Black and white

My boyfriend’s birthday today, so I wanted to make a special card. I couldn’t post it until today though, it would hardly have been surprise if I’d put it up early! After rummaging around my stash for a while, I spotted some different type of paper I’d never used before and ideas were forming immediately. Black, white with greys and silver! Now that was certainly something I hadn’t done before and it was a challenge indeed to shade the stamp in greys, not using any other colour at all. What fun it was, though!

This paper is different from what I normally use. It was called craft paper and has a different texture entirely, with a kind of fabric feel to it, which is why I hadn’t used any of it yet. Additionally some of the papers had sparkly silver, while other bits had shimmering silver. I chose one with sparkles and one with shimmer for this card. The main card was made using normal slightly textured card, with one of the shimmer papers over. I then added a plain white layer to border in the paper with sparkled branches. Next I added a sparkly silver ribbon diagonally, with a small bow in the top corner, before starting on the colouring.

I picked a reasonably neutral stamp. The teddy bear (Louis) with flowers I’ve used a lot previously, from Wild Rose Studio. It was important to me, when I was going to attempt shading in greys to use a stamp I was familiar with colouring. I also didn’t want it to be a very girly stamp as it wouldn’t suit the purpose. I used only three pens to shade this: C1, C3 and C5. I start with the legs and moved my way upwards. Once the flowers were coloured I shaded the ground and a bit of a background so it wasn’t glaringly white. I am really pleased with how it turned out. It was quite a challenge to colour the whole thing in with three pens.

Inside I wanted to try to keep the same theme, but as I had limited amount of this paper I had to invert the papers. The glittery branches now made up the outer border, white the dotted paper was used as the inner border. I then also changed the positioning of the diagonal ribbon. The greeting area was made plain white.

I am very pleased with how this turned out and may have another go at shading in black and white in the not too distant future. We shall see! And Happy Birthday, dear!

I have entered this card into the following challenges:

Willow Sketchie Challenge – Anything Goes
2 Sisters Challenge – #80 Anything Goes