Slappy Birthday - Through the Craftroom Door, coloured pencil, embossing

The sponsor for this week's Through the Craftroom Door blog challenge is The Paper Shelter! The prize is 3 digis.

For my card, I'm featuring the adorable Ice Hockey digi with Prismacolor pencils on coloured Mi Teintes with a die cut and embossed sentiment and embossed background.

Putting It Together

I live in Canada near Vancouver so I couldn't resist using the Canuck colours for my little hockey player. 

I printed the digi on Mi Tietes paper using LibreOffice to resize and print.  I have an article in the latest issue of the Through the Craftroom Door magazine on how to use LibreWriter, part of the FREE LibreOffice suite, to resize, crop, and print digis. Check it out: Jan/ Feb issue preview

I used Prismacolour pencils to colour the image. I often colour the face first so the character can watch me work and give me suggestions. I write down the pencils I use so I can refer to them later if the blend works well.

I use an unlit slanted lightbox to raise and tilt my project to make it easier on my neck and posture. It also gives me a hard surface under the paper.

The Canucks uniform has green and white stripes on blue. I added the stripes with a graphite pencil.

I love the look of coloured pencils on a non-white background. The colours just absolutely pop!

I embossed a 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" panel of pearl cardstock with a snowflake embossing folder and trimmed the image with a postage stamp edge die. I dry fit them together to make sure I could still see some of the snowflakes.

I used a Simon Says Stamp die to cut a sentiment. I decided I wanted it to have a bit of pizzaz so I covered it with Perfect Medium...

and then light blue embossing powder with flecks of white and gold. I embossed it twice to build it up without obscuring the lettering.

I dry fit the sentiment across the image and background. The blue looks almost white against the darker blues of the boy.

I wanted to make a mostly flat card to make it more mailable. With the embossing being so textured, I used double-sided tape. To make it easier to position, I snip the release paper and put it perpendicular to the adhesive to keep it from sticking immediately. Then, when I have it where I want, I press down between the release strips, and then simply slide the release papers out before pressing it all down.

To give the sentiment a tiny bit more weight, I glued the embossed cut to another plain one. This also gives it a little dimension, like an embellishment.

I then adhered the sentiment across the boy and trimmed the ends. Since the sentiment is thin, it doesn't obscure the image.

Inside, I added green and blue stripes as well as a sentiment.

Challenges

The Paper Shelter: Anything Goes

Outlawz Festive Friday: Theme - Child's Birthday

Scribbles Design: Year in Review - Birthday Party Blowout

Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes

Crafty Gals Corner: Snow Much Fun

Creative Craft Cottage: Winter

Crafting From the Heart: Anything Goes