Let Love Soar

A Blog Named Hero is having a photo inspiration challenge on their blog:

Obviously, the rainbow colors inspired me with this card. I also got the inspiration for my design from this card by Kelly at a2z Scrapbooking's blog. I decided to make basically a one-layer card, using masking for the balloon & sky strip.

After die cutting my panel from 140 lb watercolor paper using the largest of Lawn Fawn's "Large Stitched Rectangle" dies, I determined where I wanted the sky on my card, and marked that lightly in pencil. I went ahead & stamped my greeting in Ranger Archival Jet Black ink, then stamped the balloon on the panel, also in Jet Black. (Both the image & greeting are from Hero Arts' "Happy Birthday" stamp set, which I believe is no longer available.) I also stamped the balloon on some Simon Says Stamp masking paper, and cut out the upper part. I masked the balloon, then used Post-It tape to mask off either side of the sky portion. I created a cloud stencil by die cutting a scrap piece of acetate with the cloud-type die from Mama Elephant's "Landscape Trio" set. While holding that in place on my card panel, I inked above it with Broken China Distress ink. I moved my stencil down, and inked some more, leaving some white for the clouds. I kept repeating that until I'd covered that strip. Then I went back with some Tumbled Glass Distress ink and lightly sponged over the clouds, to soften them up a bit. Finally I removed my masking & erase my pencil lines.

I used my Inktense pencils and a damp paintbrush to color my balloon & basket. One thing I love about this image is that the balloon itself has 7 sections, making it easy to color in ROY G BIV order--and get ALL the colors in! Once I'd colored my balloon and let it dry, all I had to do was adhere the completed panel to a white A2 card base. This card will be going in my final shipment next week to Operation Write Home.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking's July Challenge: CAS
Live Love Cards July Challenge: Masking
Operation Write Home's July Mid-month Throwdown: Love cards without hearts