Sun, Sea and...

...a wonderful selection of images to colour.

Ignacio sent me a fabulous collection of digi-stamp images to colour and one that immediately took my eye was from one of his new Nicecrane Design images sheets - "Playing Kids by N.Brisley".

How could anyone not fall in love with this cutie...

...no sooner had I printed the image, than I was merrily colouring it in...

 ...as usual, I started with the basic flesh tone but I so wanted to try colouring the sea...

 ...this was a first for me and I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. Dipping into the Spectrum Noir Blue Turquoise (BT) lighter shades, the Green Turquoise (GT) and a touch of the mid-range Jade Green (JG), I have to say that I was rather pleased at the way it came together.
I really do love to use 'ginger' hair colour...

 ...I thought it looked so alive and fun.
Then of course the puppy needed a bit of colour...

 ...what a sweet paddling companion.
I have to say that once the image was coloured, I sort of ground to a halt as I didn't want to cut the image out as a rectangle but I didn't have any dies of a suitable size. I do not own any of the larger sets of dies because I have a Big Shot cutting machine and the maximum width that it will take is just about 6". A trip over to Barleylands and a chat to Andy in Pinnacle Crafts resulted in the discovery that some of the larger oval dies will go through my machine...

...so oval it was - plain for the image and scalloped for the matt...

 ...I decided on an aqua coloured matt so that it would stand out from the sandy colour of the kraft CS, jute and hessian.
DoCrafts have some "Scrabble" letters in their Papermania "Bare" range...

...there are a good number of tiles in the pack for the price but I did find the variety of letters a little limited.
The jute tape is also from the Bare range and the open weave hessian was from my stash...

 ...the wooden shells were the only seaside type embellishments that I could find but I think they work well.
I love this image as it gives the impression of carefree Summer days...

...certainly something that we all need to look forward to.

If you would like to have a go at colouring this cutie...

...or other similar images. Just pop over to the Nicecrane site and you can find the design sheet here.

This has been a very wet dull Winter and although we have had a couple of warm weekends which seemed to herald the coming of Spring, we now seem to be back in the cold, wet & windy weather. If you would like something to brighten your mood, do hop over to the Nicecrane blog to see what the Design team have been up to and go and have a browse through all the super designs that are available over on the Nicecrane site...............................................