Garden Crazy Bird

Hello!  I wanted to make a Thank You card for my sister, who recently did something very special for my family (but mostly for me – LOL!).  I thought a spring-themed card would be nice and it gave me an excuse to use my recently-acquired TH Flower Garden rubber stamps, along with one of the Crazy Birds.  Not to get off topic, but I’m also anxious to use my Crazy Cats set, and I am hoping that a set of Crazy Dogs will be following!  Here’s my card and I hope she likes it!

 

I started off by stamping the Coneflower heads and some stems and colored those.   I used Distress inks to paint all of these by stamping the color on a block and spritzing with water.  For the stems, I used Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint, and noticed there was a little left over residue from Perfect Pearls on a previous project…a nice addition, but probably only noticeable by me.

 

For the Coneflowers, I used Walnut Stain, Ground Espresso, Squeezed Lemonade and Wild Honey.  After they were dry, I used my clear Wink of Stella over the flower heads, but that nice shimmer doesn’t really show up in the photos.  I ended up making a third flower the next day.

I had some trouble coloring my bird, so I ended up  just blending (onto my paper) Shaded Lilac, Squeezed Lemonade, Wild Honey, and a few other yellows…maybe a little Rusty Hinge, but I don’t remember.  I used my paint brush to splatter some water, but also cupped some paint water in my hand and made a splat bigger than I had intended – ooops.  After I dabbed with a paper towel, I really liked that nice blue spot it left!  I used Squeezed Lemonade and Wild Honey for her hat, and Spun Sugar and Picked Raspberry for the flower, with a little bling.  I cut the hat so I could stick it her head in it, and it’s not noticeable in the pics, but I stamped another image and fussy cut the flower, eyes and nose for a little dimension and glued them on top.  Foam squares would have been too much.

I had a certain piece of paper in mind for my background.  It was from my scrap pile and was big enough for the front and inside of  my card.  I did want to add some texture and interest to the front panel, but also wanted to keep things simple and keep the bird and flowers as the main focus.  I used Shaded Lilac and Vintage Photo around the edges.  I also used Shaded Lilac with the TH Flourish layering stencil so it was basically tone-on-tone, then used the Zigzag layering stencil with white embossing past because my sister really likes the Chevron pattern.  I also wanted to add some “rain drops” here and there, so I used the Falling Snow stencil from Simon Says Stamp and some translucent embossing paste.   I also went ahead and stamped my Crazy Bird feet and tail tip.

It still needed something, so I splattered some on using Vintage Photo spritzed with water, and some Picket Fence Distress paint…not  too much, though.

To finish, I used some TH Chitchat stickers and edged with my Black Soot marker.  I wanted the edges of my background paper to look worn, but couldn’t use water since the paper’s too thin.  I just worked it with my fingers, pinching and moving around the entire background several times, not trying to tear it but going with it when it did.  Here’s some more close-ups of my card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am entering this in the following challenges:

http://stampsandstencils.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/spring-is-in-air.html

http://mixedmediamojo.blogspot.com/2016/03/happy-march.html

http://sirstampalotchallenge.blogspot.co.il/2016/03/march-challenge-flower-power.html

http://www.theartisticstampercreativeteam.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/creative-challenge-march-2016-springtime.html

Simon Says: Come Rain Or Shine

http://mytimetocraftchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/challenge-317-flowers.html

http://movingalongwiththetimes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/16-in-garden.html

Please feel free to leave comments, and thanks for stopping by!