Oh Starry Night!

Howdy Power Poppy fans!  Join me today as I show you how to create a simple and relatively easy NIGHT SKY using Copic Markers.

The supplies you'll need for this technique include:

• our glorious Power Poppy stamps; "Sunny Harvest" used here.
• sturdy, white cardstock
• vellum paper
• black dye ink; Memento used here
• Versamark ink
• gold embossing powder
• white acrylic paint or white pen
• Copic Markers
• Copic Air Brush system

First off, let me just show what we're going to work on today.  This is the card I featured on my blog during the latest (...and most fabulous!) Power Poppy Blog Hop.  If you missed that, come and check it out here.

Let begin making our night sky!

Step 1:
Stamp your Chinese Lantern plant image from the stamp set, "Sunny Harvest", using dye based ink onto sturdy white cardstock.  Here I chose to stamp my image right in my square die cut to mask off the edges.

Step 2:
Stamp the same image again onto the stick part of a Post-It-Note and fussy cut out all the Chinese Lanterns from the image.  Apply them to your tiny lanterns as seen above.  My Post-It-Notes are yellow so you can see them.

Step 3:
Beginning with Copic Marker B23, air brush the entire back ground of the image.  I was a little heavier with my colour application in the corners of my square.

This technique can also be duplicated using inks and sponging them in a circular motion to your scene.

Step 4:
Apply Copic B24 to the outer edges of your image using the air brush system.

Step 5:
Take the next darkest Copic, B28, and apply it to just the corners of the scene.

Step 6:
Add a slight hint of purple to your sky using the air brush and Copic BV11.

Step 7:
With your masks still remaining on the little lanterns, apply some Copic FY1, a fluorescent yellow, just around the lanterns.  This will make it look like they are glowing with light.

 

Step 8:
Leaving the masks in place, take some slightly watered down white paint and an old tooth brush and splatter some paint across the entire scene.  You can now remove your die.

If you don't have any white acrylic paint, try using a white pen and adding a whole bunch of small and large dots to your scene to mimic the stars in the sky.

Step 9:
Using your Copic YR65 marker, create some globes within the lantern shapes.  If you look at a Chinese Lantern plant, they have these glossy, bold orange berries inside of them.

Next take your Copic YR68, the darker orange colour, and apply it right over top of the lighter orange orbs but leave a small area uncoloured as shown below so they appear shiny.

Step 10:
Stamp the same image again using Versamark ink onto vellum paper.  Add gold embossing powder and heat set it using a heat tool. Fussy cut out all of the lanterns out of the vellum paper.  The vellum's going to soften the brightness of the berries.

Step 11:
Add some Copic FY1 to all the lanterns to make them more of a yellow hue, around the berries.

Apply the vellum to your lanterns.  For this I took my Sakura Quickie Glue Pen and very carefully applied a tiny bit of glue to just the outer veins of each lantern and pressed the vellum pieces into the glue.  It worked like a dream and it didn't seap from the seams.

Quick tip:  NEVER use your Copics to colour an embossed image!!!  The embossing powder will stain and clog the tips of your markers and they won't work properly afterwards.  If you do this, you may have to replace all the nibs of your markers that you used - not fun!

And here's your end result....

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial today.  I hope you give a nighttime sky a chance on one of your card creations soon!

Happy stamping and colouring!
Allison Cope.