Playing In Paradise #96 - Winter Birds

TGIF Everyone!  Normally, everyday is like a Friday for me, since I only have to go downstairs to my "office" and my "work" is something I love, but this has been a long kind of stressful week for me with refinancing going on for our house (we close in a couple days -- YEA!) and Christmas shopping (all online so not as much hassle, but still a little time consuming).

However, I do have something even more exciting to add --- this week I am the Guest Designer for the Playing in Paradise challenge over at Scrapbooker's Paradise!  I won Challenge #94.  You can see the card I won with here.  Not only did I win a crafty prize, I get to be a part of the team for this week's challenge.  So much fun!  I definitely feel like Christmas has come early for me!

So this week's Playing in Paradise theme is Winter Birds.   An easy challenge, I thought, only I discovered I have very few bird stamps and at first I was a little stumped at what to do.  They would have been ok, but I also wanted to use my fir tree branch stamps I received in my prize package from another Scrapbooker's Paradise designer, Jessi Fogan.  So, what to do?   I dug out an old painting stencil, a cardinal, that I have had for years. 

 

And this is what I created:

I'm very happy with it too!  The bird came out really beautifully.  I taped the plastic stencil down on watercolor paper.  Then, I covered his beak before doing a kind of sponge painting on him with Fire Brick distress ink mixed with water.  On top of that, I sprayed some Postbox Red Dylusions paint and topped that off with some homemade Red Spice Glimmer Mist.  For the beak I added a bit of straw distress ink.  I then colored the mid scection of his beak black with a sponge pencil and black pigment ink and a black Copics marker.  You can't see it very well in the photo, but I added a black gem for his eye too.

The pine needles and pine cones are Inkadinkadoo stamps (part of my prize pack from Jessi Fogan).  I love these!  I stamped them and cut them out for more depth.  I attempted to add a little gold glitter to the pine cones for a little glimmer.  I must invest in one of those glitter pens!  LOL  The birdhouse in the background is a Sizzix die and I used patterned paper from Anna Griffin.  I used the same paper for the sentiment tag as well, tying off the tag with thin kraft string.  Everything is adhered to the cream background that is embossed with a Spellbinders' M-Bossabilities folder.

I may have gotten off with a slow start with this one, but I had a lot of fun putting it together and seeing it all fall into place.  I want to thank Pam and all the other designers at Scrapbooker's Paradise for having me guest design.  So much fun!  I hope I get to do it again sometime in the future!

Have a great weekend and I hope you give this challenge a try and peak in at Scrapbooker's Paradise and check out all the other designer's cards!

Blessings!