I’m excited to share a new release from Whimsy Stamps featuring Dustin Pike’s fun animal characters. This is On a Roll and I colored two of the three animals from the set – so all together you have the giraffe, flamingo and panda. I was also able to use a great combination of tools to create this card including the Awesome Large Word die and Twinkle stencil. To try and keep the card simple, I layered it on a card front with a colored layer in-between. I think these two look like they’re having so much fun and I wish I was following them on my bike. 😉
This stamp is titled “Dragon Water Fun” but I’m not so sure how much Dudley is having here. Maybe it’s that time of month again? (Sure, Dudley can be a girl!) Or maybe it’s a reflection of how we feel sometimes when everyone around us is happy; our personal trials of life. Either way, it was an idea that came to my mind as soon as I saw the stamp and I knew I had to color it. Because everyday can’t be all rainbows and unicorns even when they’re visible.
Aside from raining inside the umbrella, there are a few other changes I made to the Dragon Water Fun stamp through creative color placement. That’s where I color what I want and ignore the lines of the stamp. The face was my starting point and I took away the smile and added a different mouth; the eyes were next and I colored them larger and looking up. Lastly, the shoes were changed to rain boots instead of sneakers.
After the dragon was colored, I did the water and the sky. I was nervous about the rain and water effects so I saved those for last. The water on the ground was colored using horizontal strokes. I pulled in the yellow and red colors to give the illusion of a reflection in water.
Before I went crazy, I made sure to take a picture just in case it didn’t turn out. This sat on my desk for a while until I mustered up the courage to proceed. I first added the rain with horizontal coloring. Then I went in with a white pen to add the water and splashing effects.
I’ve been studying Annabel Haines‘ style on fur because she does an incredible job. In fact, she does amazing on all her projects with added textures and details. So over the years, I’ve been working up the courage to give it a try. I practice here and there but this was the first time I’ve gone full furry on an image. It was good first attempt but I still have more to learn. The image I used was a retired Scaredy Cat rubber stamp which is now available in the Going Catty clear set by Whimsy Stamps.
Annabel has a fur coloring tutorial which shows step by step on how she colors the fur. It’s a great tutorial and is a lot easier than how I did mine. Plus hers turns out better so take your tips from her. 😀
For those who were looking for an eye tutorial on the dragon… well, here it is. Even though this is with colored pencils and not markers, the idea is the same. (1) First, the image’s eyes are usually white (if stamping on white paper) or you should color them white. (2) Then, since eye are not actually pure white, I add shading around the edges to make them look found. On a person, I add shading going from top down. But on this image, and the dragon image, I really wanted the eyes to bulge so I went with a round shape for shading. (3) Next is to color the irides. I like to have some dark at the top and light nearer the bottom. For this image and the dragon, I chose to have one large and one small. (4) The final step is to add black for the pupils and white for the highlight.
My coloring plan was to lay down a base of color for the cat, which you can see on the left side, then add all the fur texture, which you can see on the right. It worked ok but after having so much color down with the pencils, it was very difficult to get a sharp noticeable line for the fur. In some areas, especially the lightest and white areas, it didn’t look like I was adding any coloring at all. For the white, I decided to add more details with the white gel pen. Did it work? Eh, I’m not sure.
Surprise – you may think this is TP Dudley (the freebie from Whimsy Stamps) but that Dudley is all tied up with toilet paper. No, this is Mrs. Dudley! She’s all tied up in her latest quilting project. And with all the time she has on her hands, she’s not complaining.
I altered this image with creative color placement and colored the toilet paper first to make them look like rolls of pieced fabrics. Then I added strands of threads, pins, rolls of thread and a pair of scissors to help “sell” the theme. I think she turned out cute.
Many of you had a sneak peak when it was at this stage and thank you for the suggestions on colors. I wasn’t sure what to do and I agree with most that a gray-scale dragon would have made the colors pop. However, I wasn’t in a gray-scale mood so I went with teal which seems to be a second best choice.
This is Toilet Paper Dudley by Dustin Pike which is a freebie at Whimsy Stamps and was one that I had to join in coloring him. I think the hardest part was to decide what color scheme. I’ve been inspired to use yellow so that seemed to be the natural choice.
I used an Action Wobble on the head to make this an action card. It’s fun to make his head wobble with the toilet paper on his head too. In addition to that, I used three images to make this a multi-dimensional image – all the toilet paper areas are popped up on foam dots as well as his head and feet. This turned out to be a really fun card.
I’ve had my eye on this cutie for a while and was thrilled to be able to color her up. This is Wyanet (Beautiful) from Whimsy Stamps and in the background is Path in the Woods, also by Whimsy Stamps. I thought with her sitting on the cliff ledge she would be perfect to look over all of the forest.
One of my favorite things was coloring the Path in the Woods with a river instead of a path. This was an idea I saw from Megan who was the guest designer at Whimsy. It was a brilliant idea and added some versatility to the background stamp. When coloring the background, I tried it differently from my last one but not quite as happy with the foliage as I wanted to be so I think that’s a challenge to try it again… and find another way. Any suggestions?
Sproatmeyer 