Color Layering, Part 3

It's no secret that I'm a fan of white space and don't care too much if my focal point floats around in that white space. I'm a amateur, not a professional designer, and violating those rules about grounding doesn't keep me up at night.

But when I saw the top left card on this pin, I wanted to experiment with speckles as a way of grounding my fabulous aqua seahorse. Isn't he just darling?

The inspiration card uses more than just speckles, of course, to ground its seahorse-y scene, but I rather like how the speckles look all by themselves. My use of three elements, with the shell and starfish set slightly apart from the seahorse, creates a visual triangle (emphasized by the rhinestones) which allows the small sentiment to stand out a bit more.

The speckles were made using StampinUp's old, old, old Itty Bitty Backgrounds. To get the distribution right, I stamped a few, laid the elements down to see how it looked, picked them back up, stamped some more...and repeated until it looked good.

And there you have it. Another three-step color-layered image that makes me happy. One more seahorse card is coming your way, and then we shall move on to other stuff. Thanks for listening to my struggles with multi-step stamping. It seems that Hero Arts is scaling back on the number of layers in its newer releases, which makes me happy. My limit for future purchases is definitely three layers, with two preferred.

Let's keep things relatively simple, shall we?

As for the job search, Dr. Nancy West, one of my graduate school professors, graciously talked with me today, offering up encouragement and some wonderful advice for Wednesday's interview and for my return to teaching. She definitely made me feel more confident and more centered. I'll keep you posted!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Color Layering Seahorse, sentiment; StampinUp Itty Bitty Backgrounds
ink: Hero Arts soft pool, soft vanilla; Archival black, aquamarine, paradise teal, saffron
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: coordinating dies, rhinestones, dimensionals