Eucalyptus Leaves

It's an Aussie-fest here today, with two iconic images on one project!

I've used the single koala image from the new pop-up set, Warm Fuzzies, combined with the solid leaf stamp from the Eucalyptus clear stamp set. The eucalyptus leaves have been stamped with distress markers to form the background of my card.

The little koala was printed directly onto a piece of X-PressIt blending card, which is ideal for colouring with alcohol markers as it allows the colours to mix and blend nicely, and then fussy cut with a small pair of scissors. I always add a little more oomph to the eyes by colouring the pupils with a black pen and adding a white highlight.

To help with positioning everything evenly, I'm going to place the koala on a piece of card stock, which will be adhered to my card front, and trace a light pencil line around the outside. This will give me a guide for placing the eucalyptus leaves.

Solid stamps are great for adding multiple colours with just one impression. I'm going to colour the image with distress ink markers, adding greens, yellows and browns to the leaves and reds and pinks to the flowers. It will take several impressions to fill up the entire space, and to prevent it looking too repetitive, I'm going to move the stamp around as I make the impressions, sometimes masking out sections.

To get a beautiful watercolour look, I'm using my water brush directly over the stamped ink. The impression on the right hand side hasn't yet had any water added to it, while the other parts have. You can see the difference before and after the addition of the water.

My completed background is now ready for the little koala, which I'll attach with some foam tape to give a little more dimension to the project.

Stamps: