Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Blooming Birdhouse by Karen Day

Hello Ai fans!
I'm back with another of the Ai Watercolor Mini sets: Blooming Birdhouse (Sku #4603).  As always, I painted several of the images and made up a few different card styles.  Here is a 5 1/2" square card:
 The next one is much smaller, I used the wonderful Scallop Easel Die (Sku #4700) to cut out my base, which makes for a 3 3/4" x 5" card.  I used pop dots on my matted oval to give it a bit more dimension, and added some tiny pearls to the oval and the scalloped edge.
**Watercolouring tip!!  On the easel card, I used my #4 paintbrush for the sky, which is what I used to soften the lines of my stamped images, and even though I like the end result, I thought that the sky came out a bit "scribbly".  So for the square card, I tried something different.  After I stamped my birdhouse, and before I added any leaves or flowers, I used a large brush to add a pale blue wash all around it.  The larger brush gave a softer, smoother sky - and then I stamped my flowers and foliage over top of it.  It's a little hard to see in the photo, because the sky is quite pale, but I loved this effect!
The set comes with the birdhouse, three flowers and a small leafy sprig; I also added a flower stamp from the WC Flower Set (Sku #4052) that I stamped to make my blue Lupines.


7 comments:

Sharon Caudle said...

Oh my gosh, Karen!! These are both sooooo beautiful!!! I love your watercoloring! Now see....I REALLY like the "scribbly" look you got with your smaller brush!! Those papers are gorgeous and the colors are so pretty!! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!!

Charne said...

Beautiful card! It shouts 'spring'!

Christine Kosmak said...

These two cards are just plain gorgeousness! I'm actually waiting on my first "windows to the world" stamp to add to my, "unfortunately to slow for me" collection of AI!! It sucks big time being on a carers pension here in Australia as the government takes half of it back for renting one of their properties!

diane zechman said...

Both cards are beautiful, Karen! Love your watercoloring!

Renee Matarese said...

These are both beautiful! I love how the pearls fit into the scallops on the first card. Lovely colors.

Sue from Oregon said...

This is so pretty!!!

Cheri Burry said...

Wow both are so pretty! I'm going to have to get you to come teach me some watercoloring tricks!