Peace Cardinal

The past couple of weeks, I've been participating in Splitcoaststampers.com's Falliday Fest. It's a series of 30 card challenges & 10 tutorials, and has been a lot of fun. This is one of the cards I created for that.

I recently got Hero Arts' "Color Layering Cardinal" stamp set & dies. We had a friend some years ago who loved cardinals, and I guess she passed that love on to me. So when I saw this stamp set, I knew I had to have it!

For this card, I stamped the cardinal on white cardstock, using Hero Arts Fresh Peach ink for the base layer, and Memento Lady Bug & Rhubarb Stalk for the second and third layers, respectively. I stamped the face & eye in Versafine Onyx Black, and the feet in Rhubarb Stalk. I must say, not having much experience with color layering stamps, this one is not too hard to work with. The only part I messed up was the black, and mostly because I wasn't sure what to line it up with. Thankfully, I had stamped 3 birds, so I just "ignored" the one I messed up! :) After I'd finished stamping, I die cut the body & legs with the coordinating dies, and added a bit of white gel pen to emphasize the highlight in the eye.

To create the sky area, I blended Distress inks in Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, & Chipped Sapphire onto a panel of Strathmore Smooth Bristol paper. I spritzed the panel with water from my Distress Sprayer, let it sit for several seconds, and blotted up the water. I dried that, inked over it again, & repeated the water "bleaching" process. I really like the effect doing this twice gave. I think it really adds more depth than just inking and bleaching once.

I cut a piece of white cardstock to A2 size, and die cut an oval from the center with the smallest of Spellbinders' "Grand Ovals Nestabilities" (no longer available) Then I ran it through my die cutting machine again, with the "Snowflakes" embossing folder from Darice.

For the greeting, I stamped the "peace" from the same stamp set in Rhubarb Stalk, and die cut it with one of the "Labels" dies from Sizzix/Tim Holtz. I inked the edges with Stormy Sky. I stamped & die cut the berry & small pine needle images with Memento Lady Bug & Cottage Ivy inks, and die cut them as well. I layered those behind the greeting, and added foam tape to the back.

I marked the position of the oval on my inked background, and used that as a guide to stamp the branch in Hero Arts Cup o' Joe ink. I adhered my frame to the background, and glued the cardinal on top, "sitting" on the branch. Finally, I added my greeting, and mounted the card front to a white A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking's October Challenge: "Layer It"
Die Cut Divas "October is the Time to Emboss"