Using Shadows to Add Color

Hi everyone!  It's the first Tuesday of the month and time for a new color challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches blog.  My card today was super quick to make so I thought I'd share some of my "process" in creating cards.

The colors for this week are:

As you can see, there is not much coloring on this card!  By far I spent most of my time laying out where the clouds and sentiment would go.  I stamp on grid paper and often use this for my ideas.  I keep on my desk an A2 card template that I use to trace the outline of the card front.  Even though it's grid paper I find this goes faster.

So I traced the card, stamped my images and laid out the clouds, noting which were "unders" and "overs". By the time I finished I had changed the layout a little.

My coloring went very fast.  I used my Stampin' Up! watercolor pencils since I had the three colors used in the challenge.  I intended to use a blender pen to add shading but decided that on an image this small I'd just shade using the pencils.

Normally, I would add some very light blue to the clouds or background to add depth and contrast.  But this is a color challenge and I couldn't!  So I decided to use positive and negative space to do the work of the color I couldn't use.  I die cut two clouds from the panel and then stamped my cake, sentiment and puff.  I cut a few extra clouds from white cardstock.  Foam tape pops the main panel off the card base and I used foam dots under the dragon and two clouds.  One cloud is glued directly to the card but overlaps a negative space cloud.  All this gives the white clouds "color" by the use of shadow.  

Stamps: Mama Elephant Dragon Wishes, Stampin' Up! Party with Cake
Dies: Mama Elephant Dragon Wishes, MFT Puffy Clouds
Washi Tape and Watercolor Pencils: Stampin' Up!

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