The Open Sea with Northern Lights

So I discovered a new (to me) technique I saw online.. and decided I MUST try this for myself!  It goes by several names, but the one I saw was Northern Lights. It’s where you have a multicolored background with bright yellows and purples, and dark blue and black areas.. and then top it off with white stars. It’s definitely a Northern Lights in the sky kind of look.  So, I took this weeks theme challenge from The Paper Players #243: Transportation – and ran with it!

I thought.. what could I use to incorporate a huge sky, and NOT trees. 🙂  A BOAT! It’s even on the challenge picture! So, I pulled back out my Open Sea set – which I just used for my Globe card (click here if you missed it).

Here is my take on that technique:

I love the bright colors on this one. You have the ship sailing away in the shiny water, and the stars overhead. I will need to try this one again with trees next time, too! OOH the possibilities!!

For the background, I started with Whisper White paper. I used sponge daubers and just rubbed a bunch of colors on the paper, starting with Daffodil Delight. I then moved on to Old Olive, Tempting Turquoise, Rich Razzleberry, Night of Navy, then finally filled in a few areas with black.  I tore some scrap paper to mask the bottom, to keep the horizon clean where the water was going. After the sky was done, I just took a little Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise and Night of Navy to fill in the water area.  I used my white gel pen to dot the sky with stars, and added a few rhinestones.

To finish off the water, I covered it with Versamark, then embossed it with clear embossing powder. When the light hits it, it’s like it’s actually reflecting. 🙂
The ship is stamped in Night of Navy and also embossed with clear. I ran some of the Daffodil Delight and Rich Razzleberry over it very lightly so it wasn’t completely white against the sky.

The sentiment is from The Project Life set Remember This, and is stamped on vellum, embossed, and colored on the back with a marker to get the additional color on the “bound”. It’s cut out then adhered to the water. This way, it feels more like it’s part of the scenery instead of the focus of the card. I wanted the focus to be the sky!

Enjoy!!
Mak