International Art and Soul Challenge 135

 The challenge for this fortnight was set by my team mate Jennie who wants projects with a theme of Summer. 

I'm not a fan of summer, it has to be said. But I am a fan of the coast, and listening to the water, although I generally avoid it when the weather's hot and sunny. But it's still what comes to mind when I think of summer, so this is what I came up with.

I started with the stamp of deck chairs which came with Creative Stamping magazine some time ago. I coloured the image with my Koh-i-Noor pencils, and lightly shaded the background with the same pencils - a very subtle effect to remove the whiteness and no more.

Then, I added more colour with Pan Pastels rubbed on using cotton wool make-up removal pads. At this point, I almost ruined the whole thing. I wanted to add some white to the water, and thought I'd use an oil pastel crayon, thinking it would mix well with the Pan Pastel. Well, it didn't. The white oil pastel was invisible against the blue, until I put some more Pan Pastel on top, and then it showed darker than the surrounding area. But, fortunately with Pan Pastels, it's possible to erase, and that's what I did, carrying on and removing colour to get the white sea foam effect. I used the eraser again to just go around the stamped image to sharpen it where it had been softened by the Pan Pastel. I added a little more white using a white gel pen, and finally the sentiment which is from the same set as the deck chairs, and I stamped it in Versafine Clair in green.

A little matting, and that's it. I do hope you can join us this time!