When I first started card making, I gravitated towards florals and abstract/geometric patterns. One of the reasons for that is, simply, I’m not great at coloring. With flowers, I can usually get away with 1-2 colors in whatever medium I’m using and do simple blending from dark to light.
With critters, there are so many different parts to the image (face, belly, arms, hoofs, tusks, noses, cheeks…) that I find it overwhelming to pick the right shades, and then to also coordinate colors. The problem is that stamp companies keep releasing adorable critter stamp sets that I simply must own, and it seems a little ridiculous to own them for the sake of petting them and going “awww” heheh.
So, I got brave and worked on two “critter” cards using images from Avery Elle and Penny Black:
Unicorn, stars and sentiment from Avery Elle “Be a Unicorn”. Coloring with Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers. I used dies from Gina Marie Designs for the clouds and stitched details.
This was a “must have” set for me, which then set in my stash for a good couple of months, because I was too intimidated to tackle the coloring.
I’ve owned this wood mounted stamp from Penny Black (Christmas at my Window) for a long time – it was a garage sale find! I cut out the image by hand and used vellum cut with a stitched hexagon die to center the image.
I colored in the image using my Zig clean color real brush markers as well. Really loving my Zigs – they are getting less intimidating with every use.
SHAKER CArDS 