Autumn Bear

Today I have another Autumnal card to share with you. Yesterday’s card was very clean and simple. This one definitely has a lot more going on! I actually worked on this over the course of a few days – it took me that long to psyche myself up another to draw in my own background!

I started by printing out the digi stamp. This is the Heffy Doodle digi stamp that they gave out for World Cardmaking Day. I knew I wanted to make a one layer card so I created a rectangle in Word that would be the size of a card front, and positioned the stamp into the rectangle so that it would be positioned how I wanted it, and then printed it out.

I took the printed image to work with me and coloured it on my break using my Yosoo alcohol markers. I used all four of my browns (yes I managed to eke out a tiny bit more from my lightest one!) to colour the bear, then used cool greys for the base of the post box.

For the main ‘body’ of the post box I started by colouring with greens. I planned to have a traditional red post box in the end, but as I only have two shades of red I used the base of green in the shadow areas so that it would have greater contrast once I added the red over the top.

I used the same reds to colour the heart on the envelope, then added some yellow grey to give shading to the white areas of the envelope. I also used the yellow grey on the panel on the post box. I later added some cast shadows from the bear and post box using the light yellow grey, because at that point I wasn’t certain whether I’d add a full scene or not.

Obviously I eventually gathered the courage to do so! I used my light yellow grey to draw in the path, and used darker yellow greys to create the shadows. I then started to draw in the trees for my background. I had a photograph I’d taken this morning (whilst out with Thing 1) as a reference. I roughly sketched in all the trees with a light brown, went over the front and mid-range ones with a mid-brown, and then went over just the front ones with a dark brown.

I started adding in my grassy ground area by first doing a ‘wash’ of my lightest green, then adding in blades of grass. I repeated adding the grass blades in with a mid tone and a dark tone too, concentrating the darkest tone to the foreground of the card.

After playing around with the leafy parts of the trees I eventually settled on creating a loose, abstract look. I used the chisel end of my pens to add sweeps of colour around the trees. I used two shades of yellow, orange, light mahogany, and a dark yellow-green. I also added a variety of sizes of dots to give the impression of individual leaves too. I then used all the same colours to add some of those leaf dots along the path and among the grass, to look like fallen leaves.

Once all the colouring was completed I added my sentiment. The sentiment I chose is from The Greeting Farm’s Kitty Stacks and I heat embossed it with gold embossing powder. I then adhered the completed panel flush to an orange card base, completing the card.

This was quite scary to get started on. It’s definitely the most involved background I’ve created since deciding that I want to draw my own backgrounds more. Once I got started though I really got in the zone and had a lot of fun with it! I really enjoyed experimenting with it, and look forward to trying more backgrounds in future.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Creatalicious Challenges – Anything Goes and Optional: Make Your Own Background

Inkspirational – One Layer Card

Mod Squad – Fall Fest

Moving Along With The Times – Autumn/Fall

Simon Says Stamp – World Cardmaking Day

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Thinking Of You

Uniko Challenge – Autumn