Something To Crow About (...see rooster below)

Hello, and happy Friday!! My name is Lorie Souther, and I am thrilled to be able to share a card with you today as one of the new design team members for The Stamping Cottage. This is indeed great news for me to crow about!! I am looking very forward to working with the rest of this talented design team, sharing creative inspiration, and making new friends.

For my card today, I used some wonderful 4th of July themed Cottage Cutz dies from The Scrapping Cottage. American Rooster, Firecracker, Patriot Bunting, and Stars Edger dies all went into this fun and festive creation. Since my stamping and scrapping experience started with my love for painting and coloring images, I decided the best way for me to work with what I know was to start with a blank canvas, if you will. I cut each of these (except the stars edger) with regular white card stock, assembled the pieces using Zip Dry paper glue, and then colored each die cut with my Copic sketch markers. For me, this was the easiest way to achieve the color, highlighting and shading that brings everything to life. The white highlights were added using a white gel pen. I did quite a bit of distressing on the edges of the oval background using Tim Holtz distressing ink in the Tea Dye color. My sentiment for this card is simply "Sparkle", and I added a little bit of sparkle to the stars on the firecrackers, although it doesn't show up so well in the photo.

Here's a little closer look at some of the details. Notice that I used the stars from the Stars Edger and randomly glued those around the image. I like to find ways to use as many of my scraps as I can, and in this case, it worked out just dandy.

The technique I used to color the rooster is one I call the "stippling technique". I guess that term comes from my tole painting days, and while I'm not sure that's the official term for it using markers, it works for me. I just pounce the color into the desired areas with my marker layering the color from lightest to darkest.

I'm so happy you could stop by today. Please feel free to visit me anytime at my blog The ThINKin' Spot . Have a wonderful day, and a safe and Happy 4th of July! See ya soon!