Red, White and Blue Juliette's Leap Of Faith

This is my latest offering and is also my entry to this week's High Hopes blog challenge. The theme of this week's challenge, #74, is Home Country Flag. The idea is to take inspiration either from the flag itself or its colours. So, being from Britain, this clearly means red, white and blue.

I decided to use the 'Juliette's Leap of Faith' stamp. The card is for a male but I don't think the hippo image is particularly feminine!

The image was very kindly donated by Vicky as part of a PIF blog candy back in July 2008.

I coloured the image using Copic Sketch Markers:

• Parachute: R24, R29, B41, B24
• Hippo: N1, N3, C0, R20
• Goggles: C0, B41

The image was highlighted around the edges using the B41 marker and then cut out.
An octagon was then cut from white linen card using a standard octagon Nestabilities die and matted onto a scalloped octagon cut from blue card. A faux stitch line was added around the octagon using the inside of the die as a guide. The cut out image was then adhered in the centre of the octagons.

Three strips of red stripe paper from the K&Co The Best of K&Co Too paper pad were matted onto the blue card and attached to the base card and blue card candy from Craftwork Cards were then attached to the corners.

The 'Birthday Wishes' circle sentiment, from the Hero Arts Birthday Messages stamp set, was stamped using Versafine Onyx Black archival pigment ink in the centre of a small octagon cut from the white linen card and coloured using the Copic markers (R24, R29, B24, B41). Faux stitching was added around the edges again using the die as a guide. This was then matted onto a blue scalloped octagon.

Faux stitching was also added around the edges of the card blank.
The inside of the card was also decorated using the K&Co red stripe paper and the blue card. The sentiment was added using a stamp from the Hero Arts Birthday Messages stamp set, stamped using the Onyx Black ink and coloured using the Copic R29 marker. Faux stitching was added around the sentiment panel.

Watercolouring Tutorials

A few months ago I found a couple of tutorials on how to watercolour your stamped images. I found them very informative, as did a lot of people on the docrafts forum where I flagged up the web addresses for them.

I've decided to add them to my blog for a couple of reasons. The first is so I can easily access them without having to keep referring back to my original posting on the docrafts forum and the second is so everyone else can easily access the without having to trawl through the forum trying to find them.

So, the first one was found on the High Hopes stamps website, and can be found here.

The second was on the Paper Pleasing Ideas blog from Julie Buhler here.

They show two different watercolouring techniques and are most informative giving beautiful results.