Girl and Dog

On the Stampotique Challenge this week is the theme of "something new" and another of the challenges has the theme "Love is in the Air".  So with this in mind, this is what I came up with :

The "something new" is actually the background - let me explain.

I didn't get any crafty goodies for Christmas (although I did get a subscription to "Craft Stamper" magazine - woohoo!) but I was looking at pan pastels and gelatos when I was visiting my BFF's local scrapbooking store.  The pastels were quite expensive in comparison to the gelatos (although you got a lot more colours included in the pastels) so I decided I'd buy one set of gelatos which has 4 metallic colours and try them out.  They say they are super easy, but I struggled with blending them, so looked at their website and then proceeded to watch some 'how to' videos.  OK, obviously this technique is one where the more you practice, the better the result will be.

So when I was at our local shops a couple of days back, I was looking at art supplies and came across 'soft pastels' and was able to try them out.  These are very chalky and blended very easily, but I wasn't going to buy them from this shop as it tends to be a tad expensive.  Yesterday I was at a different shopping centre (I was supposed to be doing grocery shopping, hee hee) where there is a discount shop that also sells art supplies, and they had a pack of 'soft pastels' in 36 colours for $15.00 (bargain) !!!   So ..... the blended background colours are these 'soft pastels' in three shades of green and one yellow - easy peasy!

 I stamped "Every Girl and her Dog" directly onto the background and then again on ivory cardstock.  The dress and the dog are both coloured using these soft pastels before cutting out and gluing directly on top of the first image.

The foliage is from SU "Pocket Silhouettes" with the clouds and words from SU "Up Up & Away".  To allow definition, the edges are coloured with 'seedless preserves' Distress Ink and 'crushed grape' Dylusion Ink was spattered randomly across the tag.  It's finished with a purple ribbon.

I'm entering this tag in the following challenges:
     Stampotique Designers Challenge
     Artistic Stamper Challenge

My apologies if I bored you to death with my rabbiting on about all these products, but I wanted to explain how the background came into being.  If anyone out there in blogland can give me any tips on using and blending gelatos I will be very grateful.  In the meantime I'll keep practising before I give up on them.

Happy crafting!