Ombre Cattails

I've been rather remiss lately in making masculine cards for Operation Write Home. Since I recently got this stamp from Our Daily Bread Designs, specifically with the intention of using it on masculine cards, I decided it was time to get it inky. This is the card I came up with.

In looking through my collection of OWH sketches, I came across this one, and thought the strips would be perfect for an ombre background:

I began by cutting my paper strips from 5 different shades of blue cardstock. I then adhered them, in the order they would be on my card, to a piece of copy paper with temporary adhesive. I laid Hero Arts' "Flag Pattern" stencil over that, and applied Liquitex Gloss Super Heavy Gel medium through the stencil. Once I had an even layer of medium down, I removed the stencil (CAREFULLY!), and set my strips aside to dry.

For the focal image, I wanted my background to be softer than stark white, so I chose a cream cardstock from my scrap stash. I cut it to size, then placed it in my MISTI. I positioned my stamp, and mounted it to the door of the MISTI. I used a dark green Marvy LePlume II marker to color the leaves, spritzed the stamp very lightly with water, and closed the MISTI. Because the cardstock was slightly textured, the color didn't transfer smoothly, but that's the joy of this tool. I went over the leaves again with the same marker, spritzed it with water, and restamped--right over the first image. I did that one more time, which finally gave me a clear image, then moved on to the brown portions, using the same process. When I had the image like I wanted, I took 2 markers--a lighter green and a tan--and colored in the open parts of the cattails, just to finish it off.

After my strips had dried, I removed them from the copy paper, and adhered them to a piece of kraft cardstock, that I'd cut to 4.25x5.5". I matted my focal image with more kraft, and adhered that in place. Finally, I mounted the finished card front to a white A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Virginia's View Challenge #15: "Ombre/Monochromatic"
A Blog Named Hero: "Favorite" (used a favorite color--blue)
Simon Says Stamp's Monday "Don't Cut, Just Paste"