Magical Unicorn

I decided to make a unicorn card today, with a lot of shimmer (which the camera doesn’t seem to notice!) One of the benefits of this card is that it could work well for various occasions – the sentiment is fairly general, and the colour palette and imagery doesn’t necessarily evoke a particular event.

I started by finding a piece of teal paper and cutting it down for my main panel. I then found some snippets of patterned paper that coordinated well, having shades of teal, green and blue, and cut that down into two little strips to go behind, mimicking a full panel. I mounted all the elements on black with a very thin border and set them aside.

Next I stamped out a unicorn onto white card. This unicorn is from Simon Says Stamp’s Magical Birthday stamp set, which was the free birthday gift last year. This is actually the first time I used it despite getting it shortly after my birthday back in October! I coloured the mane and tail of the unicorn teal. I used three shades of watercolour pencil – a pale blue, teal for my mid-tone, and dark green for the shadows. I used the pale blue and teal for the horn. I then added touches of grey to the unicorn’s body to add some depth, used the same grey on the hooves, and then added pink to the inner ear and the end of the nose. I used my Wink of Stella to blend out the watercolour pencil and add some unicorn-appropriate shimmer. Once it was all blended I fussy cut the image, then carefully coloured the edges with black to cover any points that the cutting wasn’t quite right.

After lining up my unicorn on the teal panel I worked out where to place my sentiment. The sentiment comes from Avery Elle’s Be A Unicorn. I used black ink to stamp it, and then coloured in the gaps in ‘magical’ with my teal pencil.

I used my ruler to help me line up the patterned paper strips onto my card base – made from a piece of white glitter/shimmer card. I then adhered the teal panel over the top. I decided to die cut a circle of vellum to go behind my unicorn, then adhered my unicorn to the vellum, and the vellum to the teal panel.

It seems that this is one of those times that the camera refuses to capture the shimmer in my card! In real life the unicorn has lovely sparkle which works wonderfully with the sparkle in the card base. I am happy with this card. The unicorn is rather elegant, the shading worked better than I expected, and likewise the fussy cutting turned out neater than I imagined. I didn’t do the best job of getting my elements lined up properly… That is something I continue to struggle with! I should probably get myself a T-square ruler to make my life easier.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Freshly Made Sketches – Sketch/Layout

Less Is More – Mainly Teal

Seven Hills Crafts – Tick Tac Toe (I picked animals, watercolour and bold shades. The products I used that they sell are Be A Unicorn and Wink of Stella.)