Hello! It’s Sabrina, and I am delighted to be here today sharing my first post for the Art Neko blog.
Wise Woodland Owl by Sabrina F for Art Neko
I chose to be inspired by the rapid approach of autumn. Already the ash trees on my road are laden with berries, some trees are starting to drop a few leaves on windy days…and the evenings are getting noticeably shorter.
With these thoughts in my mind I went out to the garden and picked a few leaves to do some leaf stamping, by way of creating a suitable background for this lovely Wise Owl on a Branch with Calligraphy.
Leaf stamping was a technique I learned a few years ago on Splitcoaststampers, one that has stuck in my repertoire.
For this card I picked a nasturtium leaf (not to be recommended, it had far too high a water content and smooshed out all over the place), a couple of honeysuckle leaves and a big Japanese Anemone leaf.
I inked these with distress inks (bundled sage, tea dye and pumice stone, layered them on a piece of paper and put it through the Big Shot using the regular sandwich for cutting wafer-thin dies. I’m not sure how much of the green is actually ink and how much was transferred from the nasturtium! It’s not necessary to use the Big Shot – you could simply use a brayer to help transfer the ink from the leaves to the paper, or even just press with your hands; but I find I get the best ink transfer by running it through the Big Shot.
Then I decided where best on my leaf-stamped sheet to position my little owl, and stamped him with Versafine Onyx Black.
I used a Sizzix die to cut the leaf shape, and then coloured my owl with Polychromos pencils; he doesn’t need a lot of colouring to look good!
To finish it off,I edged the leaf with a Sakura Stardust pen to add definition.
I like cards with sentiments – so I pulled out Whimsical and Kind Sayings, and stamped one of the sentiments on some of the leaf-stamped paper that was left over. I edged this and a spare die-cut leaf with the same Sakura pen that I had used on my owl leaf.
I thought the lighter colours of the leaves needed a dark background as a foil, so I used a sheet of paper from BoBunny’s Autumn Song collection, stitching round the edges with a metallic thread, and embossing it with a wood-grain folder.
I added this to a matt gold card base, and finally positioned the leaves and sentiment, using a little foam tape to shape the sentiment slightly and to pop the leaf up
Be sure to check back soon and see what other beautiful creations the team have been preparing to share with you.
