OHC 72- Black

Today's card is another one in my One Hundred Cards challenge (read about it here). When I pulled out the theme "black", I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. My first instinct was to make some kind of starry sky, but I'd already done that with a different OHC card and I didn't want to repeat myself. So, I decided to go in an different direction and explore under the sea.

I started by preparing my top-folding A2 card base (4¼x5½") out of black cardstock. I made sure to line the inside with some white cardstock so it was simpler to write in. I then die-cut a stitched rectangle out of black cardstock. It looked a bit too plain and too severe for the fun card I had in mind, so I flicked some pearlescent white and turquoise paint thinned with a bit of water over it. This created a spotty effect that softened up the panel. The color was very bright when I was applying it, but it dried to a more subtle tone -- something to keep in mind when deciding how much color to add.

I'm sure most of you have already seen the super adorable Lawn Fawn set So Jelly. This cute set is both mega adorable and very inexpensive, so it's a great set to add to your stamp collection. I stamped 3 jellyfish and decided to do two-tone coloring on them with my Copics. I blended orange and pink, blue and purple and yellow and blue-green. This gave the jellyfish a fun rainbow-like look. When doing this kind of blending, you want to choose shades that are relatively close together in brightness, and just go back and forth with the two colors until they look blended. After they were colored, I added some details with a white gel pen and die-cut them with the So Jelly dies.

Since I really loved how the rainbow looked against the black, I die-cut a scalloped rectangle out of rainbow-striped paper. This paper is from a Lawn Fawn collection that's been retired (Hello Sunshine Petite 6x6), but you can find a similar stripe in the new Beachside paper set.

I adhered all of my elements together and added them to the card front. I wanted to add a sentiment, and I thought "thanks" was the perfect one. I die-cut the sentiment out of some gray striped paper (Hippo Line Dance) and adhered it to the card.

As a last touch, I scattered a few sparkly clear sequins around the page.

Thanks for reading!
~Elle~