Lighthouse at Sunset

This card isn't as bright as this in person, but both my camera and my phone really like to enhance reds.

For this card I used a photo I had taken of a sunset printed out to 5.5 x 4.25 inches. Then I stamped Our Daily Bread Designs Keep My Lamp Burning using VersaFine Onyx Black onto the photo once, and onto a piece of ivory CS twice. I trimmed around the stamped image on the photo, and cut out the lighthouse and compass from one of the stampings on the ivory, and just the compass from the other.

I shaded the lighthouse and compass with a mix of Distress antique linen, and several shades of chalk, trying to get just a tint of the colors in the sunset. Then I added copics to the lantern room of the lighthouse to reflect the sunset, and to the compass.

The lighthouse is mounted dimensionally over the lighthouse in the photo, then the compass is mounted dimensionally on top of that. I layered the completed design onto some yellow CS, and two shades of antique copper CS, and then onto an ivory card. The brads in the corner are from Recollections.

I have 26 different sky images sized to 5.5 x 4.25 that I have zipped up to put on Etsy, but so far, even zipped, the file size is huge. Too big to upload. I really don't want to lower the quality too much, so I've got to figure out how to make them smaller. Sooner or later, I hope to get this background and the other 25 uploaded for anyone who is interested in downloading them to stamp on.

Faith Card ODBDSLC116

I made this card for ODBDSLC116 Clouds or Sunshine.

I received two stamp sets from ODBD this morning, and one was the Bird Border and Corners , which I had ordered to compliment my Bird and Butterfly Labels, which I bought a few months ago. The minute I saw it, I remembered a photo I had taken of two birdhouses on poles, against a very stormy sky. I decided that the silhouette of those stamp sets might be the perfect thing to stamp over the photograph and enter into this challenge.

I printed the photograph out in several different sizes and tried the border on them. When I decided which one looked best, I stamped the border with VersaFine Onyx Black, and trimmed the photograph to fit the border. I really liked how the light in the sky is just peeking out at the top of the grass. Then I stamped the label on an identically sized photograph and cut it out with Spellbinders Labels Eighteen, which is the matching die for the labels, and used a Jelly Roll pen to color the butterfly silver.

This morning I also received the Faith Stamp Set and matching Butterfly Branch Die. The word "Faith" from this set was just the right size for the label.

I tried outlining the label and photograph with a silver leaf pen, but it didn't really work for me, so I trimmed around the label with scissors, just outside the stamped border, then I die cut another labels eighteen from silver paper and mounted the label on that. It looked much nicer. I then mounted the stamped photograph on the same silver paper, and mounted that onto black, and mounted the whole thing onto a white card. The label is mounted dimensionally on the card, and a narrow silver sticker from my stash was added at the bottom of the card.

I thought this would make a really nice sympathy card. The word "faith" is to give hope, and in the darkness of the photograph, there is light shining through the clouds. The silver paper and the white card were also added to represent light in the darkness.