Stampotique Designers Challenge #129 -- Anything Goes!

I'm excited to show you my first project as an official member of Stampotique's design team. This week's challenge over at Stampotique Designers Challenge Blog is Anything Goes!

Since it's the first day of the New Year, I decided to make a calendar wall hanging, so I could know what date it is! I live in a time warp, so visual reminders, like calendars, are really good!

I used Stampotique's Birdy Up, which is such a fabulous and versatile stamp because there are four adorable birds on the stamp! You can use all four, just one, or any combination thereof. If I were good at math, I'd tell you how many combinations you could use, but I'm not, so you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

Anyway, enough blather, here it is!

Birdy Up was stamped with Tuxedo Black Memento ink and colored with Copic markers. I felt like doing some color blending, so I did. When I was done coloring the birdies, I fussy cut them, edged them with a black pen, and put them aside while I worked on the background for them.

I really like the flat canvases available at AC Moore and Michael's because they hold up to a lot of abuse without warping. I had a 5" x 8" canvas in my stash and painted it with a variety of Paper Artsy's Fresco Finish acrylic paints in shades of blue and pink to create a sky. When I was happy with the look, I heat set the paints.

Lately I've been mesmerized by clouds and have been trying to create quasi-realistic cloudy skies using my Copics. I even did a tutorial! I decided to see if I could use my new Paper Artsy paints to make some clouds for my sky. Using a brush wasn't doing it for me, so I used my finger and a very light blue (Avalanche perhaps?) paint to draw in some clouds and even included some that overlapped. I continued to use my finger to add more layers of the paint until I got some nice fluffy clouds. Then I went away for a bit.

When I came back a few hours later, the paint had dried and the clouds had receded into the background a bit, so I grabbed my Snowflake (white) Fresco Finish paint and added some layers of white to make the clouds pop a bit more from the blue sky. This actually worked, which is why I love paints. You can fix your mistakes relatively easily!

I heat set the entire canvas, then decided it needed something more. I edged the piece with dark blue Pea Coat Fresco Finish paint, heat set that, then added some Classic Treasure Gold all along the edges.

White textured paper was painted with Pea Coat Fresco Finish paint, then old QuicKutz numbers were die cut. The numbers were a bit flimsy, so another set was die cut and adhered to the painted numbers.

A Lattice Rectangle Nestabilities die was used to die cut a frame for the calendar from the painted cardstock, but the calendar looked a little bit odd just floating in the sky. SCACD's Steampunk Wings die set was used to die cut the painted cardstock. Some blue painted cardstock was left, so I used one of the two dies from SCACD's Classic Corners die set to cut four corners.

The frame, numbers, wings, and the corners looked a little plain, so I used my finger to unevenly paint 'em with Classic Treasure Gold. Much better.

It was finally time to assemble my calendar! The four Classic Corners die cuts were adhered to the canvas, then the numbers were added. The birds were perched in various positions on the numbers.

Here's a closer view of the birds perched upon the numbers.

The calendar was mounted onto the Lattice Rectangle die cut, then onto the canvas. The Steampunk Wings were adhered to the calendar and positioned so that they extended off the canvas. The final touch was to add a touch of Clear Gelly Glaze pen to the birds' eyes, beaks, and talons.

Thanks for visiting today and Happy New Year!