Without snow
In VT, you would expect that this would be a Spring or Fall scene since the trees don’t have any leaves and there is no snow on the ground. But this is what it looks like here this winter. We have had a dearth of snowfall this year and we can actually see green grass on our lawns. It is just plain crazy!!!
A couple of gals in my stamp club requested this technique for our January meeting. I had never tried it before, but I agreed to give it a whirl. I’ll admit that I had a little trepidation because it looks like it could be challenging to line up the images to get a good reflection look. Once I dug in I found that it is actually very easy. The hardest part for me was adding the color to the image after I had my stamping done. I consulted with my son (our resident artist) to figure out where the ink should be darker vs. lighter to get a “dusk” appearance for the scene. I used a punched circle mask to create the moon image when I was adding the color and I tried to have that area of the pond be lighter as well to make it look like the moonlight was reflected, too. In all, I’m happy with my first attempt at this technique.
I have to say that the Lovely As a Tree stamp set is the one that I’ve seen used the most for this technique; especially the cluster of trees image that I used. This technique would be great with many nature stamps where you want to show a reflection in a simulated lake or puddle. I’ve seen the bird from Nature Walk reflected in a scene, which was quite neat. I also have a vision in my head of doing a reflection of Tote-ally Tess looking at her reflection in a mirror. I don’t have that stamp set, so I can’t try it out (at least not yet).
The materials used for this project are:
- Stamps: Lovely As a Tree, Delightful Dozen,
- Cardstock: Pear Pizzazz, Early Espresso, Whisper White, Garden Green
- Ink: Early Espresso, Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green, Baja Breeze, Not Quite Navy
- Accessories: Pear Pizzazz 1/2″ Stitched-Poly ribbon, 1″ Circle punch, 1 1/4″ Circle punch, 1 3/8″ Circle punch, sponge daubers, window sheet
Here is how to do the Reflection technique:
- Stamp the image to be “reflected” on light cardstock with Classic ink.
- Stamp the same image on a window sheet or transparency with the same ink.
- Invert the window sheet and line up the images to be a mirror reflection.
- Rub over the window sheet to transfer the ink to the cardstock; you can use a brayer for more even ink transfer.
- Apply shading and color to the images if desired.
