Forest Goddess

The moment I saw Some Odd Girl's Forest Goddess stamp, I knew wanted it. Of course, I didn't have a decent printer at the time, so it had to wait. But the amazing summer digi sale (woo!) made it impossible to resist buying her and a whole bunch of other stamps. So, here I am with gorgeous stamps that all have me excited to create. I've got a-plenty of material for my Saturday Digi series, and a ton of stamps just begging to be colored.

Let me start out by saying that I kind of have mixed feelings about this card. There are parts of it that I love to bits (stamp + some of the coloring, window die idea), but other parts I'm not so sure about. But it's important to share both hits and misses - and who knows, maybe you all will feel inspired, anyway.

I started by printing out the stamp onto some Copic X-Press it blending cardstock. I colored it in with my Copics - which took a few hours, I admit. There were a lot of gorgeous details I wanted to pay attention to, and I enjoyed making the image colorful. I left the skin for last, and encountered my first issue. I decided to try a new color combo that I've seen someone use, but it just did not work for me. It took me ages to blend everything out, and even then there are some really messy bits. I'm not as happy as I normally am with the skin. But it's important to try new things and now I know that this particular color combo will not work for my skin tones.

After this was done, I started to carefully cut out the image. This is where the second difficulty arose. The image is not only complex, but it has a lot of tiny branches and leaves on the head piece. As you can tell, I tried to cut them out initially, but it was slow and difficult. I ended up accidentally cutting out a bunch of the little branches and losing out on the detail. So, I left a little white in the head dress area, and drew in some swirls. I'm not super happy with it, but it's better than having mangled bits of wood.

After the painful cutting out, I got to work on the rest of the card. I wanted to have a decorative window, but I didn't have a die for that. So, I got creative! I grabbed a piece of 4 by 5 1/4" white cardstock and used the Spellbinders Labels 28 die (second largest) to partially cut the window in the middle. This is done by putting the die through the Bigshot only part of the way. I cut the bottom out with my paper trimmer.

For the background, I decided to use a scrap of paper from Bo Bunny's Lemonade Stand 6x6. I cut it to be slightly larger than the window. I created a card base by cutting and scoring a piece of kraft cardstock in half, for a standard A2 card. Using the window as a guide, I positioned the patterned paper and adhered it to the card with my standard dot adhesive.

I used foam tape on the window panel, and adhered it to the card. I then adhered the goddess, using dot adhesive where she touched the panel and foam tape where she touched the patterned paper. So it didn't look like she was floating, I added a bit of gray shadow under her feet.

And this is where my last issue came in. I wanted to add some decorations, but nothing I tried looked right. It was either too overbearing (paper flowers) and obstructing the window border, or it took too much attention away from the central image (enamel dots, sequins). I don't have any leaf dies, so I couldn't add leaves either, and none of my stickers or die-cut packs worked.

So, in the end, I left it as is - maybe a bit too plain, and with mixed feelings.

Supplies:
Some Odd Girl Forest Goddess digital stamp
Neenah Solar White 110#lbs cardstock
Neenah Desert Storm Environmental cardstock 100#lbs
Bo Bunny Lemonade Stand 6x6
Spellbinders Labels 28 dies
Copics: E33, E37, E29, E17, B00, B02, B18, V12, V06, V17, YG23, YG17, R08, R46, R89, BV29, Y11, Y15, YR14, (Skin: E21, E23, E25, E27, R32, R35, 0), W2, E57, E59, E33, B00
3M Scotch Double-sided Foam Tape
Tombow Dot Adhesive (pink)