Today I needed a get well card for a couple of sweet little pre-school sisters. The Kim Hughes Comforting Hugs set was a perfect fit. I started by picking a germ. . . seriously! I chose the amorphous blob because I wanted to repeat a circle motif throughout. Next I chose some Mocha Chica paper--again, mostly circles with the polka dot pattern at the top. I used a solid pattern at the bottom, scored with a Score-It, then sanded to remove some of the color and emphasize the lines. (If during sanding you depress your score lines, you can simply re-score when you finish sanding.)
I tried several ribbons and had none that were the perfect color, so I chose a coordinating strip of the houndstooth pattern to serve as my "ribbon." I stamped the germ in Memento black ink, then colored him with Copic YG00 and YG03 markers. After adding a sheen to his eyes with a clear glaze pen, I die cut him with a plain circle Nestability. For the tag, I stamped "caught a bug?" and die-cut it with the smallest double-ended tags die, then trimmed the end that I didn't need and rounded the corners by hand.
Back to coloring the germ for a bit. (If you're a Copic pro, you can skip this part!) I generally fill in my image with the palest color (YG00, in this case), then add a bit of a darker color (YG03 here),and use the paler color to blend the two together.
It's ever-so-simple to get a gradation this way. Finally, I went back with a touch of W1 and added some pale shadows on the lower side of the germ. If you prefer cooler shadows, that works well too. In fact,technically shadows are relatively cool. But when I'm using either (a)vintage images, or (b)warm colors, I tend to use a hint of warm shadow as well.
You can click on the pictures to see them larger if you'd like. Thanks for visiting today!
Debbie Olson, for the CLASSroom
