30 Day Coloring Challenge

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and join the 30 Day Coloring Challenge hosted by Kathy over at The Daily Marker. After spending all of last week making a card every day as homework assignments for the Mask-erade class, I’m kind of glad this is just a coloring challenge and not necessarily a card making challenge. LOL I would like to eventually make all the pieces I color into cards, but for now, I’m just going to focus on getting in some coloring time each day.

With all that having been said, I actually did decide to make a finished card for day one of the challenge. It just seemed like an appropriate way to kick things off. Going forward, I’m not sure how many of my daily colorings will actually make it to a full blown blog post. I think I might just post a weekly recap each Sunday showing all of the pieces I colored that week. If you want to keep up on a daily basis with what I’m working on, I would recommend following me on Instagram as that’s where I’ll be posting them.

I started off by stamping the balloon and cloud images from the Blue Skies stamp set by Lawn Fawn. They were stamped with Archival Black ink from Close to My Heart on a piece of Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Cardstock using my MISTI stamping tool. I always like to use my MISTI when stamping on watercolor cardstock because it makes it so easy for me to restamp if I don’t get a clean image the first time.

I colored in the rainbow balloon using Distress Markers in Festive Berries, Ripe Persimmon, Squeezed Lemonade, Mowed Lawn, Salty Ocean, and Shaded Lilac. I used Vintage Photo for the balloon basket and some Pumice Stone lightly around the edges of the stamped clouds. I then went over all of the Distress colors using my fine tip Aquash water brush to blend everything out.

As the watercolor was drying, I stamped out the balloon and cloud images again on some Inkadinkado masking paper and fussy cut them out. I cut the masks for the balloon and the basket separately rather than keeping them connected. Doing it that way meant I could get some sky color in that little area between them.

Before applying the masks over my watercolored images, I quickly hit them with my heat gun just to be sure they were completely dry to ensure the mask would adhere properly. Once adhered, I used my Tumbled Glass Mini Distress Ink Pad and the Mini Blending Tool to put in my background by ink blending. I also used the same little cloud mask I created last week to use on another card made using this same stamp set.

Once my sky was finished, I stamped the sentiment (also from the Blue Skies stamp set) with my MISTI using VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I then used foam tape to adhere the panel to a card base made from Marshmallow cardstock from Bazzill. I finished the card off by adding a generous layer of clear Wink of Stella glitter brush pen over the rainbow balloon.