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You are stronger than you think- night sky

January 14, 2024

Hi Everyone! This is my first time posting here and I'm excited to share how I made this peaceful mountain scene.

When I saw this mountain stamp from Woolly Big Love, I immediately thought of a starry night over the mountains (can you tell seeing this is on my bucket list?).

For the sky, I started with a piece of Tim Holtz Distress watercolor paper. I sprayed the paper first with water, then sprayed with several Tim Holtz Distress Stain sprays, including tree lot Mica Stain which added a bit of glimmer. Next, I lightly "sprinkled" PaperArtsy Infusions in Black Knight (this is a powdered watercolor) around the edges (mostly to areas I wanted to be the darkest). I sprayed the paper again with water, adding a little extra water where I wanted the color to "move" more. At this point I had a lot of water on the paper and I tilted the paper back and forth until the color flowed to where I wanted it. I let this dry overnight. This sky didn't have as much green and purple as I wanted, so once it was dry I used a blending brush and Distress inks in twisted citron and wilted violet to add more color to the already tinted areas. Lastly, I used a white wash (watered down white paint) on a fan brush to add splatters to the sky (by running the edge of the brush along the edge of scrap cardstock about 6 inches above the paper). I used a toothpick on the larger splatters to pull out the edges outward, creating 'stars'.

This process kind of has a mind of it's own, which is why I usually make several skies at a time in case one doesn't turn out. It's also very messy, so I did all of this in an old cardboard box.

For the mountains, I stamped the image on a piece of white cardstock and used Derwent Inktense pencils (neutral grey and charcoal grey) and a waterbrush to color them in. Then I stamped the sentiment from "Big Guy" and fussy cut the mountains out.

Finally, I used the two larger dies from Gina K's master layouts 1 to cut a black matt for the backing (larger rectangle) and the sky and mountains from the slightly smaller rectangle. I cut the sky first, then estimated how high I wanted the mountains to be in order to judge where to cut the piece of white cardstock . Lastly, I attached the sky to the black cardstock, then the mountain piece to this and attached the whole piece to a 4.25" x 5.5" white card base.

This card was so much fun to make and you really never know what you're going to get until it's dry. Thanks for reading and I hope you have some fun creating your own peaceful sky.