Ostrich, or Flamingo?

Hello my crafty friend! Today, the new release from The Rabbit Hole Designs launches, and I can’t wait for you to see the fun twist I put on the Caffeinated Ostrich. I actually colored him to be a flamingo! The way he has his leg folded up reminded me of the Caffeinated Flamingo, so I was inspired to put them together in a card. What do you think?

It’s been a while since I created a whole background, and I really love making beach scenes, so that’s where I planted my birds. The Caffeinated Flamingo is smaller, and has a big slipper on his standing leg, so I chose to stamp him out in the ocean, and hide his foot under water. Then, I masked and stamped him again to add a second bird in the water. After stamping the Caffeinated Ostrich in the foreground, I tore a strip of Heffy Memo Tape and masked off the shoreline.

Now here’s a trick for lazy masking (I had a mask for the flamingo, but I didn’t want to cut one out for the ostrich too, so I cheated). Use strips of memo tape, or painter’s tape, and a small brush, like the new Bitty Blender Brushes, to selectively mask and ink blend areas, moving the tape as you go. Often times, you only need a couple pieces with straight and torn edges, and they’ll be great masks. I don’t recommend it for areas where you need perfect, smooth blends, but for sand and water, it’s ideal. And you’re done blending around the birds before you’d even have the mask cut! For the big areas, away from the birds, I switched to larger brushes to speed up the rest of the blending. 

For the shoreline, I left a gap of white space between the sand and water with the mask. Then, I softly swirled on brown and blue, with the leftover ink on my brushes, just so the area wasn’t stark white. After the ink dried, I used a white gel pen to slowly draw in wavy lines and dots, and smudged them with my fingers as I went. This creates a seafoam effect. (Note, if the white ink doesn’t want to flow, your blended ink might not be dry yet.)

Once I was happy with the shoreline, I added a few breaking waves in the water behind. I was careful not to add gel pen anywhere that I planned to Copic color. You don’t want to color over gel ink with an alcohol marker, it can gum up the nib. I deepened up some of the ink blending, and then I was ready to color the birds.

Whenever possible, I like to color scenes from back to front, meaning things furthest away (background) first, and the objects closest last. This way, if any of your coloring goes outside the lines, it’s your object on top that goes wide. It looks worse if the background lines overlap your front images. So I added a few blue lines in the water, being careful not to touch any white gel pen lines, and added brown dots and shadows in the sand. (I haven’t had any trouble coloring over Distress Oxide ink.) I also used yellow markers to deepen up the sky near the left and right sides to finish the background. Then, I colored the birds. I didn’t bother to, but you could curve the ostrich’s beak to mimic the flamingo’s, since that part is colored black. You can see all of the markers and pens I used below.

You’ll notice there is a older Spectrum Noir marker in the mix. I haven’t had any issues mixing brands, and the FL1 is a great mid-tone for flamingos. The black and sepia Copic multiliners, along with the white gel pen, were used to add lots of small dots to the sand.

To finish the card, I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment HELLO SUNSHINE, making sure to use my new Cottontail Embossing Powder Tool first. (That thing is awesome! I almost cried when I thought I lost it.) Then, I trimmed the panel down and mounted it to a black mat, before popping it up with foam onto a yellow card base. I love the bold, bright colors! And I really love the idea of using the Caffeinated Ostrich in an unexpected way! What do you think?

Ready for more inspiration? Hop along with us and check out the new release from The Rabbit Hole Designs!

The Rabbit Hole Designs
Amanda – you are here
Deana – next stop
Jenn
Lauren
Tangii
Terra
Vanessa

Giveaways:

To celebrate the new release, The Rabbit Hole Designs is giving away two savings vouchers; one to a lucky Instagram Follower and one to a lucky Facebook Fan Page follower. Winners will be chosen at random from the comments left on the Instagram post, and from comments on the Fan Page post. So make sure to head on over to Instagram and look for the giveaway post from @therabbitholedesignsllc. Also look for the post on The Rabbit Hole Designs Facebook Fan Page. To enter, comment on either post by 11:59 p.m. PDT on October 28, 2021. Winners will be announced on The Rabbit Hole Designs blog October 29th.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I’ll be back tomorrow with another card to share. See you then!

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