Bonjour

This week's challenge in The Play Date Cafe, PDCC125, features "black, white and brown." Along with the vintage style photo, the color story appeared to have a very elegant and nostalgic feel to me.  After some deliberation, I decided a black and white fashion illustration would make the perfect focal point.

Having worked as a fashion illustrator for a couple of years back in my 20's, I love to sketch women.  (See You are my Muse, Te Amo, Sunshine, Explore, and Make it Personal)  I found a recent sketch in my art journal, did a layover to turn it into a line drawing, and scanned it.  I printed the line drawing in a couple of different sizes and decided to turn the smallest one into a stamp.  I felt the size would give my card a much more dramatic feel.  I used a set of gray scale Staedler watercolor brush markers to illustrate the drawing.  Then, I took some white card stock and made a mat with a McGill 1 9/16" stamp punch.  I cropped the image down into a 1 1/4" square with a pair of Fiskars deckle scissors and glued it to the stamp mat.  To enhance the nostalgic feel, I used black and white polka dotted ribbon.  I made a small slit on the bottom area of the card's spine, threaded the ribbon through it, and secured it to the inside with some double sided tape.  I glued a small bow to the front.  As a finishing touch, I wrote the word "Bonjour" with a white Zig chalk writer and highlighted it with a black Sharpie pen.

I'm planning to use the larger format of this illustration in a different card layout in the future.  I'm even thinking about letting some followers borrow one of my black line fashion illustrations to make a card of their own.  Please let me know what you think, as well as follow my blog - Blessings!