March hares

In March the Craft Barn calender challenge is asking for yellow and rabbits. This was a tough one! I love yellow and knew immediately that I wanted to use Crafty Individuals rabbit stamps from the Alice Palace range... but they had to be bought first:)  I started March by posting for the CI challenge (still going on, by the way!) so I could get their discount code, after which I did some bunny stamp shopping. Besides the Craft Barn challenge I am also posting this page for the SimonSaysStamp Monday challenge (B is for...). I can find at least bunnies, bulbs, blue sky, book paper and a bird! Which leads to the SimonSaysStamp Wednesday challenge (Things that fly)

We have been having incredible warm spring weather here in Finland with clear blue skies and lots of sunshine and birdsong, though no crocuses yet! 

I painted my background with water colours. The rays were made with a Tim Holtz stencil and Finnabair crackle paste. When the paste was dry I added some Distress Inks for colour. The crocuses are from Chcolate Baroque, they hace been coloured with Inktense pencils and water. My personal choice for these calendar pages is the use of this old book paper in each of them. The book is from approx 1850 and full of sermons. I drew the tree using a Tando mask as base but stretching and bending it quite a lot, because the tree on the mask was too square... This had me wishing I had a diecut machine, but the result is cool as it is. The paper was so thin I had trouble darkening the edges with Distress inks. 

I bought two bunny stamps from CI, because I decided that this calendar challenge is the most sensible challenge I take part in, and deserves more than one post. This image is from the "Winning Hare" and I'm using the "Crowned Bunnies" on another collage-themed calendar page. I know that at the end of the year I'm going to be grateful for the effort put into these! I stamped the Winning Hare with Versafine Vintage Sepia and clear embossed it. The bunnies got some brown colour and I fussy cut them leaving the hearts in place, but deleting the "you are my number one"-text.

The previous pages for this Old Paper -calendar can be found here:

January

February