Saturday 14 February 2015

Make Your Tiny Stamps Shine with Mama Elephant and ECD Glitter

Hello fellow crafters, today I have a card and a technique for you which I hope will excite you as much as it excites me. My main focus is on coloring with a medium you might not have considered so far: Stabilo fibre tip pens. And before you groan at yet another thing to invest in, I'll stop you right here: they are super cheap (your kids might use them already for school or just plain coloring), you can buy them in packs or individually, and if you have water color paper, chances are you can achieve blending effects similar to Copic markers!


The star of today's show is the little fellow from the Mama Elephant Cosmic Stars stamp set. You can color him any way you want, but I used the Stabilo Pens I mentioned. I found that, on water color paper, they blend very nicely. Now, don't get me wrong: you won't get the same quality of blending as with Copics and these cheaper pens are better suites for smaller images, but if you are on a budget, the Stabilo Pens might be worth your consideration.

The photos don't do the coloring justice nor the super sparkly blue background behind the little crab: I used some double sided adhesive sheets to create a sticky surface and then dumped Elizabeth Craft glitter on it. Since that glitter is opaque, I did it right on the grey card stock – as you can see, you can't see any grey, the glitter covers it right up. I wish you could see this for real, it's brilliant (pun intended).


And if you wonder what's up with this 'weird' sentiment – well, I saw the little character from Mama Elephant and he reminded me of a crab. And the crab reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite TV show, 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered', from the Hallmark channel (if you are not in the US, you can grab it via iTunes). It's just a feel-good show, with some darling characters and one of them cheers up another one by telling her that while's she's soft on the inside, she's like a special breed of crabs: she has a tough outer shell that makes her unsquashable :) I thought this would be a great card for someone who needed some cheering up.


I hope you enjoyed the card and you have a great Valentine's Day! Thanks for stopping by!

1 comment:

Sarah G said...

Great tip on the felt tip pens, Julia - the colouring looks fab on the cute crab! Love the deep blue of the glittery background too :)