Watercolor Weekend - Elf Magic

The elves are running amok amidst the presents under the tree...  It's my latest offering for Art Impressions' Watercolor Weekend:

 There was a lot of pre-planning on scrap paper for this one!  I wanted to use all four elves from the 5125 - WC Elves Set, so I played around with positioning based on their poses and the angle of how their heads were tilted, until I got something that I could work with.  I also wanted them to be in and around the presents, so had to figure out the shape of the parcels, while still leaving room for the branch to hang down.  I positioned all four elves on the same block to ensure they were placed correctly, and coloured them first in Tombow #565 Deep Blue, and then #969 Chocolate - stamped them off on scrap paper and then onto my Ranger Watercolor Paper.  With a pencil and ruler, I drew in the presents, and lightly drew a line where I wanted the branch to be.

 The elves are painted with #837 Wine Red, #177 Dark Jade and #969 for their shoes.  A touch of #850 Flesh for their skin tone, and #026 Yellow Gold and #969 Chocolate for their hair.  The presents are painted with #026, #565, #969 and #N65 Cool Grey.  I layered the colour to get the darker shades on some sides of the boxes, and went in with the fine points of the markers to draw the crisp edges of the boxes in.  I dove into my Christmas wrap to dig out a bow, and loosely sketched it in on the large present, painting it in with #565 Deep Blue.  With the pine bough from 4867 - WC Foliage Set 2 New, and my #249 Hunter Green marker, I repeatedly stamped it to create the tree branch.  After dabbing it lightly with my damp #1 paintbrush, I went back in with the fine point to draw in a few needles, and darken a few areas.  I picked up #565 from my palette, and painted a faint blue wash in the background, and also used it to add shadows in and around the elves & presents. Since this paper has a fair bit of texture, some of the definition of the elves had been lost in the stamping, so I used my TT41 - TwinTone Marker - 41 Chocolate to redraw the outline of the elves.

 The image is die cut with one of the 5063 - Rectangle A2 Double Stitched Dies.  I wanted a softer edge to my scene, so I used blending brushes with two shades of Distress Oxide Inks (Evergreen Bough & Blueprint Sketch) to shade the outside of my rectangle giving it a bit of a soft focused look.  I matted it with some dark blue cardstock and adhered it with pop dots onto my plaid card base, then wrapped it with an organdy bow.  A few sparkles liven it up a little!

The Elves Set isn't a Christmas stamp set, but they work perfectly when you colour them up right!  Dive into your supplies and see if you can use something non-Christmassy for a holiday card.  Be sure to check out the Art Impressions blog on Saturday to see what Dot & Tricia have to share.

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