Waltzingmouse Blog Waltz - St Patricks Day

Welcome to the Waltzingmouse Blog Waltz!

Well here is my take on St Patricks day! I must admit when I first saw the theme I was like "oh no!". The only things I could think of were green leprechauns, shamrocks, rainbows and pots of gold. (very stereotyped but hey!) I had no inspiration whatsoever, but I asked for help over on the waltzingmouse forum, and someone suggested celtic. Well that was all I needed! I've loved celtic knotwork for many years, and was bought a celtic design book for my 15th birthday (almost 15 years since!). It gives instructions on how to create your own hand drawn celtic knots. So I dug it out and found a few designs to do. Heres a link to the book if you're interested Celtic Knotwork designs

The book gives really detailed instructions, so its pretty easy, but very satisfying!

The first thing I did was do a grid on some watercolour paper, and it was made much easier using my rolling ruler, as it has little holes you can use to do the dots!

The next thing to do was copy the pattern and add the drawing in pencil.

Sorry if thats very faint, but its in B pencil! I then went around the outline with a fineline marker and erased the pencil marks.
Heres a picture with the 4 designs I'd chosen to try.

I'll be using the others in weeks to come, so keep an eye out for more celtic stuff!

I decided to paint the inside of the design with distress inks, as I wanted a more subtle green, and its easy to use with water.

I started by using very strong colour around the edge, then watered it down and added a middle layer, and finally I used just water to blend the whole design.

Now the design was the easy bit, I then had to decide how to make the card, so I cut the design using my nestabilities circles, and layered it onto some suede paper in a sagey colour that matched really well.
I used a plastic circle mask and put the white 5" square cardstock through my cuttlebug with my No More Shims embossing mat. This gave a great pattern which complimented the design. I wanted to incorporate some gold into the card (well gold and green are very Irish!) so I used my gold ink pad and brushed it over the embossing. I also used a sponge to add the gold ink to the edge of the card and around the design.

I finally used the walzingmouse free irish designs from last year, and printed off on my computer the "Emerald blessings" sentiment and then cut it down to say just "blessings". (I don't have any irish friends, or anyone to make a St Pats card for really!). I layered it on the sage suede again and stuck it onto the cardstock using some 3D foam pads!

I hope you like my take on Irish!