Under an African Sky

Hi everyone.  It's our DS's birthday today and as he lives in Australia it is the first time in many years that he has been able to celebrate it here with us, which makes it extra special, and I bought these four Sheena Douglass stamp sets recently with mainly masculine birthdays in mind and I thought that he would like the African wildlife theme.

I started the card using my 7" square gelli plate which I covered in Distress inks using Tumbled Glass and Faded Jeans at the top, Spiced Marmalade and Mowed Lawn towards the middle and Mustard Seed and Walnut Stain at the bottom.  I spritzed it with some water and pulled the print using a piece of good quality smooth card.   I did have a couple of goes to get the balance of colours right and then dried it using my heat tool and trimmed the finish background down a little.  I love the randomness of these prints as you never know what you are going to get, and often it is not until you add in the stamping that you get a proper idea of whether it is going to work or not.

I continued to stamp on to the background using the African Landscape set and my misti stamping tool.  I stamped the large Acacia tree first using the Walnut Stain ink and then the background smaller tree using the same ink but second generation.  I then stamped the small group of elephants using Memento London Fog ink and stamped over them several times to get a better depth of colour, but am not totally sure that it wouldn't have been better if I had added a little brown to make them a bit more distinct, although they are better in real life than they appear herecra.  I then added the giraffes in the foreground using Spiced Marmalade and Walnut Stain, but using more of the Walnut Stain on the second to make it stand out enough against the first one.

I finished the background by adding a bit of shading under the animals and around the trees using a water brush with the brown ink, making it darker under the foreground tree to ground it.

Lastly I stamped the sentiment on to a 7" square white card again using the Walnut Stain ink, and then adhered the scene to it.

I have a new follower Sandra who I'm sure a lot of you will already know, but if you haven't been to her blog do go and take a look at her beautiful cards here, her scenic cards are very special.

Thank you for joining me here today and I hope to be back soon.

I would like to enter the following challenges:

Happy Little Stampers May Watercolour Challenge - Anything Goes (no optional twist).
Fashionable Stamping Challenge - No. 123 Let's Go Wild.