Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Flowers for a friend....

Do you ever color up images and then stuff them in a drawer to make into a card later? I don't do that a lot now, but I used to. I used to keep extras that I colored up while teaching a class to save for a rainy day.

Well, last weekend, I was digging through some of the drawers in my stamp room and found one that I did on watercolor paper using markers and some really fun stamps from Art Impressions. It was just there on a scrap piece of watercolor paper calling my name. And guess what? It was actually a rainy day! ;-)

So, I grabbed my new Nesties and went to town to make a semi-easy card.
If you click on the link above for Art Impressions, you'll see the kind of "watercolor" stamps I used. They key is to stamp by inking up the stamps with Marvy markers, mask the areas (like the gloves and the water pail) and accent with flowers and the grass. Then, when you are done, you simply take a damp water brush and meld the colors together to make these hand stamped images look like you painted them yourself!

The rest is easy. Use the Labels 3 Nestability to cut out the watercolor image and a second for a mat (I used Bo Bunny paper). Use a distressed background stamp (SU) with Antique Linen ink, paper pierce the edge and distress, add some brads and a little hardware and ribbon! The tag was done with a fun little set I bought years and years ago from Hero Arts. I made it into a tag thanks to a 1" circle bunch. And..... done!

Now... to a story. I honestly could not believe this one! On Saturday, my family and I went for a short walk to our favorite island nearby that is separated from our neighborhood by the Yellowstone River. It's not uncommon to see some fun creatures big and small. We've seen porcupine, ground hogs, beaver, heron, deer, and fox. Well, on Saturday we saw a beaver and it was just sticking out its head staring at us while we stared at him. I was kicking myself that I didn't have a camera. As we walked away, honestly I said, "The only thing better would be to see a bald eagle." Well, we finished our walk and didn't see one....... at least not then.

The day melted into evening and we had seized the day by barbequing. As we were eating our steak kabobs, right over our house we saw this circling above.... Holy cow! Are you kidding me? It was a bald eagle circling over the nearby field. I didn't get a shot of what happened next because it happened so fast but out of nowhere a hawk of some sort dive bombed the eagle in mid air causing them both to spin out. I guess the hawk didn't want the eagle in "his" territory. It was a sight to see! What was hysterical is the hawk was half the size of the eagle. It had some ki-hon-ays!

So, I guess, be careful what you wish for!

Well, thanks for stopping by my place, see you back here tomorrow!

10 comments:

Janine said...

Love your AI card Julie and the pic is gorgeous!! What a day!

The Rubber Maid said...

I always forget how nice those Art
Impressions stamps are for water
color art. Very beautiful card. Mom

Stacy Morgan said...

Very pretty, great water coloring! Very cool with the Eagle and I agree he had some *gumption* to take on the Eagle.

Vivi Casale said...

Gorgeous card Julie and I liked the new blog's wallpaper!! very pretty! both!!
Hugs
Vivi Casale

Darlene said...

Your card is lovely Julie and WOW ... check out that Eagle ... awesome!!!

magic boxes said...

Love your work Julie.

Glad Curt put a link to you.

The bald-eagle picture/story is amazing!

Elaine x

Diane said...

Wowzer card !!!! Love your coloring as always!
Good thing you didn't want to see a crocodile or something,lol!
As if that happened!!!!Amazing!

Etha said...

beautiful card, cool bird shot!!
love the watercolor quality on this image!

lisa808 said...

Gorgeous card and amazing photo!

Shirley said...

Talk about beautiful! I love the whole design and the Flower Soft really really looks elegant with it!