Alight by Heather Telford

Hi Creative Friends,

I mentioned yesterday that Penny Black has just released a bevy of blockbuster stamps. Heather Telford is sharing one with all of us today. The stamp is called Alight by Penny Black and Heather has knocked it out of the park with her awesome painting!

Hello my crafty friends,
Are you making Christmas cards yet? Perhaps you are one of the wise and organized people who make them all year long. With the arrival of the new ‘Making Spirits Bright’ release from Penny Black, I am now moving from autumn tones to Christmas colors and themes. I am happy to be here on the Foiled Fox blog to share my first PB Christmas card for this year.

I worked on hot-pressed watercolor paper to create this card. I splattered it with masking fluid before I began stamping and painting. At the end of the project, I remove the masking fluid to reveal white dots or ‘falling snow’ over the whole panel. When designing a card like this one I have to decide whether to add background color before stamping, after, or not at all. I added it before stamping this time by smooshing some fossilized amber, pumice stone, and seedless preserves on my glass mat. I diluted the ink with a few spritzes of water then swiped my panel through the liquid. I diluted the ink further by spritzing the panel to move the ink around. The result is the soft patches of yellow, pink, and brown behind the bird and leaves. You might think yellow, purply-pink, and brown are strange colors for a Christmas card but I am challenging myself to pick new combos for this year’s cards.

I kept the panel in a stamp positioner for all the stamping and painting working on the bird first. I inked the front of the bird in fossilized amber, down the back in pumice stone, and under the wings in speckled egg. After stamping I could see where I needed more ink and repeated the stamping before blending the ink with a paintbrush and water. Once I had blended the inks to fill the bird I made sure it was dry before stamping the legs, eye, and beak with black and dark brown.

I stamped the leaves in forest moss and the berries in seedless preserves, blending each one with water after stamping to add light and shadowy areas. I turned the stamp on its side to add extra leaves and berries on the left side of the panel. The sentiment is from the new PB set ‘Happy & Bright’ stamped in Versafine Clair Shady Lane ink. The stamp is a large one so the finished card size is 6.25″ x 4.5″.

Thank you for joining me today; I hope you are inspired to try some new or non-traditional colors on your Christmas cards this year. I would love to hear your thoughts about color combos in the comments below.

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