DCM - Birds of a Feather

Happy Friday!

It's my turn to set the challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers blog this week, and as the name suggests, our cards need to feature feathers or something feathered.

Well, this was a good opportunity for me to dust off my new Jumbo Curiosity Feathers from The Greetery's latest release. A good job, as I see a new release is on its way next week"

Once again, the ideas I had in my mind went a very different way once I got crafting.

Stamp: The Greetery - Curio Labels
Dies: Honey Bee Stamps - Wood Frame Builder, The Greetery - Curio: Divider and Details II, The Greetery - Curio: Spring Findings, The Greetery - Jumbo Curiosity Feathers, The Greetery - PreText Banners, The Greetery - Winter Medley
Other: Gansai Tambi watercolours, Distress Oxides, Distress Ink

I started out by cutting feathers with the original Curio Spring Findings set and the new jumbo feathers, which are just bigger versions of those same dies, from watercolour cardstock with the intention of painting them with Distress Ink or even my watercolours.

But then I looked over at my swatch book of Distress Oxides and thought it would be easier to colour them using ink daubers and the ink that was already on them, and that's what I did. Adding lots of black and white pen speckles once the feathers were dry.

But there was still scope for watercolour paint!

I created a wash on a panel of watercolour paper, mainly using Wild Honey, Peeled Paint, and Weathered Wood Distress ink, and drying the paper between washes. But it still looked a bit bland. I remembered I had some Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Sparkles that I bought in a sale last year, and thought this was a good time to experiment with them.

The Pixie Sparkles add an iridescent finish to the wash, but also have clumps of pigment in them that moves with water. It's hard to photograph the end effect, and you can't see much of the background on my card, but it looks very reminiscent of a very early Basic Grey collection that was all graphic washed out prints with a bit of a skateboard/scientific sort of theme on this bleached yellow paper that reminded me of books I got in Poland back in the 80s... 

But I digress, I ultimately chose to use the Curio Divider and Details II die to create spaces to showcase the feathers and other curio elements, plus the odd bit of greenery from the Winter Medley die set.

I gave the little inserts for the Divider die the watercolour treatment too, and added a very liberal splattering of copper paint to each.

There is no shortage of splatter on this project, that's for sure!

After attaching the divider dies to my card base, I added a woodgrain frame using the wonderful set from Honeybee Designs that can be adapted to different card sizes.

Once the frame was in place, it was time to add all the details and finish the card off with some gold paint around the frame and a simple sentiment.

Make sure you check out the wonderfully feathered projects from the rest of the design team here, and play along if you can!

Happy crafting!

---

The Greetery - Curio Labels stamps Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG	Honey Bee Stamps - Wood Frame Builder dies Shop at: EH | MISC | SBC	The Greetery - Curio: Divider and Details II dies Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG	The Greetery - Curio: Spring Findings dies Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG
The Greetery - Jumbo Curiosity Feathers dies Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG	The Greetery - PreText Banners dies Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG	The Greetery - Winter Medley dies Shop at: SHC (UK) | TG	Versafine - Onyx Black ink pad Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC | SHC (UK)
Neenah Classic Crest 110 lb smooth Solar White cardstock Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH	Tim Holtz - 4.25 x 5.5 Distress Watercolor Cardstock Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC	Kuretake Gansai Tambi 36-pan watercolour set Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC	Cosmic Shimmer - Pixie Sparkles - Flirty Sky Shop at: AZ (UK) | SBC
Uniball Signo White pen Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC	3M Scotch double-sided foam tape Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH	Lawn Fawn - Stamp shammy cleaner Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC (UK)	Sponge daubers Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC
Tim Holtz - Distress Sprayer Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC	Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous Splat Box Shop at: AZ (UK) | SBC	Waffle Flower - Mini Media Mat Shop at: EH | SBC | SHC (UK)	Ranger - Artist brush set Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC
Royal Langnickel - Zen watercolour round wash brush set Shop at: AZ (UK)	Sizzix - Big Shot machine Shop at: AZ (UK) | SBC	Sizzix - Sidekick machine Shop at: AZ (UK) | SBC	Tim Holtz - Tonic guillotine trimmer (maxi) Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC
Tim Holtz - Tonic guillotine trimmer (small) Shop at: AZ (UK) | EH | SBC

Comments

[Miri]

That's sooooooooooo beautiful, Nat! I love how you coloured the feathers