Whimsy Design Team

Another amazing stamp company is looking for *ME* to join their design team ;)

Here is the blog where the call is listed!

Here is the AWESOME home for the stamps!

The directions are essentially - design something that uses an animal as the focal point. I sure hope a fish counts because I thought this would be great for a plage I've been planning mentally for a special album I'm working on. Last summer, my dad got to go on a big fishing trip to Canada. My mom printed up his photos and brought them to me so I could scrapbook it for his upcoming birthday. (I also have not been able to buy any Whimsy stamps yet, so I couldn't use those.)

I started this page by getting out some Whisper inks, my brayer, and a sheet of bazzill white cardstock. I inked up with 3 different blues and one green to put down the water. Repeatedly. Then went over the area with each color individually to brighten it up some. Then for a (sunset-type) sky, I brayered with two yellows, an orange, a red, and a pale blue. Then I took my most evergreen looking green and inked up and ran it at an angle to put a couple large evergreens on the sides of the page.

I went through after I was finished with that (and it was dry) with my Prisma Colored Pencils. I put in a little brown for the beach at the horizon level, and put in some green jaggeds for the trees. I put a little brown here and there for trunks or hardwoods in my little dreamscape forest. I used a little mineral spirit (turpenoid, gamsol, etc.) to soften these up.

For my focal stamp - I took a TAC stamp of a jumping fish and stamped it on white cardstock. I then did a silhouette cut of the fish and his splash. I colored the fish with G21, E31, and a white gel pen, and a teeny bit of copic spica clear for sparkle. I colored the water with Boo, B10, Goo, white gel pen, and lots of spica clear for sparkle. I used pop-dots to set the fish out of the water a little. I hope this photo shows some of the sparkle - because it is really cool. (Plus, when I scanned the finished page the sparkle didn't really show as well as I'd hoped.)

I trimmed the photo of my dad with his fish and triple matted it. I like that it gives it some height, some focus, etc. (Also, the photo had the date imprinted on it. I was glad for the layering cardstock thing to make the photo still look significant even though I trimmed it to lose the date.)

Finally, I found a cardstock tag and stamped the "fish story" stamp along the top and bottom around the "fish" rub-ons (by American Crafts). The ribbon/fiber is from Michael's, and the button came in a superpack from Oriental Trading Company.

The page is simple, but lots of work went into it. I think the simplicity makes the photo and the jumping fish stand out more!