Thanks a Melon - Ants at a Picnic

Hello Whimsy Fans! It's Iris here today and I want to share this fun shaker card I made with one of the newly released clear stamp sets called 'Ants at a Picnic' by Dustin Pike. Look at those adorable smooshy faces.  Usually I am not very fond of ants -yikes- but I would love to have these guys in my yard.

To create the blue and red backgrounds I sponged distress oxide inks (chipped sapphire, broken china, festive berries, worn lipstick) onto mixed media paper using an ink blending tool. I added white and metallic pink ink sprinkles to the blue sky background and sprinkled some water and white ink onto the red shaker background.

I colored using Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils, and the images were stamped onto mixed media paper with hybrid ink. Sometimes, if I am not sure what medium I want to use to color my images, I use mixed media paper and a hybrid ink to stamp. This way I have lots of options to choose from including alcohol markers. It also gives me the option to combine different mediums without worrying if the ink might bleed, etc.

I also like to use mixed media paper for blended backgrounds because the ink blends like butter on these papers. My favorite is Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media Paper. It is bright white and has a heavy 140 lb / 300 gsm weight.

For the grass I used the darkest plain green from the Otters designer paper pack and the grass dies from the Cloud and Grass edger die set. I sponged the grass edges with Peeled Paint distress ink and used a soft, dense blending brush. The sentiment is included with the stamps. 

I also used foam tape to pop up some of the images and paper layers to give the card a 3D look.

Products I used from the Whimsy Stamps store:

            

      

          

         

   

Thanks for visiting today!

Hugs,