Impression Obsession DT Challenge: Celebrating Mom

It's time for a new challenge from the Impression Obsession design team - in this challenge we're "celebrating Mom"!

I remembered our last challenge, where we made a card that would represent a "me day", and I thought about what my Mom might do on her "me day"... Mom loves the beauty of the outdoors, and adds to the beauty of it by gardening (click there to see some of Mom's spring bulbs that were blooming when we were at her house 2 years ago...gorgeous!). She loves butterflies too, and the testimony they are to how something beautiful can come from something common.

I thought this new image, Watering Can with Butterfly, from artist Gary Robertson would be perfect - watering cans, flowers and flower pots, with a butterfly in the center. I watercolored the image with Derwent watercolor pencils and a waterbrush (Niji), using some of Mom's favorite colors. After the piece was dry, I added some texture by cross-hatching with a Prismacolor Pencil (Espresso) in some of the shadowed areas, and added some highlights with a white gel pen. I also cut around the wings of the butterfly carefully, and bent them up, then covered them with some Crystal Lacquer. That little bit of dimension and shine adds so much! I sketched in a few blades of grass behind the scene to give it some depth.

I used the Cover-A-Card Wood Grain stamp for my background panel - I swiped some light blue and sand ink on the cardstock first, then stamped the woodgrain in a sage ink over the top. You can see it closer in the photo below.

Did you know that you can enter these challenges too, using your Impression Obsession stamps? See the I.O. blog for all the details - you might even win a $25 gift certificate!! Be sure to check out the rest of the team's cards for inspiration....links are over to the left!

P.S. I found another challenge to link up to for this one - Spring cards at Everybody-Art-Challenge!