Holiday Doodles Meditation

There are so many design possibilities with the new Holiday Doodles Stamp from Technique Junkies ... and for this week's card, I decided to use my Spectrum Noir markers to color the entire image.

Remember, you can use my code TJ10Stephanie for 10% off the entire store.

I took a little time over a week to finish the project.  After work each night, I spent a little meditative time coloring.  I usually do most of my creating on the weekends, so it was nice to relax with some creativity each night.

My original intention was to just color a portion of the image, but once I got started, I just couldn't stop until it was all filled with color.

I stamped my image in Amalgam Ink on Watercolor Paper and then started coloring with three shades of green.

I picked out areas I knew would be green like the Christmas trees and then picked other areas scattered around the stamp to add more green (I realized later I missed those two holly leaves at the bottom right, so I went back and added more green as I finished).

Next I added three shades of pink-ish red markers.  I started with the Candy Canes and then used the same process for positioning the color across the image.

Now I had to start thinking about how many more colors I wanted to incorporate and what those colors would be (I thought about stopping here, but it seemed a bit too naked).  I looked back through color combinations and chose a golden yellow next.

I loved that there was more distinct contrast between these shades, which added more dimension to the design.

Next I added shades of purple.  I loved how regal & rich the colors of the palette were shaping up to be, and how all the different the pieces of the image were coming to life.

I decided to stick with four colors and went back and filled in the remainder of the image with the prior shades until everything was colored except the stripes on the candy cane.

This entire process brought back fond memories of sitting at my Grandma's dining room table and coloring with her.  She would always sit down with us, pick a page out of the coloring book, and color with us.  I think she found it as therapeutic as I do today.

I cut my image into thirds and mounted it on a black card base.  

I finished with the gorgeous new A Very Merry Christmas Sentiment stamped in Amalgam Ink on a scrap of the Water Color Paper (to match the white of the one candy cane that is peeking out from under the sentiment).

If you like meditative coloring, Holiday Doodles is certainly a stamp you'll want to add to your collection.