Silhouette Grass....

and a bit of distressing.  I haven't used distressing or my HA Silhouette Grass stamp in forever.  I have been soooo into coloring that I have kinda forgotten about all the other techniques and styles out there.  I attended a Tim Holtz class at Scrapfest and besides the fact that the guy is amazingly nice he also re-ignited my love for distressing!  Don't you just love the intensity of color that distress inks give you?  And lucky for me I came home to the NEED to make several cards that have to be in the mail this week.  Unfortunately 3 are sympathy cards (man those are hard to make) 2 are birthday and 2 are what I call "just 'cuz" cards.  The "just 'cuz" cards are always my favorite.  And, a bag.  My son dates a girl whose birthday is today (of course) and last night he asked me if I could make a nice bag for him to put his present for her in......I have GOT to teach him the concept of "advance notice".  Although, he probs would respond that he did give me advance notice by telling me the night before....you know though - I am just so glad that he asked me to do it!  His girlfriend loves ice cream and so Corm  went to a place called GLAZE where you can pick out the pottery of your choice, paint it anyway you want and then they will glaze it in the oven for you and you pick it up a week later.  So Corm picked out and painted a freestanding ice cream cone....kind of like you would see in a retro shop and then filled it with all sorts of ice cream toppings....chips, sprinkles etc....such a cute idea I thought.  But you came to see a card right?  Not be subjected to my distracted, meandering  thought process!
I have several stamps that have become my go to stamps for sympathy cards.  I love the HA Silhouette Grass for that reason.....many of the sympathy images that I use are silhouette stamps and then I often use a distress background.  I know that this particular card is very vibrant but here in my town the leaves are starting to change.  The wake up temp was in the upper 40's this morn and the geese are flying over head daily on their way south.  The man who passed was a farmer and so I thought stark outdoor images against a vibrant sky would work best.  I need to make three separate cards for three of his daughters....all of whom I am friends with so the cards need to be similar yet differ slightly.  After stamping the image in black I often go over it with a black Prismacolor pencil....touching up the spots that need it - keeping others light where I want them to look like they are more in the background.  Finally, I add white Prismacolor pencil to each aspect of the image on one side.....that represents the "light source" hitting, in this case, the reeds.  And, also, the white just seems to make the image "pop" a bit more to my eyes.  So, there you go....I hope you like it!  I am actually entering this into the Hero Arts Monthly Challenge...this card is in the "Fall Feast" category as well as following the color scheme category.

Thank you so much for stopping by!  I plan to be back "online" today and hope to stop and visit you too!

Be well,
Sheila