High contrast makes a bold statement and I love to throw in a bit of neon with it as well and I thought Stencil TCW716 Four Feathers and TCW Black Gesso together would make a perfect statement card to send my friend for her birthday! Below is a step by step on how I created it!

Finished card all ready to go check out my tutorial below to see my process!

Supplies:
Stencil TCW716 Four Feathers
TCW Black Gesso
TCW White Gesso
TCW Heavy Body Acrylics
Various Pens, Pencils, and Markers (whatever you have on hand is fine variety makes this fun!)
FW Acrylic Ink in Fluorescent Pink
White Gel Pen
White Paint Pen

My Pen cup from my studio table pushes me to be spontaneous

To start my card I decided to pull random pens, pencils and markers out of the pen cup on my studio table. Sometimes it is fun to just give yourself total freedom and this is a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone and maybe even find new color combination you like!

My Randomly Selected Supplies

You can see the supplies I pulled at random from my cup, I have a good mix of color and line weight options here. I also put a piece of Washi tape on the fold of my card so I can keep a clean edge. Now lets get creating!!

Scribble and Color

I started out by freely scribbling in each of my selected supplies. Since one of them was an acrylic paint pen once I applied it to the card I used a brush and some water on it  to blend a transparent layer of orange acrylic paint over most of my scribbles this brings a bit of harmony to the page. The orange and blue are complementary colors so this also creates interest.

A layer of white gesso

Next up is a layer of white gesso to tone things down. Since I knew I wanted to do a few layers of colors and paint I used the white gesso to push back my first layer and give me a new base to add my second layer to.

Neon Pink and Pencil Layer!

NEON was up next, I used the dropper in the ink bottle to place a few dots of Neon Pink FW Acrylic Ink and then blended it with my finger. I love the translucence of the neon inks and they stay put once they are dry which is pretty fabulous as well! The next 2 photos are all about building layers, color variation and interest.

Another layer of paint

Another layer of Gesso

You can see in the 2 photos above I added a layer of TCW9023 Blue Jellybean Heavy Body Paint that I hand mixed with a touch of white to create a softer blue. Then I added another layer of gesso over the blue to push it back into the piece a bit. Finally I added some marks using the blue marker from my pen cup. I chose to add the marker because I started the base layer with it and I thought it would tie everything together nicely if I used it on the top layer as well.

Stencil Time

Using a pencil I traced my feather from Stencil TCW716 the goal here is to get the basic shape to paint around you will go back in later with white and clean up the edges a bit for definition.

Black Gesso adds contrast

I used a small brush to add black gesso around my stenciled feather shape. I added a touch of water to the gesso and added it in a fluid organic manner over the colored composition I created.

White Contrast is up next

Once my layer of black gesso dried I used my stencil, white gel pen and white paint pen to add definition, scribbles, dots and a little writing to my card. This adds whimsy and a personal touch to the black layer.

Finished card all ready to go Check out my tutorial to see my process!

I love how this colorful birthday card turned out and I would love to see your handmade cards so be sure to share your thoughts and pictures on The Crafter’s Workshop Facebook page or by tagging The Crafter’s Workshop on Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest! Also tag me @Drawriot if you share your creations on Instagram!

Until next time, keep creating! ?

Tori Weyers
The Crafter’s Workshop Design Team Member

The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. This post also contains affiliate links. The opinions I share are solely my own.