To You and Yours

Christmas Cardinal

Let me start this post with an apology for not taking "in progress" photos.  I wasn't necessarily creating this card to be a blog post, but when I finished it, I wanted to share it with you anyway.

I have been dying to play with the ShinHan Twin Touch Markers, so I decided to take a little "me" time and do a little coloring.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE cardinals.  Sadly, we don't have any in my neck of the woods.  I'll never forget one winter, when we were living in Morgantown, West Virginia, (many, many, moons ago, lol) there was a beautiful pair of cardinals that must have been nesting in the trees behind our apartment.  I would see them often,  resting on the railing of the walkway to our front door.  It was truly magical.

Anyway, the You and Yours stamp set is one of my favorites because of these memories.  It is also a perfect set for coloring with markers.  

I have LONG been a Copic user, and I will ALWAYS love my Copics.  That being said, the ShinHan markers are very comparable in coloring and blending, as well as MUCH less expensive.  I am very spoiled when it comes to my Copics.  I have about 200 colors to play with, and because of that, I can easily get lost in a day of coloring, simply because I have nearly endless options for color matching and blending.  With the ShinHan markers, I have the 24 colors as well as the colorless blender that Close to my Heart offers.  I do believe that the colors CTMH has chosen are a good variety, that work well with the color palate in the CTMH product line. 

I stamped the image with Memento Tuxedo Black ink.  This is the ink I've used with my Copic markers for the past several years, so I just continued to use it with the ShinHan markers.  I've tried CTMH's Archival ink, but I had issues with smearing.  I've also heard some consultants are heat embossing the image, and are happy with the results, so there's another option for you.  Anyway, I used  Carmine Red (R11) to lay down a base layer on the entire bird.  Then I came back in with Warm Gray (WG4) to add dimension to the back of the bird, as well as some of the feathers for shadowing.  I used the same colors on the berries.  I used Leaf Green (GY234) and Sap Green (GY 235) to the holly leaves.  For the beak I used Marigold (YR24) and brought in a very small amount of the Carmine red.  The branch was simply a couple layers of Clay (BR116).  By layering the same color in some spots, it gives the illusion of depth.  The background is Turquoise (B68) with the colorless blender used to create some variation to the color.

I used Yuletide Carol paper for the card layers, as well as New England Ivy cardstock.  For the greeting I used a sticker from the Yuletide Carol Compliments.  I matted the greeting and the cardinal with Black cardstock. I wrapped the bakers twine from the Ruby Mini Medley Accents around the cardinal.   I popped the main image as well as the greeting up on 3-D foam tape.

I also stamped the Holly image onto the envelope and colored with the same colors used above.  IMPORTANT: Be sure to have either scrap paper inside your envelope while coloring, otherwise the ink will seep through to the other side.

Please click on the highlighted description above for a direct link to my web page for ordering these items.