I thought the new line of Shady Tree Studio stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms (available in Ellen's store January 15) might be perfect for the White Color Pencil technique Ellen has shown us HERE with black cardstock and HERE with brown cardstock. Much to my delight, it worked like a charm! These line art images, with their shading drawn in for you, make it simple to know where your highlights and low lights should be.
I began by testing which kind of white ink I preferred:
The Closed Tulip from this same stamp line is stamped onto Chocolate Brown Cardstock with Palette New Canvas hybrid ink on the left, and the two images on the right are stamped with Ranger's Snow Cap pigment ink. I'm not too sure if you can tell (after I colored it) that the Palette image was a bit softer, while the Ranger images were brighter. For this project, I preferred the brighter Ranger ink. You can see by the center, uncolored image, that it was very easy for me to see where to place my shading.
The packaging for this stamp line is beautiful -- the full color artist's rendering makes a perfect sample reference. I only used Prismacolor's White pencil to color this Iris Bloom image. After coloring the image, I trimmed it and then matted it with some of Basic Grey's new pink Bittersweet patterned paper.
I distressed the mat with Tim Holtz Edge Distresser -- with my love for the vintage and shabby styles, this tool is always close by! (It appears the store is sold out of these at the moment, but if you check back they should be in by Monday of next week.)
The sentiment I selected for this card is from Mona Lisa Moments' Script Essential Expressions. This fabulous set is one I reach for ALL the time -- it contains sentiments for absolutely ANY reason you might need a card! I stamped it with Memento Rich Cocoa ink, die cut it with Spellbinders Tag Trio, and added some Ranger Vintage Photo Distress ink to bring out the embossed edge.
Machine stitching, ribbon, a tied button and Neutral Art Flowers finish this 5-1/2-inch card. All papers are Basic Grey Bittersweet . . . chocolates and pinks, what could be better? <not much! -- sigh>!!
