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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunrise or sunset? You decide! (Plant Hope stamp set)

Here's the last card sample from my brayer class.  As you can see, I am fond of tropical scenes...but at least this one is daytime.  Well, not sure if it's sunrise or sunset but in my mind, it's the North Shore of Oahu which definitely makes this sunset!  When we lived in Hawaii, we loved to drive over to Jamison's at the North Shore, a nice restaurant right across the road from Sunset Beach which was the perfect place to have dinner and enjoy watching Mother Nature paint a perfect sunset.  Little did I know back then that someday I would be stamping up sunsets like crazy .Of course, back then I thought rubber stamps were only used to stamp your hand for re-admission to a concert.  Silly me!

For this card I started by masking off the sun with a punch out from the 1 3/4" circle punch.  I punched it out of a sticky note and just used the adhesive on the back to keep it in place.   Also applied sticky notes with the adhesive about halfway up the card (so they would stay put and mask off the space for the ocean/island).  Then I started out brayering Delightful Daffodil from the top down so the color became gradually more faint but still yellowish at the "horizon" where the water would meet the sky.  After I had just enough intensity of the yellow, I went back with a clean brayer inked in Pumpkin Pie (Tangerine Tango would also work) and brayered that down over the Daffodil but not all the way, I still wanted the lighter yellow showing as well.  At that point I took a sponge a lightly applied some Rose Red ink along the bottom of the sky (with the post in notes still in place so the water didn't get "polluted") then removed the mask over the sun and grabbed the post it note with the 1 3/4" hole in it to apply over the sun and mask off the sky.  I first sponged the "sun" lightly with Pumpkin Pie then went over it againg with Rose Red to give me that nice "fireball" sinking into the ocean.

At that point I removed the masks and turned them around so they would make off the sky and leave room for me to do the ocean and island.  I used Not Quite Navy (although in the picture it sure looks like Pacific Point) and brayered the ocean from the post it masks in the middle down toward the bottom of the card, reapplying ink to the brayer and letting the color fade out toward the bottom.  When I was happy with the coloring, I removed the mask and got some clean post it notes.  To get the island I tore away a "shoreline" from the post it and stuck it down on the card so that the torn edges pointed to the card bottom, then I used black ink (direct to paper initially) to create the island. 

When I was started designing the card I put in a LOT of ocean so when it was time to plant the trees (theoretically speaking...don't worry, I do know that I was really only stamping the trees!) I realized my trees were all going to sink below the horizon and I thought it looked funny not to have at least one sticking up above the waterline soooo....it was Stampin' Sponges to the rescue!  I just sponged in a little more real estate and built up the landform/island far enough on the right hand side to allow my tree to peek up into the sky line.  The next time I did this card I did more sky and less ocean so the trees would stick up higher....it just seemed more appealing to me that way.

Anyway, once again, this is the Plant Hope stamp set.  You may be wondering why I haven't stamped any sentiments or greetings on the front of the card.  Well, two reasons....first we were focusing on the technique rather than creating a specific type of card (birthday, anniversary, etc) so we just left them all "blank" of sentiments.  That way it could be used as a notecard or stamp anything desired inside and suddently you have any type of card you want!  

If you live in my local area and would be interested in joining me for my next brayer class, please let me know and I will put you on the for the next class, I don't have it scheduled yet but due to my existing class schedule and the fact that the holidays will be upon us before we know it, most likely it won't happen until February or March.  Would love it if you could join me then!   Jan 

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