Birthday blackberries

Soon I’m going to run out of blackberry images to use of cards for my mum, but not this year: I have one digi stamp left unused.

I decided what I was going to do for this year’s card quite a few weeks ago, but, of course, I left it until the last week before mum’s birthday before actually doing anything about it. And then — having not done any Copic colouring for ages and being well out of practice — I decided that it really needs to be “no-line” coloured. Because that doesn’t make it any harder at all!

But it worked! I’ve only made five other cards with no-line Copic colouring and most of those were small simple images (apart from the MST3K Christmas card I made for my other half), so I was really surprised how well this turned out. In fact, the mouse on the inside was actually trickier to do than the flowers because the head and body are the same colour…

I added a little bit of detail with very sharp coloured pencils: some subtle pink veining on the flowers and the same in green on the leaves, and a few highlights on the blackberries. I also sharpened up the detail on the bee.

I avoided the temptation to bling up the outside of the card and just let the colouring be the star. I even resisted adding a faint outline/shadow around it – mostly for fear of messing it up. I’m still not sure whether I should have or not, but I think that’s mostly down to my inability to cope with leaving white space on my cards…

So I kept it simple and just heat embossed a simple sentiment on the front, rounded the corners and matted it on a piece of purple paper.

I could have stopped there, but it wouldn’t be a proper card for my mum if it didn’t have a cute critter somewhere on it. In the (almost) five years I’ve been making cards, all of her birthday cards have had a mouse and all except one have featured blackberries…

The mouse I used this time is a (very cute) free digi — he was originally holding a balloon, but I wanted to tie the inside to the front of the card and so I replaced the balloon with one of the blackberry flowers.

If I’d left myself more time, I would probably have added a bit more contrast around the flowers on the front; I like it how it is, but I do have the urge to keep fiddling with it. Instead, I will quickly write a message inside and get it in the post…

Copic markers:

flower petals – RV91, RV0000, 0,
flower centres – G07, YG23, G20
big leaves – G24, G46, G29
small leaves – G24 YG23
blackberries – BV02, C7, BV29
bee body – E97, E99, W6, W2, W1
bee wings – G20, YR23, W2
mouse ears – RV91, RV000 and a glaze of E41
mouse dark fur – E71, E74, E77
mouse light fur – E70 and E41
ground – W6, W2, W1

Polychromos pencils:

mouse nose – 199 black, 233 cold grey 4
body – 176 van dyck brown
ears and light fur – 189 cinnamon
veins on the flowers – 129 pink madder lake
bee – 186 terra cotta, 181 payne’s grey, 199 black, 185 naples yellow
leaves – 165 juniper green
blackberries – 101 white

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Tiddly Inks – G’moma’s blackberries
  Wiebke – Frederic with balloon
• stamps:
  WPlus9 – strictly sentiments 1
• inks:
  Versamark
• embossing powder:
  Wow! gold rich pale
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory – beautifully bright pad
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – cotton white
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
• miscellaneous:
  We R Memory Keepers corner chomper