Emerald Gondola Card

Birthdays for the month of May have the birthstone Emerald, a colour which always makes me think of the sea around the coast of Brittany where we spend a lot of time. Gingersnap Creations Blogspot's Reasons to Stamp colour for May is Emerald. I love my new Darkroom Door Gondola stamp and needed to make some cards so I thought that this was a good reason to use the colour Emerald, as, whilst I am sure the canals of Venice are really a sludgy brown, I prefer to think of them romantically as a sparkling Green!

To colour this scene I brayered Baby Powder Kaleidacolor going upwards, then went across widthways just over the canal, using Caribbean Sea, so that I had pastel buildings and a greeny water.

Venetian Gondola Card

I am having a catch-up on making cards at the moment, for birthdays and other occasions, which is a good excuse to use this new Venetian Gondolas stamp from Dark Room Door which Nancy kindly ordered into the shop for me. I love it! I stamped a few onto glossy postcards and coloured them in various ways to see what worked, and had done some with a very murky green canal. I had in my mind MP and Florence's photos of their recent trip, with the pastel houses, and I wanted this to be my focus, so Colin said, why not just colour the houses. So that is what I have done on this version. I then brayered a little pastel colour onto white shrink plastic and stamped the mask from the Oxford Impressions' Venezia set (well, I have held back from this favourite set for a while now!). Then I shrank it and used it as the embellishment, with a simple backdrop of one of the Crafty Individuals' patterned card blanks. Tried to be a bit restrained.