Scene Building with Camping Life

Hello crafters! I’m back with another project for my Altenew Educators Certification Program, which is focusing on scene building. I needed a masculine card for a graduation party, so I chose to work with the Camping Life stamp set. The scene building class, taught by Nichol Spohr is available as a single course if you are interested in taking it and is made up of six modules that you take at your own pace. I really loved this class, because lately I have been focused backgrounds and scenes using stamps and copic markers, but there are so many ways to create a scene and we will talk about that too. Let’s take a look at my project first….

When creating your scenes you can make them as simple or detailed as you want as long as you translate what is going on in the picture. One of the easiest ways to create a scene is ink blending with your Crisp dye inks, such as making a sunset blend and ground it with a darker color. Once blended, adding a silhouette image really makes them pop and move off the page. Think of an African Safari scene as an example.

Another way to create a scene, which Nichol is amazing at, is to mask images so that some images are behind others or overlap, which is one of the techniques I chose for my project today. To do this, I used my Misti stamping tool and laid out my stamps on my card stock to sort of get an idea for placement. Once I knew exactly what I wanted, I stamped the foreground image in this case the fire first. I also stamped it on to masking paper and fussy cut the image out and applied the “sticker” to the cardstock so that I could stamp over it.

Above you can see I used a piece of painters tape because I stamped on the wrong side of the masking paper leaving me with zero stick! I hope that made you laugh! Anyhow after stamping the tent on top of the masked fire you can see the tent is now in the background! From there I continued to add the chair and rock images to the scene.

Now what to do? To make a scene look realistic it is important to have highlights and shadow to create depth and dimension. Typically when you color with alcohol markers, you choose the lightest color and then go with your next darkest etc., but I was creating a night scene with a bright fire, so I tackled it a little different. Using a very light yellow and mapped out where the glow of the fire would go so that I knew not to color the area with dark colors.

So you will you see that the bottom right of the tent is much lighter than it would be if no fire were in the area. Under normal circumstances I would have started with a much darker color in the corner and really had to fight myself from doing that. I also chose an orange for the base color of the chair to give it a glowing look as well. Also around the fire bricks I chose yellow green colors to highlight what would also normally be dark in the night. In Module four, Nichol spent some a good amount of time talking about highlights, mid tones, and shadows when she was coloring cupcakes. I know it’s hard to image how cupcakes and camping go hand in hand, but color theory works no matter what you are coloring.

Nichol also discussed in the second module that the use of big objects used multiple times can give the illusion that there is more going on in the scene. I used her idea and drew in trees in the background making some wider and others thinner so that it would portray distance in the background. Another technique taught is using windows to focus your eye on the scene using dies or layers. I didn’t literally use this technique, but I did add a lot of shadow (forming a window like shape) to the inside of the tent so that it makes you want to jump in and snuggle up for the night.

One last thing about scenes, adding texture and patterns to your scenes really makes them come to life. During the courses, Nichol used, dies, ink blending, sprays, and patterned papers in her projects. I used her advice and added a bunch of texture by adding the stars to the sky, the different patterns in the foliage, and shadows. I think all of the little details really bring life to this scene which in my opinion is key to scene building!

I’d really love to know what you think of my project? Any tips you might have, are always appreciated! Now I’m off to the graduation party!!!

Just a small disclaimer! All items used in all of my projects are (or have been) purchased with my own funds, but this does not include design team items that I have received or otherwise stated.

Challenges entering:
Simon Says Stamp: create a scene
Make my Monday
Classic Design challenge: June

Until next time… keep crafting!!!