Happy New Year everyone!!!!

I am back from holiday with my family, have the kids back in school and finally have the car and suitcases unpacked.  All of that done, I finally get to get back to my desk and start cranking out so fun new work, some fun new challenges and a few new design groups pieces.

One of the new design groups I am getting to play with is Craftin Desert Diva (CDD).  I am working on their Digi Design Team and get to play and color all kinds of super cute digi stamps.
CDD also has a really amazing Facebook group called Craftin Desert Divas Gallery where you can join, and share your projects with the whole CDD community (and maybe win a few prizes too).  Today I am sharing a design that goes along with their January Mood Board.  It is such a great inspiration board with many different possibilities for it.  Check out all those beautiful purples and blues incased inside those winter wonderlands.

I decided to play with those colors and see if I could create my own winter Aurora Borealis (or northern lights) to show off those amazing colors.  I chose to use the digi stamp Bear with Stump and sized him up on my computer and printed him out.  I knew I wanted the digi to be the main focal image, so I made sure to size him pretty big on my computer.

Then I started the process of coloring in the image with my copics.  The stump I colored in with E50, E53, E55, and E59.  (side note, I am really starting to love coloring in wood…I think I finally have a good grasp on it.)

I went with a white bear trying to make him look like a polar bear…however I do think I used too much grey.  I used the colors N0, N2, and N4 with lots of colorless blender.  Ignore where the grey ran out of the sweet little bear, and the horizon line that I created, it gets covered later…this unfortunately is the result of using too much colorless blender.  I also added some grey to the snow around the stump and grass blades to shadow the snow.

I wanted my little bear to look sweet so I added some pinks (RV00 and RV02) and a bit of blue to his eyes (B000).

With the easy part of the coloring done, I moved on to the skyline.  I knew I had to somehow mask the grass blades, so I decided to add my purples that I was going to use in the sky on the grass and turn them into icicles.

Now time for the sky.  I pulled out two sets of a trio of copics, one a light violet (V12, V15, V17) and one set that is in the blue violet shades (B60, B63, BV01).  

I took the two lightest shades and drew some wonky (yes, that is a technical term) lines behind the bear.  I added the middle shade onto each side of the pale shades. Finally, I filled in the darkest shades and blended the best I could all three shades of both color together.

Here is where the real trick came in to make the night sky look like the northern lights.  I pulled out the colorless blender and went to town on the background colors, fading it all and push color this way and that.  Yes, I saturated the paper with colorless blender because it created such ease and movement in the purples.  I also pressed the tip of the colorless blender onto the paper and let drips and drops form.  I added bits of more light colors into certain zones to create more movement.

Finally, I pulled out my favorite white Gelly Roll pen and added a ridiculous amount of snow drops everywhere so that it looked like was snowing.  I dropped bits of ‘snow’ onto the stump with some heavy body acrylic, adding both piles of snow and some texture to the card.  I trimmed down the card and backed it with some black card stock and adhered it all to an A2 top folded card.

I wasn’t going to add a sentiment, but in the end, I just had to add something.  I found the perfect sentiment on the Snow Day stamp pack.  I think that sentiment is just perfect for this card.

I am also going to add this design to Sunday Stamps and their current challenge that is featuring a collection of pretty purples too.

That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoy my attempt at creating my own Aurora Borealis.  I didn’t quite get exactly what I was going for, but I think I ended up pretty close.