Tales Of The Riverbank

Hello folks, hoping you're all having a lovely weekend and managing to fit in some crafting like me.

Today sees the start of a new challenge over at Fashionable Stamping Challenges and I had a bit of a dilemma with this one as I couldn't decide which of my many stamps on this theme to use! The challenge is Birds which is why I had the struggle but I finally decided on a riverside theme as I wanted to ink up my gorgeous Artemio kingfisher stamp. I made a little piece of artwork that will probably end up on the wall although I haven't yet added the hanging element. Hope you like it.

I made my background paper first with a square of thick watercolour paper which I sprayed with water and then swiped on Distress Stains in Crushed Olive, Shabby Shutters, Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed and Dried Marigold. I dried this off and then stamped on the large fern leaf sprig from the Hero Arts Fern stamp and die set with VersaFine Spanish Moss. I stamped some on scrap paper first for a faded effect.
I cut a slightly larger square of recycled greyboard and inked round the edges with Distress Embossing Ink then heat embossed with Fran-tage Aged Green Embossing Enamel. I distressed the edges of my background paper with an emery board and added this to the greyboard panel.
I stamped the kingfisher on thick smooth cartridge paper with Memories black ink and then coloured him with Tombow markers and pastel pencils. I cut him out to leave a narrow off white border.
I made the distressed panel by applying Tumbled Glass Distress ink to a rectangle of the cartridge paper direct from the pad and then stamped on the Kaisercraft Wood Panel stamp with Weathered Wood DI and embossed with the Cuttlebug distressed stripes folder and swiped the ink on the raised areas.
The embellishments were made by  stamping the fern with the moss ink and the dragonflies with VersaFine Deep Lagoon. I then coloured the 2 dragonflies with Tombow markers then cut them out with the die and sponged with VersaMark ink and heat embossed with sparkly powder. The fern was die cut and because of the large white areas left, I sponged on some Crushed Olive DI to make them blend in.
I assembled the panel as you see with a mix of double sided and foam tape.

The Design Team have a gorgeous array of very different creations on the catwalk so don't forget to pop over for a look. We also have our usual lovely sponsor, Marina of Cottage Crafts with a voucher to spend in the online shop for our randomly drawn winner.

Have a lovely Sunday.
Hugs,
Fliss xx

Some challenges for my recycled art panel:
Craft Us Crazy - Get To Cutting (die cutting in my case)
Sarah Hurley Challenges - Anything But A Card
Divas By Design - Winged Things
Stamping Sensations - Fur and Feather (think you can see I have feather tee hee!)