Arbor Scene – Birthday Challenge #2

You may recall that my birthday gift this year from my children was the gift of inspiration where they “assigned me” 12 card challenges based on some childhood memory or other significant connection we’ve shared.  Kelly came up with challenge #2.

While the COVID-19 pandemic had forced us to “stay at home” this past spring, taking walks outside was permitted, and we walked around our neighborhood (while keeping our distance from our neighbors) every day.  Kelly and I often admired and talked about all the beautiful flowers and trees that were starting to bloom or house and car colors that we saw and liked, etc.  Kelly’s challenge was inspired by these walks.  Her challenge was a two-parter; she challenged me to create an outdoor scene and to include a few of the colors that we saw on our walks around the neighborhood.

I decided to do water color stamping to create my scene.  (Can you tell I’m loving this new-to-me technique!?)

My color choices (purple, pink, green, white, blue, orange, and browns) can be seen in these photos we took while walking:

I have to admit that I cheated a bit with the color part of the challenge in that I took photos of every color imaginable and then selected the photos that matched my finished project.  (So many pretty flowers!!)  However, as you will see below, just adding color at all was the challenge for me – lol!

I did this (earlier) version with no flowers because I actually forgot to leave space for them as I was stamping the leaves and vines on the arbor!  I liked the way the greenery looked so I decided to do the whole card that way.  It didn’t work for the color part of the challenge though, so I came up with the additional sample at the top of this post.

I was excited when I found the Art Impression arbor stamp (retired?) to use for my scene since there was actually an arbor (with purple blooms) in our neighborhood.

Besides the arbor stamp (and the vines and leaves that came with it), I used stamps from several other Art Impressions sets:  Watercolor Starter Bundle (which includes the WC Decorative Jar Set – 5123, Foliage Set – 4051, and Flower Set – 4052), WC Foliage Set 4 (#5126), WC Mini Flower Set (#5009), and a floral image from the Watering Can (#4761) set.

The sign stamp on the first card was from the “Day at the Beach” set by Kittie Kits/Rubbernecker (retired?).

I used water color paper, Spectrum Aqua markers (from various sets) along with Gina K Designs Sandy Beach and Stormy Sky ink as my paint , a no. 4 paint brush, and water.

This image proved to be more challenging to work with than I imagined!  I trashed quite a few of my early attempts while trying to figuring out how to add the foliage and blooms without it looking like an unruly mess; it’s easy to get carried away once you start stamping!  I discovered that less is definitely better with this image.  (The upper right portion is meant to be fuller as there is a big gap on the arbor design.)

I also starting masking portions of the arbor while I added the vines, leaves, and flowers which really helped.

I’m still getting used to how much water to use with the ink, and getting the backgrounds to look like they did in my head was much harder than I expected as well!  I did enjoy the process though and will keep practicing!

Thanks for checking out my card projects!

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