Chickadee Holiday

The current challenge at Our Daily Bread Designs is a color challenge. I used the purple, blue, red, & brown from the inspiration palette.

I stamped the "Chickadee" from ODBD onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper with Hero Arts Soft Granite ink. I die cut it with the largest of the "Floral Ovals" by Spellbinders, and colored the image with my Inktense pencils, using a damp paintbrush to pick up the color & blend it on the paper. (This is my preferred way of working with Inktense pencils, as I find it gives me the most control.) After I'd finished coloring, I added the eye back in with a Sakura black glaze pen, and added a highlight with a white gel pen. Then I placed the die cut back into the die, and used a sponge dauber to blend on Tumbled Glass Distress ink for a sky, leaving a halo of white around the image.

For the background, I first cut a panel of watercolor paper to A2 size, and applied a coat of gesso to the whole panel. When the gesso had dried, I stamped the "Small Snowflakes" background from ODBD (discontinued) in Versamark, and heat embossed it with Recollections Clear Detail embossing powder. Then I scribbled blue & purple metallic gelatos over the background, and blended them with my finger. I finished the background by buffing the color off the embossing with a very slightly damp paper towel. I used Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue my focal panel to the background.

Unfortunately, I discovered that gelatos take a LOOONG time to dry! I suppose especially when you apply them over a gessoed background. So when I later checked on my card, the focal panel popped right off. :( I remedied the situation by using a baby wipe to wipe the color off the background, just behind the solid part of the die cut. Then I reglued my oval on, and set an acrylic block on top until the glue dried. I was contemplating spraying the card front with a matte varnish, but didn't want to lose the sheen of the gelatos. Thankfully, after a day or two, the gelatos had dried sufficiently that the color didn't rub off! I used a fine-tip applicator bottle to squirt tiny dabs of glue under the detailed edges of the die cut, and set that under an acrylic block to dry, which it thankfully did. Crisis averted! :) I finished my card by adhering my card front to a white A2 card base, and rounding the corners with my 1/2" Corner Chomper.

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

Craft Your Passion #336: "Anything Goes"
Through the Craft Room Door 2nd Annual Blog Hop