Light as a Feather

     I was browsing around several of my favorite monthly challenges, hoping to be struck by something that would inspire me, and I found this at House of Cards.

     Using both feathers and the colors, here's what I did.

I started with the sketch from Sweet Sketch Wednesday.

     This is a little different from the way I normally color my images.  I started with just one feather, colored it with ProMarkers and Lyra polychromos pencils, then I photographed it and used my editing software to add a very light grayscale background.  I saved that photo into my hard drive.  For the next paragraph to make sense, you need to know that the feather was photographed standing on its 'stem' so that the feather is standing instead of floating horizontally - more like the ones in the inspiration photo.

     I opened the saved file using MS Word, adjusted the size to what I wanted (see the square, middle feather,) then did a copy and paste two more times to get three feathers.  On the two outside feathers, I 'squeezed' the sides in to narrow them from square to a rectangles.  I printed that, now having the three feathers in a row as my image and then, after I matted it, I turned it on end so that the feathers seemed to be floating downward.

     If you're looking at the three feathers, thinking that they are all colored exactly the same way, now you know how I did it.  One colored feather, photographed, duplicated and size adjusted to give me three identically colored feathers.

     Next step was to choose cardstock in colors from the inspiration photo.  Rather than cutting into new sheets of paper, I went through my bin of scraps and found each of the vertical strips.  The strip on the far left was cut with a Cheery Lynn die (Scandinavian Boutique) and is one of the pieces from the outside edge of the frame (which was used on another project.)  In order to get the darker blue of the color combo, I added a strip of sheer ribbon to the background and also used a snippet of it to 'mat' the sentiment.

     I added three, tiny, brass, 'pearls' to the top corner and another three to the bottom corner.  What is it about sets of three that is so magical in card designing?  Three feathers, three strips, three pearls...  This is my first work with "mixed media" and I hope to get better at it but mixing photography, fabric, die cuts, and metal with textured papers was the best I could manage this time.  I stayed with all simple, geometric, shapes for a clean, somewhat 'industrial' and masculine feel.  

     Challenges:
A Vintage Journey
Catch the Bug (top row)
Crafting with an Attitude
Creative Fingers
Jo's Scrap Shack
Pixie's Snippets
Scrapper's Delights

Word Art Weds.

     This week has sped by so quickly!  Maybe it was all the Easter celebrations or the Monday holiday along with the half day at the beginning of last weekend for Good Friday.  Whatever it was, the weekend is nearly here and I'm sooo ready for it!  I plan to do very little and be a couch potato most of the time.  If the Creative Muse knocks, I'm probably going to debate answering that door.  :-D  Happy Stamping.  NanaConnie