
I pushed my comfort zone a bit with today’s card. I knew I wanted to use this adorable elephant, and was planning on keeping the colouring fairly simple. But then I thought hey… that candle would be casting light around, right? So I decided to play with the look of cast light on my elephant. I’ll admit adding the bright yellow onto the elephant was a tad scary, and the candle probably wouldn’t cast quite as much light as I ended up with, but it was definitely fun to experiment with!
I started with the Baby Elly’s Birthday digi-stamp from Sasayaki Glitter. I coloured the cake first, with the idea of it being a chocolate cake. I used my darkest browns (I have these markers) to colour the icing, then some lighter browns for the cake itself. (As I was writing this I realised that my shading on the cake is all wrong, given the light is coming from above… I coloured it before I decided to have the candle as the main light source, and forgot to go back and fix it!) For the decorative flowers and the candle I used some purple. I then coloured the flame of the candle with yellow and a touch of orange.
Next I added in my areas of cast light to the elephant. (I later went back and added them to the icing too.) I spent quite a light of time puzzling out which areas would be most hit by the light, and I’m not certain I got it right, but I tried my best! I then coloured the elephant with my yellow greys. I worked over it a few times to make sure the yellow highlights were realistically blended in. I then went back to the glow around the candle and added more yellow to really brighten it up.
I coloured the elephant’s hair with the same greys as her skin, then chose some greens for her bow. I used the darkest green that had been on the bow to colour the heart on her foot.
After finishing the colouring I really wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing by adding the yellow to the image… I showed husband and he pointed out that, well, of course it wouldn’t look right with all the white around it! So I fussy cut the image and as soon as the white was removed it looked heaps better! I looked in my stash of card bases that I had premade and found a dark brown one and decided to use that as it would be a bit warmer than black, and would coordinate well with the chocolate cake! The lighting definitely looked better on the elephant once I’d laid it against the card base.
Though I was happy with the card base I felt like something more needed to be going on behind little Elly. After some contemplation I decided to die cut a circle of yellow vellum to put behind her. Before die cutting I backed it with double-sided adhesive so that I would be able to easily adhere the vellum to the cardbase. I then stuck it down, and popped up Elly with foam tape on top of the circle.
As a final touch I white heat embossed a sentiment just below my image. Yesterday I had received the Heffy Doodle stamps that I had backed on Kickstarter, and the elephant set (Elephant of Surprise) was on the top of the pile, so of course I decided to use a sentiment from there!

I’m really pleased with this card. The elephant is so cute, and the sentiment matches beautifully. I really like how the yellow vellum enhances the impression of the light coming from the candle. Though it was daunting to do I am definitely glad that I decided to play with the cast light on this card.
Love,
Lady Joyful
Challenges included:
AAA Cards – Creatures Great or Small
Sasayaki Glitter Challenge Blog – Brown (edit – where it was picked as one of the top three!)
SheepSki Designs Challenges – Feature a Creature
Sweet Stampin’ – Heat Embossing
Ah – how sweet! I can never make my mind up how to do light…I just do a vague scribble and hope it’s interpreted as shadow!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Haha that’s pretty much what I was doing, but now ive started trying to really think it through. I just signed up to some online colouring classes too which should help! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Cute. Nominated you for the Liebster Award and The Blue Sky Award
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re Welcome
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lady Joyful Thanks Again. Post is out. Thanks Samanthamurdochblog.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Elephants are just so wonderfully cute for such a large animal. Love yours! Thanks for playing at AAA Cards.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! 🙂
LikeLike
I love elephants and this little one is adorable! Such a sweet card! Thanks for joining AAA Cards! Hugs Ã…sa
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Åsa 🙂
LikeLike
Charlotte, undoubtedly fantastic card! So sweet. And love your colouring, specially yellow from candle light. Thank you so much for sharing your card with us at AAA Cards Challenge.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂
LikeLike
So adorable, beautiful clean simple design, it’s perfect with this image. thank you for joining us at SheepSki Designs this time
Andrea x
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Andrea 🙂
LikeLike