Back to School Fox - Through the Craftroom Door, watercolor pencil, Distress Oxide, Distress paint splatter

The leaves are starting to turn colours and fall from the trees signalling the yellow school buses to return to the streets to pick up their charges. It's time for back to school.

My card today is my inspiration project for the Through the Craftroom Door blog challenge. Each week we have an Anything Goes challenge. This week's sponsor is M Medel Illustrations and the randomly drawn winner of the challenge will win 3 digital images from their shop.

Hi there! I've doodled since I can remember (on table cloths, street guides, text books, walls and finally, for my parent's relief, sketchbooks). What I love the most is to create adorable characters for both adults and children and bring them to life. That's why I became an animator and illustrator.
I decided to create a shop to free all the characters that were trapped in my sketchbooks, unfinished. So I took them, refurbished and sparkling, and share them to the world. They are ready to be adopted and willing to be part of your crafts.
All my illustratons are 100 % handmade by me, scanned from my sketchbooks and finished in Photoshop with my beloved Wacom Cintiq.
I hope you like what you see and come back soon.
Follow me on :
INSTAGRAM: @maria_medel_illustrations

My card features the Back to School Fox in a scene with a school bus from Simple Stories, a tree from Impression Obsession, a greeting from Hero Arts, and an inside sentiment from Unity Stamps. The fox is coloured with Prima Marketing watercolour pencils, and the background is Distress Oxides with Distress Paint splatters.

Putting It Together

I like Autumn. It's my second favourite season (winter is first). We live close to a school so soon I'll be hearing the bells if I'm home on a weekday.

I was sick all last week, so I didn't have lunchtime at work colour time. I got some of my watercolour pencils from my purse and coloured up this cute little fox after printing him on heavy watercolour paper. I used Prima Marketing watercolour pencils using the two sets I own: Skin and Hair, and Spring and Fall. I need to get some more sets because I still haven't got a blue.

I was wanting a school bus for the card but didn't have a stamp or patterned paper with one. And then... a Facebook post telling of freebie digitals from Simple Stories and one of them had a school bus! I fussy cut the fox and the school bus and dry fit them on a cardbase to start building my scene.

Using masking, I put a road of Black Soot Distress Oxide as a diagonal on watercolour paper panel. I then masked the road to add in grass on both sides using a blender and brush. It was my first time using the Distress brush. I like that you can vary the fluffiness/stiffness of the bristles by sliding the cowl. I used the cowl nearly all the way up to the edge of the brush to stipple on the darkest colours by pouncing it.

I then splattered Distress Paint in reds, oranges, and a brown over the panel as the leaves on the grass and street. I have a box where I splatter or spray but still managed to get droplets on my arm that nearly blended in with the freckles.

I die cut a tree using an Impression Obsessions die and brown cardstock. I used the brush to add Autumn colours to the leaves. 

I still needed to let the paint splatters dry more but couldn't resist getting in a dry fit by holding the tree over the panel.

To give the panel time to dry, I made another card start to finish! I love paint splatter but it does take time to dry. 

When the panel was dry (mostly), I dry fit the items I had thus far. The empty area in the lower left was unbalancing.

So I die cut a "hello" from a dark brown glittered cardstock. I felt it was a bit dark and didn't hold up well with the rest. I die cut a copper one and felt much better about the look.

I decided to do a stacked word so I die cut two more from black and white. 

For easy adhesive, I ran all three through the Xyron. 

I stacked the words, leaving them on the bottom one on the release paper. 

I used a Zig liquid glue pen on the tree.

After putting the background and bus on the card base, I put the tree on extending from the background to the card base and beyond. I then used a scissors to trim off the branches that extended over the edge.

I added some of the trimmed branches to the other side as a tree just out of view. Adding the sentiment and the fox popped-up with foam mounting tape finished the card. 

Inside, I used a stamp set from Unity Stamps.

Challenges

Incy Wincy: Back to School

Crafty Friends: Animals/Birds

Outlawz Monday Greetings: Rectangle Card

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Anything Goes

Crafting From the Heart: Anything Goes

Polkadoodles: Anything Goes

A Bit more Time to Craft: Anything Goes