There’s Gnome-Body Like You

Hi there, I hope you had a nice weekend and are staying safe and healthy.

I spent a part of Saturday getting inky with Distress Oxide inks and playing with different color combinations.  This combo reminded me of watermelon so of course I had to color up this cute watermelon-eating gnome from the new Chillin’ Gnomes stamp set to go with it 🙂

I started with an A2-sized piece of Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock and four colors of Distress Oxides: Abandoned Coral, Carved Pumpkin, Scattered Straw, and Twisted Citron.  I had already blended a number of panels so when I started this one, I knew that I wanted to have a lot of Abandoned Coral at one end, and just a bit of Twisted Citron at the other.  So, I added Abandoned coral over a good fourth of the panel and then just a bit of Twisted Citron at the other end.  Then I added stripes of Scattered Straw and Carved Pumpkin.  At this stage, the colors are very much in stripes and not blended at all.  Then, I started blending the colors together.

Bristol smooth cardstock’s coating means that there’s a lot of time to blend colors before they settle into the paper.  It also means that as you blending/swiping motion, it can be hard to build up color because you end up wiping away pigment that’s still sitting on top of the cardstock.  To combat this, once I have a decent blend, I switch to a tamping motion to have more control over the blend and to build up color.

While the panel was drying, I stamped the gnome and his cute mushroom in Copic-friendly Hero Arts Intense Black ink.  Then I colored them up using some yellow green, red, and earth-toned colors:

Reds: R20, R22, R24, R29
Yellow Greens: YG00, YG01, YG03, YG25
Gnome’s skin: E11, E13, E15
Beard: W1, W3
Mushroom flesh: Y32, E50, E51, E53

I cut out the images and backed the gnome with foam tape.  I trimmed most of the stemp off of the mushroom and then added foam tape behind the cap and the top of the stem.

Before I adhered the gnome and mushroom to the background, I stamped the sentiment in Versafine Clair Nocturne ink. To finish, I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thanks for coming by!