Unique Textues: Florals, Gems and Shimmering Wings

Hello everyone!  Ugh, I just got back from having fillings repaired and I’m frozen from under my chin to my nose!  Good thing you can’t tell by my typing!  I feel very fat lipped and fat tongued.  :(  

Today’s card is one I spent some lovely time colouring up last week.  It’s an amazing new stamp from Power Poppy called Shimmering Flight Digital Stamp Set.  I love it because of the unique mix of lovely textures and surfaces to colour.  There are several versions of the illustration in the set, so you could colour it many times and not do the same thing twice!  Today’s card is coloured solely with Copics.  

We have a special place in our heart for Hollyhocks because my husband’s dad loved them.  So, this is a sweet homage to him.  Hollyhocks come in tons of colours, but I love the variety that are in the  Indian Spring Mix family for their deep burgundy colour, mixed in with other pretty colours.  I took my time giving each of the elements on this design their own textures and effects.  

The beautiful turquoise and silver brooch combines both the soft polished shine of Southwestern silver with its dark grooves, and the mottled colouring of the turquoise.  The turquoise is given that marbled look with touches of a Copic blender marker (after the colouring is done) to lift some of the turquoise colouring.  The silver of the brooch is given soft gray with deeper coloured outlines so it mimics how southwestern silver looks.  I kept my overall gray/silver colour quite light so there would be lots of contrast, and silver is generally quite light in colour.  I added slightly darker shadows between the descending layers to give it depth.  

For that pretty dragonfly, I gave the wings the feeling of soft transparency using the lightest shades of marker for each element that was below it, so you get the feeling of see-through wings but with less definition.  After the whole design was done, I added some glitter pen along the sections in the wings to really give it that iridescent look that dragonfly wings have.  

I added a strong shadow underneath the dragonfly wings with a BV00 marker to give it the feeling of being alight above the gem.  That bit of defined shadow makes a real difference in the realism.

The leaves and petals of the flowers have a lot of veining definition in them, so you can see my strokes are quite long and defined.  I always come back with the lightest marker in the grouping to blend out the lines so they don’t look TOO stripey.

I kept the accents very simple, iridescent sequins that change colouring depending on the way you turn the card.  It is a nod to the dragonfly wings and ties it together nicely.

I created the look of the mottled turquoise on the sentiment strip with sponged Distress Oxide Ink and spritzes of water.   The sentiment is from another Power Poppy set, Vibrant Thanks.  I embossed it in silver to tie to the silver in the design as well.  

Here’s the Copics I used.  A whole host of them!  Hope you enjoyed this little tour through colouring different textures!

For more inspiration stop by and visit the Bloom Brigade and Instant Gardeners playing along today!

Christine (you are here)

Allison
Stacy
Gloria
Leslie
Nancy
Barbara W
Lisa

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Unique Textues: Florals, Gems and Shimmering Wings