Morning people

I was going to skip the challenge over at Country View Crafts this month – humour is something I struggle with on cards. But then, at the last minute, I thought why not push myself and make something…

I’ve had this stamp set for a while – I’d put it on my Amazon wish list because there were a couple of sentiments that were just true enough to be amusing and my brother bought it for me a couple of birthdays ago. (Though, I have to say, that full stop before the exclamation mark is making my innate proofreader cry.)

The time constraint meant I needed to keep the design simple so I opted to do some masking and ink blending and create a kind of sunrise.

I tore some masking paper, masked off the centre of the panel and then created a black-grey-blue blended gradient down the sides. I tried dabbing a wet wipe through a star stencil, which didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. It even tore the paper in a couple of spots, which was particularly annoying as this is on Distress watercolour cardstock.

I switched the masks around, covering the sides, masked off where I wanted the sun to be and then used a stencil brush to add some blue sky.

The sun was painted using my Peerless watercolours (the first time I’ve actually used them other than making a swatch and palette folder, which I should probably write up).

I decided to go over the stars with clear Wink of Stella — it still looks a bit messy, but more “deliberately messy” than “well that didn’t work messy”.

I made sure everything was dry and then outlined the sun and sky with a charcoal pencil and smudged that a little. 

The sentiment is a single stamp, so I stamped it out and cut it into individual strips before gluing the pieces across the card. I also outlined them with the charcoal pencil.

Resisting the temptation to do anything else to it, I trimmed it down and mounted it on a black card base.

If I have a good handwriting day, I might add “but I’ll make an exception for you” on the inside.

Challenges:

• Country View Crafts – May – be humorous

Supplies:

• stamps:  
  Dylusions – say it how it is
• stencils:  
  Craft Box – stars
• colour:  
  Distress Oxide – broken china, faded jeans, hickory smoke, black soot  
  Peerless watercolours – brilliant yellow, cadmium yellow
• inks:  
  Versafine – smokey gray
• embellishments:  
  Wink of Stella – clear
  charcoal pencil
• paper and card:  
  Distress watercolour cardstock  
  Papermill Direct – plain black
• miscellaneous:
  1″ circle punch

9th June update – to my huge surprise, this card got chosen as one of the Top Three in the challenge!