Anniversary Doves

I had a lot of fun with this card. It didn’t come together exactly as I intended, but close enough for me to be happy with it. I think I’d need to practice a bit more to get it “perfect”. For some reason all the pictures I took of it came out blurry… I only realised when I came to put this post together and the lighting is not good now to take more, so I do apologise for that. I’m using the best ones I have.

I started by creating a card base from some black card stock. The piece of card I used was just the right size to make two card bases – I scored first so that they were both ready to fold once cut, and set the second aside for a future project.

Next I took my Panduro dove stamps and, with the help of my MISTI, lined them up to be facing each other. I placed a heart stamp between them – the one I used is from a set by Sinooperi. I then stamped the whole lot using my clear embossing ink.

Next I took my Caran d’Ache Luminance white coloured pencil – a Christmas present, it gives fantastic coverage! – and used that to go over the stamped lines before beginning to colour in the images. I decided to have a central light source, so the doves are lightest on the edges closest to each other and darker further away. Shading was fairly straight forward in that I just needed to put less colour on the areas that I wanted to keep darker. I had planned to make the heart red by colouring over the white, but after testing on a leftover piece of black card I found that none of the reds I had blended properly with the heart, so I decided to leave it white.

With all my colouring done I moved on to creating my number. I’d already decided this would be a first anniversary card. My plan was to add a stylised/calligraphic 1 and to make it somewhat decorative. I did an image search for ideas of how to draw the one, and then used a regular pencil to do the initial drawing. Once I was happy with how it looked I went over it with my white pencil, and then filled in the open areas with lines and dots. I’d intended to go for a lacy look but it didn’t quite work out that way.

Whilst I was happy with how the card looked I felt something was still missing. I decided to emboss a frame around my image. I used the X-Cuts Filigree Circle embossing folder. It took me a little while to work out the best way to fit the card inside the embossing folder to get the frame positioned how I wanted it. In fact I was concentrating so much on working that out that I forgot to check I had the folder the right way up… Still, I think it works well enough being debossed instead of embossed. As a final touch I added some Wink of Stella to the lacy edge of the circle.

I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out. As I said, it’s not exactly as I’d intended it to be, but it’s pretty close. The second dove, on the right, didn’t turn out quite as well as the first. I think I put down too much colour. I prefer the depth of shadows on the left one. But for a first try and doing this kind of blackboard/chalkboard style it worked out quite nicely!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

CAS-ual Fridays – Celebrations

Double D Challenges – Anniversary/Blogaversary/Birthday and inspiration from the mood board (I did anniversary and took inspiration from both the blackboard and the decorative 1)

Mod Squad – Anything But Christmas

Moving Along With The Times – Something In The Air (love is in the air! And, well, birds..!)

Simon Says Stamp Monday – Start Afresh (use something new – my Caran d’Ache pencil is new. I don’t think I’ve used that heart stamp before either.)

Sweet Stampin’ – Something New (see above)

PS, If you’re looking for my photo-a-day series, it has now been moved over to The Joyful Soul. I do hope you’ll follow me there if you don’t already!