Stampin! with Jaydee

Hi Everyone.

Happy Monday. I have a quick post for you tonight.  One of the classes I am doing as part of my Altenew Educator Certification Program is called "Color your day" and the presenter is the very talented Therese Calvird from lostinpaper.com

The first lesson in the class is to use a photo for inspiration.  So, find a photograph that appeals to you and use those colors to create a card.   Mmmm... just up my alley.  So, I went off to look for photo inspiration challenges and found this one at Card Concept - 

The bright yellow chair with the grey, and yellow stripes on the carpet and the white elements really appealed to me.  I also loved just the hint of turquoise.

Well, you can imagine that I originally thought of flowers!  But, I really wanted to stretch myself a little further.  I was sitting at my craft desk wondering what to do when I saw a lovely little Goldfinch fly past the window.   AH HA!  Consider that a light bulb moment!  Once I saw the little goldfinch I knew it was going to be a bird card.

I began by creating a background.  I didn't want to use stripes, but still wanted to create a grounding element.  I pulled out a stencil and used that to create the background.  

I then stamped the bird in yellow, grey and black and die-cut it with the matching dies. I could have gone black with the back of the wings, but liked the almost green tinge that the grey left me with.  I decided to leave it as I quite liked the grey/green combo.

I needed to add more interest, so I die-cut some vellum leaves from the Build-a-Wreath set and decided to use the negative piece as  a stencil.  I added some stenciled leaves onto my focal point layer.  Take a look what I mean:

The grey leaves help ground the bird and add a little more interest.  I mounted the bird onto the base and then added the vellum leaves around him and to also give him a "perch".

All the colors at this point were influenced by the yellow, white and grey in the photograph, but I needed a way to incorporate the turquoise.  So, I decided to use that for my sentiment.

Here's my card:

So, there you have it.  Another non-floral card :-)

On a personal note.

OK.... it's snowing.  AGAIN!  The last time I sat here doing my blog we had just had over 6" dumped on us.  Tonight they are forecasting another 4-7".  Have I told you all that I am SO over winter!!!!!!

I think the birds are over winter, too!  We have had an influx of predator birds in the garden the last couple of weeks and the west side of our house is like Hawk Alley.  It's a favorite spot of the Coopers Hawk.  He manages to fly in virtually unseen in that part of the garden as he flies in between the trees in the wetland and catches his unsuspecting victims.  He's smart.  If he can't catch them the normal way, he will force them to fly into the window to knock them out.  However, since we put the heavier screens, that is far less successful for him.  In fact, he wasn't successful at that trick for the whole of 2017!

He managed to catch this victim with a straight swoop in.  The photo is from behind the screen, so it isn't that clear... but you can see he wasn't happy about me watching him have lunch!

This happened just before the snowstorm on Friday and you can see that we had a sight of grass for a little while before it disappeared again!

I'll be back tomorrow with another card.   In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight.

Hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe:

• Cardstock:  Neenah Solar White
• Stamps:  Sentiment:  Sentiments and quotes.  Bird:  Birds of a Feather.  All Altenew
• Inks:  Altenew