A March Hare in February!

Hello all and happy Thursday! I have had a madly busy month craft wise (as well as everything else-wise!) and played with so many different mediums, including some sneaky new ones which are about to be released...(don't you just hate it when someone does that?)

Guess what? Wait for it... The card I made for this post is for a birthday which is nearly 2 MONTHS AWAY!! Whoohoo! Not sure the 'organised' trend will continue, but here's hoping..

I realise it is not March yet and I have been crafting with the Hobby Art March Hares Set, but the main stamp has so much character! I have been thinking of a name for him...Harold? Winston? Nope. I've settled on Hercules. He does look like a Hercules to me!

I started with a 14cm square of Watercolour Card and stamped the large hare from the Hobby Art March Hares set with Jet Black Staz-On in the centre. 

Next I used a soft paintbrush to spread water across all the areas I wanted to be blue, leaving a dry area were the hare was. I picked up some Stormy Sky Distress Ink on my brush and starting at the top, bought the colour down the page.

Making sure the blue area was dry, I took one of the grasses and stamped it across the page with Peeled Paint Distress Ink. Wetting my paintbrush once again, I went over each grass blade and pulled some of the colour out. I know it looks messy, but bear with me...

To add some more depth, I stamped over the blurred grasses with more of the same ink.

Remembering to mask of the hare, I repeated the same process with some of the other grasses from the set, blurring some and stamping over others. I also stamped with Forest Moss Distress Ink, to vary the tones. Wanting to add some more colours to my topper, I decided to add some detail with the straw stamp. Originally I stamped  with Scattered Straw Distress Ink, but it quickly became apparent that this pale colour was getting lost. I stamped with it anyway, making it appear that there was some pale straw in the distance, but also stamped with some Wild Honey Distress Ink (although it has a more 'orangy' tone, I quite like it!).

My next step - colour Hercules of course! I used Tea Dye and Walnut Stain Distress Inks, following the shaded areas where they had been drawn. At this point, I confess I was not happy with my picture and I took some inspiration from the Hobby Art team by adding some white line detailing. This added touch really does make all the difference!

The final touch was to use the same blues and greens of ink and add some darkness to the edges of the card.

With the main topper complete, I found a sentiment from my stash and matted and layered my panel.

So, there we have it. A simple card, made for a man with a March birthday!

Hope you like it; thank you for reading!

Love

Martina

xxx

P.S. Class day tomorrow...yippee!