I recently stumbled across an absolutely gorgeous illustrator Crissy Armstrong who illustrates for a few different companies. I immediately fell in love with her style and decided to visit her site where I was inspired by so many of her projects. I found she had some video tutorials on her technique for colouring, one being a technique on water colouring. I love water colouring and picked up some wonderful new tips.

Crissy has recently designed a gorgeous illustration called “Wings for Hope” and along with Whimsy Stamps, they are offering this design for a limited time as a digital download to raise funds for Haiti. All proceeds (minus fees) will be given to the American Red Cross disaster relief fund for Haiti. What a special way to help.

Click here to purchase this gorgeous “Wings of Hope’ carousel horse

Not only has Crissy designed this wonderful new image, she has also started a blog candy giveaway supported by a number of companies to help promote her cause and add a little extra incentive. Click Here fo all the details.

If you love Crissy’s designs as much as I do, you will want to checkout these sites as well! You can find other designs by Crissy from, SquiggleFly, Kraftin Kimmie Stamps and Wags ‘n Whiskers Stamps

So I have recently purchased a few of Crissy’s stamps but today I wanted to help the Haiti cause and so I took my new water colouring tips to the table and attempted to create a magical whimsical rendition of her carousel horse.

I was thinking of magical new beginnings whilst I was colouring and wondered how I would share this image, and with the beautiful rainbow colours and pretty light purples and pinks I thought of a new born baby.

I created a border from pink card with my Friskars punch, and placed a sheet through my cuttlebug to add some texture, I sanded the dots to make them lighter.

Here is a close up of the horse.

I added the different colours to the mane and tail and then at the end I lightly blended them together to reduce lines. To add that extra magical touch I used my embossing pen to draw over the areas I wanted to sparkle and then sprinkled my clear glitter embossing powder on top and heated. Sometimes I find embossing powder gives a better effect than glue and glitter.

I wanted to spread the word about the wonderful effort and offering Crissy has created for the Haiti relief and it just so happens that my card fits into the following challenges this week:

1. Color Chef - Dark and Light Pink
2. Incy Wincy Designs – Buttons, Bows, Ribbon and Lace
3. Kaboodle Blog – Pink, Lemon, Green & Plum (I could be stretching it slightly girls – was hoping my rainbow mane and tail might cover the colours. hehe)
4. Stamp with fun – Baby
5. The Pink Elephant – Polka Dots, Bow and Pink (I am hoping my embossed dots cover the polka dots.)
6. Creative Card Crew – Punch it
7. Die Cuts R Us – Ribbon
8. A Spoon Full of Sugar – Freestyle
9. Creative Belli – Hearts
10. Crafty Catz – Love (heart)
11. Creative Inspirations – Feminine
12. Little Red Wagon – Hearts
13. Simon Says – New Baby
14. Truly Scrumptious – Sketch (square based sketch)
15. Your Next Stamp – Sparkles
16. Cute Card Thursday – Fairy Fantastic (Again I could be stretching it here but the gorgeous horse is fairy like with it’s beautiful wings?)
17. Sassy Studio Designs – Polka Dots (again hoping the embossing covers this one.)
18. Crafty Ann’s Challenge Blog – Embossing
19. All Sorts – Hearts and Flowers
20. Crazy 4 Challenges – Pretty in Pink
21. Sketch Saturday – Sketch (square based sketch)
22. Unscripted Sketches – Sketch (square based sketch)

Wow finding these challenges was a challenge in itself! A few of these were a bit of fluke and just scraping by but I hope you all see it for a good cause and wanting to get the word out.

Hopefully you have enjoyed viewing my little bit of magic today and are inspired to create a watercolour rainbow too!

Take care and happy crafting!