Perching Kingfisher

Hi there.  Here is a recent birthday card for one of the chaps in our extended family, and I decided to use this Kingfisher from the A Little Bit Sketchy range by Sheena Douglass.  There is nothing so beautiful as seeing that flash of blue and orange as it swoops over the water, not that I have actually seen one myself, but I would love to one day.  This is its first inking and I have to admit I more or less followed the picture on the packing for the colours, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

I started with the background which is alcohol inks on Yupo paper.  I wanted water and sky so I used a mixture of Stonewashed and Pool in the sky and more of these two plus Clover and Limeade for the water, and also some Blending Solution.  I also added a little white Posca pen smudged with the finger to look like spray on the water, but may be it looks too faint to see it.

I then stamped the Kingfisher on to a piece of white card using Versafine Smokey Gray ink heat embossed with WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder and coloured with my Distress Inks using Carved Pumpkin, Abandoned Coral, Blueprint Sketch, Lucky Clover and Brushed Corduroy applied with a waterbrush from ink put on to my glass mat.  I then fussy cut it out.  I thought I would add a little Wink of Stella on the wings and the head to add a bit of iridescence, not sure that it did a lot and it definitely doesn't show in the photo.

I decided to make a window for the background which I die cut from some more white card, cut using my square dies from The Works cut just a little bit smaller than my 6" square white base card and I added the sentiment using more of the Smokey Gray ink heat embossed with the Clear Gloss EP.  I fixed the alcohol ink background behind the aperture and fixed the bird to it too.

This was not trouble free as I forgot that the card had to fit into an envelope of just over 6" square.  There was a little swearing at this stage when I realised the bird was stuck not to be removed and it was sticking out over the edge too far, so after a little thought I decided to trim a bit of the left hand side of the aperture layer and also the side and bottom of the white card.  This made the card a bit smaller,  and also with a bit off the poor bird's tail feathers it just fits...what a palaver...lol.  I then adhered this piece to the white card.

Sorry for this rather lengthy discussion on how 'not' to make a card, but thank you for joining me today and I hope to see you again soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.
The Male Room Challenge - No. 105 Anything Goes/No Designer Paper.
Seize the Birthday Challenge - No 160 Anything Goes.