Susan - Beautiful Details

Okay - I have to say that the videos by Marika intimidate me. She has so artfully employed an ephemeral quality and use of subdued colors. I can't believe that she is self-taught! The intricacy and detail of her coloring and enhancing with drawing using all different media (including the Intense pencils that I have just recently discovered) awed me! It will take a lot of practice and patience to come close to what she created, but it is an interesting challenge to try.

For this project, I used the Bird of Paradise stamp set, but turned the Bird of Paradise petals into bamboo leaves. I used Memento Bamboo Green and employed first, second and third generation stamping to achieve different shades to the leaves. I then used fine point Sharpie markers in 2 shades of green to draw in some lines as both veins to the leaves and outline as well as the stalks of the bamboo. My next step was to trot out my brand new Derwent Inktense pencils (I was very excited to see Marika use these in her videos) and applied two shades of green in various places and then brought in a water brush to move that color around. This photo provides a close up view of my mixed media application to develop the leaves and the bamboo stalks:

After the bamboo image was completed, I applied some gold paint and some lime green ink splatters. I "framed" this with a window appearance by using a blue/green shiny paper (actually is Origami paper, keeping with the Asian theme!) To give it a more finished look I cut a ring of matte gold paper and applied it at the junction of the paper panel and the decorative shiny paper. The sentiment comes also from the Bird of Paradise stamp set and was heat embossed onto a light tan vellum that (although difficult to see) has leaf patterns embedded into it. The sentiment was adhered (again) by putting it through my Zyron sticker maker.

Additional matte gold embellishments were applied using Nuvo Dream Drops. I used the same stamps that I used to make the bamboo leaves and stamped them around the edges of the card base to "pull out" and continue the leaf theme. These were done with 3 different shades of Hero Arts ink (Lime Green, Moss and Forest).

The decorated panel was then attached to the front of a top-folding A2 size card base with a layer of foam underneath to provide some dimension.

And here is the finished card. I hope Marika would approve!