The other day my hubby called me to the window as there was a large bird in our garden that he didn’t recognise.  Well very much true to form, the minute I got to the window the said bird flew off, but I did manage to get a bit of a look and suspect it was a heron.

We see all kinds of wildlife around our little patch of Nova Scotia and the views from our home often inspire me to create projects like this simple picture.

I started with a piece of card in my new favourite background colour, Soft Sea Foam and I used some Stampin’ Sponge to add a light layer of Blueberry Bushel ink over the whole piece.

The sea image comes from the Lilypad Lake Stamp Set but sadly it wasn’t quite long enough to reach right across my 6″ wide piece of card.  So I inked it up with Blueberry Bushel ink, stamped it off onto some scrap paper and then stamped it on the right side of the card with the left edge of the stamp roughly where I thought my heron would end up.  Then I reinked the stamp, stamped off, and stamped the left hand side of the water getting the join in the two images as close as I could.  With another stamped-off sea image stamped in the centre of the card below the first two I was then ready to start on the land.

I found some scrap paper and tore a rough edge to act as a mask, but first I had to protect the stamped water with a Post-It® Note.  With the torn scrap paper creating a sort of triangle area on the right-hand side above the water I used some Stampin’ Sponge to add some Call Me Clover ink.  I moved the paper mask slightly and then added some Mossy Meadow ink to create a lower darker section of hills in front of the first.  More hills were sponged along the bottom edge of the card using Mossy Meadow ink and the torn edge of the paper as a mask.

With the background done I turned my attention to the smaller details; the heron and the sailboat.  Both these images come from the Lilypad Lake Stamp Set and I stamped the heron using Smoky Slate ink, and then the boats image (there’s actually three in the image) with Blueberry Bushel ink, both onto Whisper White Card.  Using a Blender Pen I coloured in the sailboat with ink picked up from inside the lid of a Blueberry Bushel and Grapefruit Grove ink pad.  The heron simply had some shading added using Smoky Slate ink.

I finished my stamping with the two halves of the sentiment from the Lilypad Lake Stamp Set stamped onto Whisper White Card with Blueberry Bushel ink.

Nearly there, I used my Big Shot and Magnetic Platform to cut out the sentiment, the boats and the heron using dies from the coordinating Lakeside Framelits.  My first priority was to hide the join in the water image and so, after putting Multipurpose Liquid Glue (Tombow) onto the back of the heron, I fixed him into place with one leg directly over the join.  I added one of the sailboats and the two sentiments and then slid the scene into the frame.

Although the 4″ x 6″ frame I chose to use has very little in the way of an edge I did think that my scene needed more scene and less metal frame at the bottom.  To fix this I took a strip of Call Me Clover Card and tore it roughly along its length, and did the same with a piece of Mossy Meadow Card.  Then using a piece of Stampin’ Sponge I added some Call Me Clover and Mossy Meadow ink to the torn edges of the card and also tapped some ink onto the surface.  I could then use Tear & Tape Adhesive to attach strips along the bottom of the frame, and finish with one final strip of ‘ground’ attached using Foam Adhesive Tape.  Perfect.

I really like the scene I created and the dimension I was able to achieve both inside and outside the frame, and it really wasn’t that difficult.  What do you think?