Colourful Birds

Sometimes it’s fun to play with unusual colours on stamps. Blue isn’t exactly the normal choice for an owl, but it looks fun nonetheless! Plus using colours in different ways is a great opportunity for playing with different colour combinations. If it’s not expected to look natural, then it isn’t quite such a big deal of the colour combination doesn’t work as well as hoped.

For this colourful card I started with stamping out my birds. They come from the Paper Smooches Chubby Chums and Chubby Chums Pals stamp sets, which I adore! I stamped them with MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink, which is safe for use with alcohol markers.

I used my Yosoo alcohol markers and started by colouring the owl. I used by favourite blue-green combo to colour the under-feathers, wings, eye brows, and parts of the ears. I then used a brown combination for the rest of the owl, and yellows for the beak and feet.

I used the same yellow combination to colour the chick. I guess the chick is fairly ‘normal’ colours, as chicks usually are yellow! Not as bright as I went though, perhaps. I then used an orange combination for the beak and feet.

The duck (I think it’s a duck) has the same orange for its beak and feet as the chick. I then used some yellow greens to colour the body of the duck. I finished off the eyes on all three birds by adding a light blue-green in a C shape and blending it back with my colourless blender to give a subtle appearance of shape to their eyes.

Having finished my colouring I fussy cut all three of the images out and set them aside.

I was considering using a white card base but I didn’t have any in my drawer and rather than making more (which I could have done quite easily!) I grabbed a kraft one instead. I’m glad I did, as the colours pop so beautifully against it! I played around with the layout of the birds then added my sentiment, which is from Simon Says Stamp’s Best Ever stamp set. I felt it was an appropriate sentiment to go with the images!

I stamped the sentiment with the same MFT ink, then used my glue pen to adhere each of the birds into place on my card base.

I’m really happy with this card. The colours worked really nicely and look so bright and beautiful against the kraft card base! I’m really wanting to get some better markers though. Whilst the ones I have aren’t bad exactly, I bought them as a cheap option (for my first foray into alcohol marker colouring as I didn’t want to spend a lot of money in case I ended up not liking them) and now that I know I love colouring with alcohol markers I’d really like something a bit better. Plus these seem to be starting to dry out already. I really had to fight with my lightest brown to finish colouring the owl as it seemed almost completely dry. Though of course when I got home and showed husband, it was working fine again… Still, I feel like they shouldn’t be being this temperamental after only 3 months of having them!

Love,

Lady Joyful

PS, did you know I’m having a giveaway? For the full details, and to enter, click here!

Challenges included:

City Crafter – Colorful Birds (edit – where it was spotlighted!)

CAS Colours and Sketches – Sketch/Layout

Paper Smooches – Animals

SheepSki Designs – Feature a Creature