Owl Be Seeing You By Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it: Easy isn’t cheating! 

The four cards I designed for this post are super simple. They are flat, meant to be displayed on a small easel. If you prefer, use a folded card base.

Here’s the how-to:

1. Stamp the owl onto pages from a damaged book or onto newsprint using black, cordovan or teal ink.

Tip: If possible, choose text that goes with the stamp and position the stamped image so that you have controlled the copy that remains visible above the owl’s head as shown in the photo below. Find and tear out a quote or poem that relates to the theme, too.

2. Color the owl’s eyes with yellow and orange markers. Option: Use an opaque yellow pen to add bright yellow dots around the eyes as shown in the photo below.

3. For a Halloween card, hand-draw and cut out a 2.5” tall witch’s hat. On a 4.75” x 6.25” vertical cranberry cardstock rectangle glue down a yellow moon at the upper left (yellow cardstock circle) and trim as shown. Then glue down the owl (fussy cut along the top edge), the hat, and a mini playing card – THE QUEEN, of course! Border with black glittered cardstock.

4. For all other cards, tear around the stamped image and use a glue stick to adhere to a contrasting horizontal rectangle (shown: Cranberry cardstock 4.75” x 6.25”).

5. Option: For owls stamped in colors other than black use a black fine nib marker to reinforce the pupils and border around the eyes, as well as to accent the beak and feathers as shown below.

6. Add a single or double border to a stamped quote or the poem torn from the damaged book and position it toward the bottom right. Option: Use foam squares beneath the rectangle for added dimension.

7. Use we glue to add Gourd-Jus Prills around some of the torn edges for extra texture and color as shown below (and in the photos before and after step 2).

8. Embellish with half-pearls or with brads and spiral- or triangle-shaped paperclips.

Supplies:

• Owl stamp (Stampendous ‘Look into My Eyes’)
• Julia Cameron quote (RubberMoon)
• Prills in Gourd-Jus (USArtQuest)
• Glue stick
• Tombow Mono Aqua glue (for Prills)
• Inks in black, cordovan and teal
• Newsprint
• Pages from a damaged book
• Cardstock in cranberry, turquoise, yellow and black glittered
• Half-pearls in yellow and red
• Mini playing card (Queen!)
• Broad point or brush point markers in yellow and orange
• Fine nib marker in black
• Brads in red (.25”)
• Spiral- and triangle-shaped paperclips
• Foam dots