Flower Pots Lucy and Ray Tutorial

This is my first tutorial for CC Designs :)

I made this card using the adorable Flower Pots Lucy.  I coloured her with copics and then decided to make a ray background in colours to match.  So I thought I would show you how I made the background.

I used a piece of white card 10x10cm, sponges,  grid paper, large post it notes and two distress ink pads : Broken China and Dusty Concord.

I like to use grid paper because it makes this process quick and easy, but you can of course measure with a ruler instead or just "eye-ball it" if you're game :) My grid paper is in centimetres but it is easy to adjust it to a quarter or half inch grid.  I just place the white card down on the grid paper and I put the post it note on the half way mark at the bottom (5cm) and up 2cm on the side.

I then sponged on some Broken China Distress Ink. I always dab off some on the grid paper before starting each segment and I always start at the bottom of the paper.  I use a swirling kind of motion starting on the post-it and then off and up towards the next segment (fading out).  Then, with a different sponge, I used Dusty Concord Distress Ink and after dabbing off again I sponge along the line of the post-it only, with a back and forth motion.

I then move my post-it note around the card repeating the sponging in the same way. Always having the post-it on the half way mark at the bottom. 
For this card I went up 2cm, 3cm, 4cm, then up 1cm and across the top 3cm, across 4cm and then mirrored that on the way back down the other side.  I like to change the post-it note when I get half way around, otherwise the sponging gets progressively darker.  When you've finished, your first ray on the left side will still be white and I just went back and sponged more of the blue there and also sponged it along the edge of all sides of the card. The middle looks "yucky" but you always cover that bit up with your main image or grass or something.

This is a close up of the card when I was done, hopefully you can see the pretty combination of colours on the rays better. For the grass I simply tore a piece of green card and sponged the top with green ink. Then I stamped the get well sentiment from the new Happy Day set on to it.

This is another set of rays using the same colours but using different measurements.  You can create lots of different looks with the same basic technique.

Copics used :

E 000, 00, 50, 53, 55

YG 0000, 01, 03, 95

BV 0000, 00

R 30

C 1

B 93, 95, 97

BG 0000, 01

I hope I've inspired you to give this background a try :)

Kathy