Bear Hug

I am making a concerted effort to be more "equal" in my card making for Operation Write Home. I decided that, for every feminine card I make, I'll make a masculine and a kid-friendly one. This is one of my recent "kid" cards.

I chose OWH's Sketch #211 for my card design:

I first stamped the focal image, from Hero Arts' "Lil Hoot" stamp set, onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper with Ranger Archival Jet Black ink. I colored it using my Inktense pencils and a damp brush. Then I set that aside to dry.

For the background, I decided to try a technique I'd seen Jennifer McGuire use in this blog post & video. She used Ranger's Texture Paste over a stencil. After the paste dried on the cardstock, she repositioned the stencil over the design, and blended Distress ink onto the paste. She said that she'd found that the Texture Paste takes color like that better than embossing paste. So after masking off where the 3" wide strip would go on a piece of cream cardstock, I applied Texture Paste over the "Mini Dancing Leaves" stencil by The Crafter's Workshop. When it dried, I replaced the stencil, and blended Mowed Lawn Distress ink over the leaves. The paste does seem to take the color well.

Detail of inked Texture Paste

To finish the card, I die cut a circle using a Spellbinders "Standard Circles LG" die in a piece of green cardstock. I glued the watercolor piece behind that, with the bears showing through the opening, then trimmed off the excess paper. Once I'd stamped the greeting (from the same stamp set) in Versafine Onyx Black ink, I matted that with a brown cardstock panel. Finally, I adhered the whole focal panel to my completed card front, mounted that to an A2 card base, and this card was done!

I'm entering my card into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Add a Little Texture"
a2z Scrapbooking's February challenge: "Embossing"
Hero Arts' "Nature" challenge