Full of Life Sentiments with a Sketch

Today I worked the early shift and had most of the day off. When you get up at 3:40am, being done with work by 10 is sort of strange, but I'll take it!

I had seen a sketch challenge on SCS and wanted to give it a whirl. This layout was designed by Rox. She's prolific! Let's talk about the blue one first. I received some non-SU! patterned paper as a gift, and I wanted to build the card around it. I've said this before and I'll say it again, having SU! coordinate its Designer Series Paper (DSP) with its cardstock so that the colors match exactly is such a marvelous thing. With this patterned paper, I had to experiment before I found something close. I chose Brilliant Blue and Tempting Turquoise from the Bold Brights family and cut the panels.

What to use for a main image? Well, I wanted to use the sentiment from Full of Life that says, "if at first you DO succeed, try not to be astonished." I searched through my stash and unearthed these funny creatures from Doodle Factory. Doesn't that face just seem to say "stunned. amazed. astonished."? I thought so.

Coloring this little guy was a bit of a challenge because the green in the patterned paper didn't really truly match any of the bazillion greens that SU! has already produced. (I'm going to go on record right now that there'll be a sort of limey green as one of the next set of InColors. Remember that you heard it here first.)

The Real Red, BB, and TT were fine, but surprisingly Certainly Celery was the closest green to the color I was searching for. The shading was done with Bordering Blue and a blender pen. Notice that I did NOT say with an aquapainter. I made the unfortunate mistake of using that on the image that's on the other side. Basic Black ink is NOT waterproof, as the catalog claims!

Another sticky wicket here was getting the right shade of matching cardstock for that main image. You see, the color in the patterned paper isn't quite white and it isn't quite vanilla either. It turns out, it's the color of chipboard coasters! I cut one of those down to the sizes I needed and am pleased with the results. I used the same markers directly on the stamp, one phrase at a time, to get the sentiment.

For this card, I hope it's obvious that I turned it sideways. I used the true measurements of the sketch, which I didn't find until after I was almost finished with the first card, and I like this one better. The base is Close to Cocoa, and the mat is from Candy Lane DSP. The rest is pretty self-evident. Pink Pirouette is the mat for the sentiment, again from Full of Life.

I received a bit more information regarding the possibility of paper crafters getting involved in Katie's work in Africa. (See this post if you don't know what I'm talking about.) Stay tuned. Details to follow...and they have to with scraps!