Baby Koala

AGAIN with the baby cards! Who swapped me out for my evil twin? Sigh. BUT, I managed to use something old + something new, and I got 4 cards out of the deal. Not too bad for a rainy Sunday morning, huh?

This is the end result of my labors:


The image is from a Clear & Simple set I picked up during my last shopping spree at Angela's, and following are some step-by-steps, some discoveries, and other things I've learned in the process.

By the way, what color IS a baby koala anyway? I went to my trusty Zooborns site and found this link which gave me this pic:


To me, this looked like a brownish grey. I say that mostly because I'd already stamped the image in dark brown, so I needed a brownish-grey for it to work. Here's my first attempt at coloring:


I used W-3 for the koala and W-1 for the outline. That outline was to come back and bite me, but it's all about learning, right? RIGHT?!

Oh, before we move on, these are the card bases I was using:


The only problem with them is they are so stinkin' textured, it's tough to come up with other card stock that works well with them. So, ever the rebel, I stamped the Koala on some scraps of SU Very Vanilla, which is about as far as you can get in the texture arena from the card base. It's also not the best paper to color with Copics because of its smoothness (not as absorbent as other papers). But that has not stopped me before, and it did not stop me today.

I was not happy with the 'whiteness' of all that smooth vanilla card stock, so I took my B0000 marker and colored around the image, and got this:

Better, but I was hatin' the blue with the outline I'd done first. That meant I needed to stamp the koala again and color it again. Here it is with no outline, just the blue:

I like! Next up, what to put between the smooth Very Vanilla and the textured card base? Something to act as a toner-downer between the two. And the winner is: Mulberry Paper! I have a stash of the stuff, and I chose this:

You can see I also tore the edges of the koala piece because I felt any clean cut would look too perfect, and there is no perfect in my world.

When I went to photograph the cards, lookie what I discovered:

Ack! I intensely dislike when this happens. Especially since I'd used red sticky tape to make sure the layers stuck to the textured card base! The good news is: the layers peeled right off, with minimal damage to the card base. I did remount the pieces on a new card base, but either I did not burnish this enough, or red sticky tape really does NOT stick to everything, and is NOT really permanent.

Do you know anyone in Israel who would like this card? Oh, wait, I've remounted it, so never mind.

Now I have 4 new baby cards made, and that's a lot for someone who does not do baby cards. I really don't know what's come over me. What happened to the old me? To quote from one of my Rosie's Roadshow stamps: I've gone off to find myself. If I return before I come back, keep me here.

Thanks for stopping by!