Morning Song

Oriental Stamp Arts today offers challenge #199. This is the second time I have participated in a challenge, and I have to say I am enjoying it very much! It is making me get out of my normal M O.
this weeks challenge required us to use this color palette:

Isn't this pretty!! I think so and a far cry from the Neutrals I am most comfortable with. So the Challenge is to use this range of colors. Actually I liked the whole image so much I decided to use it as my background (whoever just yelled "cheater" I heard that and I hope not )!! So the next step was stamp selection which really was no choice at all because when I saw the image all I could thing of if the Dawn and if could sing it would look like this!

It had to be the Penny Black Bird stamp! Next what to do with the size and how to use it.
I decided on making it the background

I needed to find the right complementary colors

I heat embossed the birds with black pigment ink and powder and then colored them with Tim Holtz distress markers. I added some glittery stuff - the white dots - they should be sparkly in about 15 minutes.

I added a Japanese Kanji on the side that says 'Morning Song'.  Google offers a host of translators and as long as your computer supports the alpha base of the language, the sky is the limit!!  And boy can that be fun!!  For those of you who love Calligraphy and words, you know just how exciting that is - everyone else may think we need to get a life, but we know better!!
The next choice was the card base.  Because this is a large 5x7 card I decide to use a 80# ivory laid Neenah paper.  I prefer the 100# for card bases, but with the large size and layers I decided to make it lighter for mailing.  Because the Laid paper has a nice crisp slightly embossed finish it has a very good in the hand feel.  I made sure that the deeper embossed side was on the out side, it looks better and it will be easier to write on inside.  I'll show you this difference between the white and the Ivory:

 

Well when my sweet husband reads this post he will see that I really do need that Nikon Camera That I was playing with in Best Buys when we were out having fun last night!  Because you can't see the difference here : the top photo is with a solar white base and it is distractingly white.  The one below is the Ivory which works with the yellow in the back ground much better!
The finished cards - but not quite dry sparkly stuff.

Thanks for stopping by today, yesterdays India ink is still looking good!
I hope you have a great day!
Ginny