Autumn Abundance

Edit: Susan brought up a very good question. She asked why I would use three Copic colors to color in my leaves (for example) instead of just one color. I posted this photo below to give you a good visual along with my answer. When you see things like a sunflower in real life, it has lots of dimension. The flower petals and leaves have folds and curves. You also see one leaf in front of another leaf...one flower petal in front of other flower petals. All of these factors add up to dimension and depth, foreground and background. This different elements cast shadows on one another. So in real life, you rarely see a color that is just one color. Instead you see highlights and shadows, light areas and dark areas. So in my interpretations of these sunflowers, I used 3 colors on the leaves to represent the shadows and highlights that occur in real life. I want my finished image to look as real life as it can be. I hope that helps to answer your question, Susan. And if you're having trouble with the shading and light and dark areas, google a photo of what you are trying to color. Zoom in on the photo and really study each and every leaf. Pick one flower petal and really analyze where the shadows are and what one petal looks like when it's behind another flower petal. It takes a little doing, but you will get there!

Autumn Abundance is a beautiful new set coming out this month at Papertrey. Nichole did a fabulous job with illustrating the images in this set. For all of you that love to color stamped images with Copics (or watercolors, etc), this set is going to be a must have for your collection. Be sure to check out Nichole's blog to see more ideas for her beautiful new Autumn Abundance stamp set.

I got inspired to make my vase look like spatterware (or speckleware or splatterware), which is a blue enamel finish that has white splatters all over it. Check out these new splatter ware dishes to see what I'm referring to :http://www.norbysonline.com/cgsinspen.html

Here's another example of a spatterware plate:
And a big pot:
And a whole set of spatterware:

Okay, I'm going to start coloring my image and I'll get to the spatterware part in a little bit. First as I've shown before, I start by making a palette of Copic colors. I choose my colors in groups of three (just how Papertrey sells Copics) and scribble a little of each color onto scrap cardstock. Now I have a visual reference of my colors.

I started out by coloring the leaves first of the pretty vase full of sunflowers. I used three shades of greens in YG93, YG95 and YG97.

Next up was the sunflowers. I shaded them in colors of Y32, Y35 and Y38.

Using a mix of E55, E57 and E59, I then colored the centers of the sunflowers. You'll see on my finished card that I went back in with a white gel pen and added some dots to the brown centers to resemble sunflower seeds.

Now for the really exciting part of my colored image...the spatterware vase! I used Copic colors of B95, B97 and B99 to shade the vase in blue. I left a big white spot which is where light would be hitting the vase. Once I had my vase shaded the way I wanted, I took my white gel pen and scribbled little spatters all over. While the white ink was still wet, I smudged the speckles with my finger tip. My vase now resembles spatterware!

I then set aside my colored image and moved on to the card design. For my background papers, I created one custom made background using Guidelines and Ripe Avocado, Enchanted Evening and Summer Sunrise inks. Second, I chose the Ripe Avocado Green Tea Leaves patterned paper and for my third paper, I chose a sheet of In Bloom patterned paper in Enchanted Evening. To keep in line with my spatterware theme, I took white acrylic craft paint and splattered my paper. Voila, custom made spatterware patterned paper!!
Lots more fun elements to my card, including this string of buttons. I simply threaded Rustic Twine through the buttons and spaced them out to fit on my card. One button has a snippet of Summer Sunrise Swiss Dot ribbon to match up with the sunflower colors.

And here's my finished card. I layered my colored image with Spellbinder's Rectangle Nestabilities and Scalloped Rectangle Nestabilities die templates. The rest of the card background features different blocks of my patterned papers and the string of buttons. The sentiment along the bottom is featured in Autumn Abundance along with some other very unique sentiments.

And here's a close up of my colored vase of sunflowers. I used Ranger Glossy Accents on my vase to give it shine. This really makes the spatterware come to life as it gives it that realistic enamel coating that is common with spatterware pieces.

So I hope you enjoyed my post today. Autumn Abundance is a terrific match with your Copics. Stay tuned because I'll be adding more and more Copic tips as we go along!