Spring isn’t the only thing in the air!!! Today I am sharing a card I used with a set from Jan’s Digi Stamps called Up, UP, AWAY! Now, ***in full disclosure***, the dog I used is NOT part of the set. He’s from a Mama Elephant clear stamp set called Mini Dog Agenda. Here is a picture of what you get in the Up, UP, AWAY! set:

For my purposes, the sweet little boy wasn’t going to work, but I really wanted to use the balloon. All of Jan’s sets come with both precolored images and b/w line art. I love that she included the balloon without the boy, so you can use it as you see fit. I used the b/w image of the balloon and the clouds to create my scene. This set has some of the prettiest sentiments!!! I needed a birthday card, so I used the Happy Birthday cloud. Once it was printed, I masked off the basket and stamp my dog. The line weight was different, but I knew I would be making the balloon rope lines black and thought that would help balance it out so it didn’t look odd.

I originally thought I would use a piece of 6×6 multicolored paper for the card front, so I used those colors when coloring the image with Prismacolor pencils. I ended up using the reverse side (serendipity) instead. I liked the bold colors but it was distracting from the image. The balloon ropes and lines are really small and thin, so rather than making a mess with a colored pencil, I used a Micron pen to fill them in and as I suspected, it helped make the dog look like it was part of the set instead of an afterthought. After the image was fully colored, I used the Clouds stencil from My Favorite Things and Distress Oxide ink in Broken China to ink blend the background. Since the pencils leave a waxy bloom, it helped to resist the ink blending if I accidentally went over the image. I used Gamsol to blend out the image, and this time I wish I had not. I had so much more shading before I used the Gamsol and now it looks flat. I’ll probably try to put down another layer of color before mailing this one out. I gave the front panel a thin black mat before mounting onto the patterned paper and card base. But because I really liked the patterned paper I had originally picked and all the colors on it that matched my balloon, I added a strip of it to the inside of the card to carry through the color scheme.

The April challenge at Jan’s Digi Stamps kicks off today and runs through May 2nd. I’d love if you would head over to see what the rest of the team created to share with you, and while you are there why not enter your latest creation to the challenge? This is a truly Anything Goes challenge, so you can enter your recent baking, jewelry, pottery, drawing, scrapbook layout, card, quilting, etc! Using Jan’s digis (or any digis for that matter) is not required but using Jan’s images gives you an extra chance to win!

My days have been spent in the garden more than the craft room lately, but I have a few project ideas in my head I’d like to get onto paper so hopefully I’ll be back soon with more cards! Thanks for coming by to visit with me ❤