Pan Pastel Week 5 - Animals

Hello Everyone,

Hope you are having a nice relaxing sunday? Its a busy one here... we have a Greyhound walk with the pack (a lurcher, a greyhound and 2 whippets) this morning and this afternoon Bella and I are off to talk about our experience at a local Homebirth meeting.

This week the theme over at the Pan Pastel Challenge is Animals - and tell you it feels like a zoo here sometimes with 3 kids and 4 dogs!! 

I decided to do a Canvas based on an Idea I saw on the talented Helen Anderson's facebook page (I couldnt find your blog Helen! please message me so I can add it and credit you for my inspiration!!) ... she has been making new baby canvasses for a while so I contacted her and asked if she minded if I used hers as inspiration and she said i could so here we are hehe

I started by gessoing the canvas then adding a mix of different coloured pastels direct to the canvas to make the sea and the sky. I also added a bright red around the edge of the canvas (cos i liked how it looked on my star one!)

I then covered that in the Maimeri matt medium to seal it. I went over then with a couple of masks to create a bit of texture.. again using a darker shade of pastel, and a little white in the sky. I also made a sun in the corner with bright yellow pastel

I printed my Noahs Ark Digi from Whimsy stamps onto the most amazing super smooth card (you wait till this is available it will fly out its that fab!!) and coloured it with Graph-it markers. They are a great new alcolhol marker which are due to be launched next month and I love them... but I will be telling you more about that soon!!

I used a range of stamps to create texture in the background - they were just varous text etc stamped in smokey grey versafine.. I wasnt bothered if they didnt stamp properly as it was just for texture. I also used a black ink pad and a dylusions border stamp to stamp around the edge, and a blue ink across the horizon line.  Whilst the stamps were out I stamped the name onto some card.

I attached the digi and the name with more matt medium. Then using the maimeri gesso i used bottle caps, masks, a scraper (yep the boots card again!) and my fingers to add a bit more texture.

Finally when I was happy with all that I covered the top part with Matt medium. I used gloss medium on a brush over the ark and I used a texture sponge to dab the gloss gel onto the sea section to give the impression of water. I am really happy with the effect that gave!

Finally a bit of doodling with my black graph-it Marker and I was done :D


The Mediums, texture sponge, Canvas and pan pastels are available from Your Creativity Store
The Graph-it Markers and super smooth card will be exclusively available soon so stay tuned!!
The masks and stamps available from Crafty Boots
Noahs Art Digi stamp available from Whimsy Stamps



I hope you like my design and don't forget to head on over to the challenge blog to see what the rest of the design team have been up to and join in !!