...an espresso of thanks

Howdy do? I'm taking the ostrich approach to politics this week and just sort of ignoring everything that has been happening with Brexit etc, I've no clue how all of this will pan out and sadly I don't think the folks 'in charge' have any clue either...but hey-ho the sky hasn't fallen in today so far, so here's a card.

I made this for last weeks MIUM challenge over at Stamp TV forum. I must admit I'm pretty hit and miss with challenges, but I wondered what MIUM meant and nope, I'm not going to tell you - pop over here and see this weeks MIUM challenge for yourself, lol!! and then maybe you will be reeled in like I was!

Anywho this card started as a great excuse to further explore my new Gina K inks and I am smitten, I'm loving these inks for solid images, I'm loving how the stamped image seems to sort of smooth itself out as it dries, the coverage is so good and the colours that I have used so far are scrumptious.

I stamped my coffee pot and did a little random shading with a brown colouring pencil just to give the image a little depth. I didn't bother with working out where a light source would be or anything so complicated, I just added a little rough shading on areas of the image that I thought would look good. I wanted to keep the illustrated feel rather than make it look too realistic.

I used the Coffee Set stamps, just released at Gina K's for this one. Huge mileage in this set, many, many sentiments for lots of different occasions.

How to ground a stamped image

Many times when you stamp an image, it can look a little lost there, floating on the page and when that happens you need to ground the image on the page somehow by making it look like it was meant to be there. There are loads of ways to do this, and I did it for this card by roughing in a suggestion of a tablecloth. Here's how, I'm using a slightly larger set of images on my example, but it's the same principle:

 I masked the bottom of the coffee pot with a post it. The I lightly sketched diagonal lines with a colouring pencil.

 Changing direction, I then went back and sketched diagonals going the opposite way. I sketch lightly and I stop short of the edge of the panel, I was just interested in creating a 'suggestion' of cloth, I wasn't aiming to actually draw a tablecloth. I lightly shaded a little crosswise also, but not enough to take away from the diagonal lines.

I removed the post-it note and had a nice tablecloth effect. You can see how I did the same thing on the actual card below. The background floral panel was stamped with flowers and dots from the same stamp set. Inks used were Sweet Corn and Dark Chocolate both Gina K Designs.