Cleopatra in the Ancient Egyptian City

Make it Crafty this week is having a “Walk Like an Egyptian” theme which matches perfectly with the latest release.  If you haven’t seen all the fun images you need to check them out! I’m joining in on this week for fun because I was lucky enough to have two projects using those image and wanted to share them both.  This time I created a journal page.

Many time on my journal pages I color the background and the characters separate.  Then I cut out the characters and place them on the side of the image or next to the background image.  However, this time I wanted Cleopatra to be standing in the center of the action and didn’t feel like fussy cutting.  So I merged the images before printing then only had to fussy cut part of the character. 

On the journal page, I switched things up a bit and add my ribbon vertically instead of the traditional horizontal.  I think it helps with the illusion of the pillars being tall but in reality, it just looked better to me.  😀  Then the rest of the embellishments were grabbed here and there and added.  Not sure that there is much meaning into it other than my thought process was … old, Egyptian, collections, then trinket box.  Does it work?!  LOL

The sky was colored with blues then I went back in with grays and darker blues to color in clouds.  Finally the blender marker was used to take away those colors in the clouds and this is the effect that it creates.  They’re kinda fluffy looking and I liked how they turned out.  It was pretty easy so I’ll be trying that again!

I debated how to color the city and finally decided to color it all the same to look like sun-bleached sand on a dry desert day.  Then I added some shadows with BV23 and a little color here and there on the greenery, baskets and market stands.  For the most part, the sun is shining down from the upper right corner of the image so I could have Cleopatra’s face stand out more.  This was a different spot from where I normally put the sun (upper left) so there are a few mistakes – lucky for me, none of them stand out.  he he he

I was able to contrast Cleopatra in a white and black dress with lots of gold.  Compared to the town, I really wanted her to stand out like royalty would have.  The dress uses cool gray colors and I used warm grays for her hair.  The shadows were added with BV23 which seems to be working out with most colors.