Penny Black Saturday Challenge Week 156 - One For The Boys

This is my entry for the Penny Black Saturday Challenge this week and I only just got it finished in time to meet the deadline.  It's for my friend's son who graduates on Thursday.  A very special day for the family and one which his Dad is travelling from Kazakhstan to attend.

This is an easel card and the image I've used is from the Margaret Sherry collection, 2071J - A Scholar!!, and is coloured with Promarkers.  I had terrible problems trying to colour this simple image.  After having been at two of Debbi's Promarker classes I decided to try and use the grey shading techniques she'd taught us on the mortar board but kept failing and I ended up doing a block colour of black with a grey edge instead. The picture below shows my many attempts. More practice and a few more shades of grey pens are needed so that I'm not going straight from black to grey 4.  I was quite happy with the hedgie though and have worked out which of my colours to combine for the skin tones.  That's because the one thing I did successfully learn from Debbi is not to be scared of using a bold colour and then tone it down by going over with another colour.  Also in the picture you'll see the images which Debbi helped us to colour.  The teddy is a Kanban image and was coloured using shades of grey.  The girl is a stamp from Funky Kits and is called Pillow Talk from the Simply Sassy range. On this image we practised colouring hair and skin.

The base card is a black 14.85 square card folded to make an easel card.

Papers used

Black and red card

Small piece of grey card for the end of the diploma die cut

White card for stamping

Mirri card from Create and Craft

Congratulations backing paper created in a word programme

Diploma backing paper created with a Hobby Art stamp

Tools used

Penny Black stamp - 2071J  A Scholar!!

PSX stamp - F-2593 Congratulations Graduate

Hobby Art stamp - LT916B  Diploma

Memento Tuxedo Black ink

Spellbinders Nestabilities - Petite Ovals Large

Spellbinders Nestabilities - Petite Scalloped Circles Large

Spellbinders Nestabilities - Classic Circles Large

Spellbinders Nestabilities - Classic Ovals Large

Spellbinders Nestabilities - Petite Scalloped Classic Ovals Large

Quickutz Double Die - KS-0159  Graduation Cap

Quickutz Single Die - RS-0158 Diploma

Woodware 1" circle punch

Embellishmaents used

Assorted silver star peel-offs

Crystal dot peel-offs 

Stampin' up  Real Red grosgrain ribbon

Narrow red ribbon for small bow

Top tip for this card would be to sponge silver metallic ink along the edge of the top of the cap to give the die cut some dimension.

Thanks for reading

Liz x