Wishing You Rainbows

I procrastinated on this card. Whilst most procrastination (at least mine) is unnecessary, this was particularly so. I’d actually created most of the elements of the card this morning before work, so there was very little to do. If I’d got on with it instead of procrastinating then maybe I would have actually been able to go to bed on time..! Oh well.

I started by painting my rainbow strip. I used a snippet of watercolour paper and some cheap paints with the wet on wet technique to create the rainbow look. I tried to get a fairly smooth blend between the colours. It’s not quite as bright as I would have liked, but worked well enough. I cheated a bit – the snippet I used was not long enough to cover the card from corner to corner, so I cut it in half with the idea that the gap would be hidden behind my central element.

The central element in question was made from a piece of white card stock, the same as I used for the card base. I used a die to cut a large circle. I then took some scrap paper and used the rain drop die from the Memory Box Come Rain or Shine die set to create my own stencil. I lightly sponged some different shades of blue ink through the stencil onto the circle to create rain. I also added blue sponging around the edge of the circle to help differentiate it from the card base.

I decided to use some sparkly pink adhesive backed foam (which I had left over from a craft with the girls at my old job) as the top of my umbrella as it seemed like a fun choice! I was a bit worried that it would be too thick to go through my Big Shot but after a minor complaint it went through fine. The umbrella die is also from the Memory Box die set. I cut the handle from a snippet of gold mirror card.

At this point I started assembling my elements. I used a ruler to help line up the rainbow halves to make sure I could retain the impression of them being one piece. I adhered them down with Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue, and used the same on the back of the rainy circle, making sure to adhere it the right way up! Wouldn’t want the rain going the wrong way. As I tried to work out the position for the umbrella I realised I was missing an element – I wanted to add a character!

As I was already running late I didn’t want to have to do too much colouring. So once more I cheated! I took a snippet of brown card and stamped on the bear from Paper Smooches’ Chubby Chums Pals. I then used my watercolour pencils to add shading in a few places, blending it out with my Wink of Stella. I also used my white Caran d’Ache pencil for the eyes, though I later went back in with a white gel pen to brighten them up even more.

Removing the backing paper from the adhesive foam I attached the umbrella top to the handle, then used my glue pen to adhere it to the bear’s paw. I used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid glue to attach the bear to the focal circle, and the umbrella’s self-adhesive to hold that in place.

In order to help ground the bear, and to add a sentiment, I created a sentiment strip. I wasn’t sure what to use for the sentiment so I searched through my stamps and decided to selectively mask some of the stamps from the Simon Says Stamp Magical Birthday set. The spacing between the words is a little off, but nothing too major. I then trimmed the panel down and roughly sponged some of the blue ink across it. I used foam tape to adhere it below the bear’s feet.

I think I’ll see how I feel about this card in the morning. I’m kind of happy with it, but I also feel it’s not quite how I wanted it though I can’t put my finger on why… Most likely it’s just because I’m tired and had ended up spending more time on it than I expected. It’ll do!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

AAA Cards – Stencil

Addicted to CAS – Rainbow (edit – where it was picked as CAS Perfectionist!)

Inspired By All The Little Things – Inspiration Image (The elements I chose were the rain and the umbrella.)

Paper Smooches – Showers

Pixie’s Snippets Playground – Snippets

Seven Hills Crafts Challenge – Sketch/Layout (I changed the oval to a circle as I don’t have oval dies. The stamp set the bear came from is available in their shop.)

Simon Says Stamp Monday – Splash It On