Wicked Little Frog

I am so excited to share today’s project. The frog on this card has got to be the best coloring I’ve ever done! Isn’t he cute? And a little bit wicked? He is from the Got A Bug set from The Rabbit Hole Designs. I’ve had him in my stash for a while, but I haven’t had a chance to play with him yet. Over on the Sweet Sentiment site, Jammie has a coloring class for him. It’s very inexpensive, so I decided to give it a shot.

I watched the video (it’s in real time, and not that long). She breaks it down into easy step-by-step instructions. I have many of the Copic markers she used, and was able to pull out similar colors to substitute for the ones I don’t have yet. Since I’ve been on a Halloween kick the last few weeks, I decided to turn the frog into a witch (kinda). Jammie’s tutorial is only for the frog, but I figured I could wing the rest. I stamped him and then partially masked him off. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to cut out the toes, just around his eyes.) Then I inked up the top of the witch hat from the Gourd-geous set, and stamped it on his head. Jammie recommended stamping with grey ink, but since I don’t have a Copic friendly one, I used my favorite black ink and stamped it off on scratch paper first. I actually did that several times to get a dark enough impression that my old eyes could see, but still not a harsh black line. 

I colored the frog according to Jammie’s instructions. With the hat on the frog’s head, I decided to fill in the space between his eyes to look like his forehead, so I used the same greens, darkening up the area since it would mostly be in the shadows. For the hat, I pulled out a selection of purple markers and used the shading lines drawn into the image as a guide. Hopefully, the recipient won’t notice that my light source changed. 😉 

At this point, I was really happy with him, but also scared that I was going to mess the whole thing up when I added my background. I didn’t want a busy scene that would take focus away from him, but I did want to add more color. I decided to lightly stamp in the stars from the Cocktail Witch set and create a magical atmosphere around him. I masked off the hat and allowed some of the stars to overlap, so they would look like they are floating behind him. (I made sure to leave the stars in my Misti, so I could stamp and emboss over them after the background was colored.)

I also thought the spider and sentiment in the same Cocktail Witch set would be great to incorporate as well. Since I needed black legs for the spider, I just stamped him in full black ink and colored him with a few warm grey markers. Using a Copic multiliner, I drew in a thin black line to connect the spider to the hat.

For the background itself, I drew an oval roughly around the stars and worked my way out from light to darker colors, creating a gradient. The outline of the stars helped me keep their centers bright white.

To add more texture to the background, I used the same markers to add dots all around. Then I smoothed them out a bit by adding a second wash of color on top again. The background was coming together nicely, but my frog was still floating in space. That might have been okay if he wasn’t drawn in a sitting position. It was easy enough to fix by coloring in a bit of a ground and shadow under him with cool grey markers.

To finish it up and turn this guy into a card, I masked the hat off again and stamped the stars (that were still in my Misti) with Versamark ink, and embossed them in white. I stamped the sentiment in Candied Apple Distress Oxide, then embossed it with clear powder. Trimming the panel down by 1/16″ all the way around created a teeny tiny white border when I glued it to the card base. A few white sequins and some shimmer pen highlights add sparkle. I seriously considered adding a coat of Diamond Glaze to his eyes and to fill in the stars, but in the end, I chickened out. I was afraid it might smear the white gel pen highlights in his eyes. 

I’d love to know what you think of this guy. Have you taken any coloring classes like Jammie’s? I think I might be hooked. Lol, I’ve already watched several more that I’m anxious to try. I’d also love to know if you repurpose any of your stamps for holiday cards like I did with the frog? Wouldn’t he be cute with a Santa hat too? 

Thanks for stopping by today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another fun Halloween project to share. 

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