Tia's Tips: This time of the year many of us find ourselves spending more time in the kitchen. Baking pies, cookies and breads to celebrate our love and joy for the holiday and each other. Take time to look at what's in your kitchen that can be used for your art! From food coloring paints, cling wrap stenciling and for me-water coloring with salt!
I chose to feature Joy Clair Designs newly released digital stamp sets “Christmas Cheer” and “Jingle All The Way”. Because who doesn’t love dancing “for-joy” penguins?
What a joy December’s Mood Board is! Filled with several gorgeous shades of royal blue, crisp white and sparking silver, those are the colors that inspired my card.
I’m excited to be playing along with the Joy Clair Designs December Mood Board. To meet the color palette, I paired two fun techniques for you to explore. Mixing watercolors and salt I created a snowy background! And my Penguins are dancing atop a flawlessly foiled sentiment.
Watercolors and Salt
I was playing around with this technique and didn’t even think of capturing what I was up to! There are great videos on YouTube that you can look up if this technique is new to you. With Lindy’s Magicals in Bachelor Button Blue, I created the background paper. Start by taking time to make the watercolor paper heavy with water. Next, I applied the pigment powder. I created areas of both light and dark pigment. After that, I hand sprinkled table salt, Kosher salt and Ice Cream Rock Salt across my board. I created a large 11 x 14 in. creative board and let the salt and watercolor dry. Upon my return I brushed the salt away with a dry paintbrush. When I was ready with my focal image, I found an area of the board that I liked most to use as a mat.
Card Design
For digital designing I use the photo-editing software Pixlr. I used the word ‘Joy’ from the “Jingle All The Way” digital set. I then pulled the Penguins from the “Christmas Cheer” set and set them atop the word, sizing them until each of their feet landed atop each letter. With my laser-jet printer I printed the image on 100 lb. Hammermill Premium Color Copy Cover paper.
Foiling
There’s something about Christmas that just brings out the need for shiny foils! I used Indigo Blue Foil from Deco Foil atop the word ‘JOY’ and ran it thru my Minc foiling machine.
Marker Selection
This card requires minimal markers. A little Y38 spread with my colorless blender on the neck/beak of each penguin. I used C3 & C5 on feet/beaks. The bow-ties were colored with B18, B23 & B21. The inside of the letters were colored with C3, C5 & C7.
Putting It All Together
I began assembling a 4.25 x 5.5 in card base with blue cardstock. I deckle die-cut white cardstock to mat behind my water-colored paper. The final image was die-cut with a fun postage-shaped die. Navy cardstock was used as a mat and the entire image was popped up with foam tape. All this layering created a cool wintery-scene with lots of the Mood Board colors in use!
Thanks for following along with me! Take time and try some of the new techniques shown here. If you do, head over to the Joy Clair Facebook page and share!
Until next time-Get Crafty!
-Tia