You Make Me Smile plus small cloud tutorial

Hi Everyone! I hope everyone has been having a great summer!  My kids start back to school next week.  I can't believe how quickly this summer has went by!  I'm due in a little over 2 weeks so we have lots happening the next few weeks!  I'm excited to meet our new little one soon.  We didn't find out if it is a boy or girl so I'm ready to find out! :)

Today, I thought I would share a card I created last month and a little tutorial on how I shade the clouds behind my images.   I recently picked up some Tiddly Inks images from an online shop and had to ink one up right away.

This adorable little girl is from the Friends are Flowers stamp set.  I love the little heart flowers in the pot.  The sentiment I used is from a little stamp that comes with one of the LOTV images.

I colored the image with copic markers (listed below).  I added some grass under her feet before masking to spray the sky and clouds.  I put together a little tutorial to show how I create the clouds.

Mini Cloud Tutorial

These are the supplies I use when spraying my backgrounds.  I have the clouds die cut from some Tim Holtz masking plastic.  It's nice because it's slightly tacky and you can use them over and over. 

I stamped the image on some Eclipse masking tape and cut it out to create the mask for my image.

First, put the mask over the image.  I didn't worry about masking the grass I had added because the blue is a light color and won't cover the darker green.

I added some of my cloud masks randomly around my image.  Then, I sprayed the piece using a blue copic marker and my air compressor.

After removing the masks, the image looks like this.  I store the image masks on the back of my clear stamp sets like this so I can use them again later if I want to.  No use cutting them out all over again. :)

For this tutorial, I used W0 and W1 when coloring my clouds.  (I didn't have W00 when I photographed this tutorial.  I now use that color, too, since it is even lighter.)  First, I went around the the clouds where I wanted the shadows with the W1 marker.  Then, I flicked the color up using the W0 marker to help blend the colors up.  I did this a couple times until I got a nice blend and shading to my clouds.  Remember to use a light hand so the clouds don't get too dark.  I often go over the gray again using my colorless blender, too, to lighten the colors.  (This can push too much color to the bottom of the clouds, though, so use it lightly.)

I later added more grass below her feet, too. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I love hearing from my blog readers! :)
Niki

you make me smile card supplies:
Stamps: Friends are Flowers (Tiddly Inks), sentiment (LOTV)
Cardstock: X-Press It (Copic), hot fudge (MFT)
Patterned Paper: This & That: Graceful (Echo Park)
Ink: Tuxedo Black Memento (Tsukineko)
Embellishments: twine, hot fudge button (MFT), pearls, graph washi tape
Copic Markers
skin: E000, E00, E11, R00, R20
hair: E13, E15, E17, E19, E18
dress: R32, R35, R37, R39
shoes: W2, W4, W6, W8, W10
shirt: G05, G00
heartsL R24, R27, R37, R89
pot: E33, E35, E37
sky: BG11, B000
grass: YG11, YG63, YG67< E35, N6, N8
clouds: W0, W1