Hi Creative Friends,
It is a pleasure to share a project showing off another gorgeous stamp from Penny Black. This one features Holly Berry Branch, a graceful branch of one of my favorites, holly with berries.
To begin, I first splattered small dots of masking fluid over a piece of Fabriano hot-pressed watercolor paper. After it was dry, I stamped the holly berry branch onto the paper, using waterproof ink. My favorite is Versafine Black Onyx. At the same time, I stamped the bottom half of the branch onto a piece of masking paper (check out the supply list below) and then fussy cut around each of the leaves until I had a replicate of the bottom of the branch. Once done, I peeled off the release paper and laid the mask over the top of the stamped image to protect it while I stamped a portion of the branch again. This extended the branch and changed the direction a little.
I was ready to paint. I used a few distress inks for the leaves, like Rustic Wilderness and Pine Needles (sometimes I mixed them together for the right color), Crushed Olive, and Peeled Paint. For the berries, I first painted them with Abandoned Coral, then highlighted with Candied Apple and shaded the berries with an Aged Mahogany distress marker. There are tiny areas to paint in the branch. For this, the Espresso distress marker was perfect.
Once the painting was done, I taped the edges of the watercolor panel to my glass mat making sure to mask off a 1/2″ all the way around. I used the grid on my mat to help make sure the edges were evenly masked and a repositionable tape that I know will not tear my paper when I remove it. My favorite is the Post-It Full Adhesive Roll but Purple tape works too.
With a blending brush, I very lightly blended on Speckled Egg distress ink around the edges and a tiny bit in the interior, then used a little Evergreen Bough to darken the corners. I used a very light touch with each of these colors. When I was happy with everything, I peeled off the tape, then rubbed off the masking fluid dots with an adhesive eraser.
I was nearly done, I just had to stamp the sentiment from the new When Snow Falls sentiment set using Evergreen Bough, then splattered a little bleed proof white ink.
To finish, I mounted a panel of Ocean Tides green cardstock to the front of a white card base, then added the watercolored panel on top.
I hope you enjoyed this project. For me, I have another holiday card ready to send! ♥
Goodies Used:
