Farm Fresh Cows Silhouette – Crafting By Designs

I’m back with the Crafting By Designs design team with a new challenge hosted by Megan. Look below for how to create this Cow Silhouette Card.

The theme is “Silhouettes” and runs from Feb 27th until March 5th, so please ADD YOUR CARD or projects with silhouettes to the challenge and you could win a $15 gift certificate from Sparkle and Sprinkle!

I created this friend / homesick card using the Farm Fresh Cows digital stamp set, and some beautiful inks for the sunrise in the background.

See below for the colors used and the steps I took to make this sunrise.

Steps to create a Cow Silhouette Card:

1. Cut a 5 1/4″ x 3″ piece of watercolor paper.
   • Sponge your lightest color (daffodil) on the bottom half of your watercolor paper.
   • Sponge your next darkest color (flamingo) along a stripe above the yellow, and continue with the darkest colors (cajun and red). Don’t worry if it looks funny now– water will smooth out your lines in the next step.
   • Starting at the bottom with your lightest color, use your aqua painter (or a wet brush) to smooth your colors together. Striping back and forth as you make your way up into the darker colors gives a smooth result.
2. Print your silhouette stamp at 5 1/4″ wide.
   • Using your craft knife, carefully cut out getting as close to the black as possible.
3. Adhere the silhouette over the sunrise, and finish your card with a black glitter ribbon and the sentiment.

Supplies:

Farm Fresh Cows digital stamp set  from Sparkle and Sprinkle
Goodies from Stampin’ Up:

Basic Black 8-1/2″ X 11″ Card Stock	Watercolor Paper	Aqua Painters
Daffodil Delight Classic Stampin’ Pad	Flirty Flamingo Classic Stampin’ Pad	Cajun Craze Classic Stampin’ Pad
Real Red Classic Stampin’ Pad	Sponge Daubers	Black 5/8″ (1.6 Cm) Glittered Organdy Ribbon
Basic Black 3/8″ Shimmer Ribbon

Craft Knife

I found cutting out the cow silhouette worked best, and maybe even made it stand out more, than sponging color directly over the silhouette. If I sponged too rough, I found the black printer ink of the cows would smudge into my yellows and oranges! Using watercolor paper gave me more ability to place the cows where I wanted against the “sunrise” and gave the card deeper colors.
Who is in YOUR herd?

I’m playing along with this card in the following challenges:

• Crafter’s Castle – Challenge #14
• Happy Little Stampers – Feb Watercolour Challenge
• Cutie Pie Challenge – #132 One For the Boys

Check out a few other silhouette cards! This encouragement card is done one foil paper and given an embossed cover, this one uses brusho/watercolor powders for a bright background to a silhouette, and this halloween card has a silhouette stamped over a sponged background. Previews are below:

Happy Crafting!