Waiting for Spring

Yes, still waiting for spring. One of the signs I rely on to tell me it's really spring is the first sighting of the Goldfinch. I just love those little guys. They are so bright and cheery, and their happy little chirping puts a smile on my face every time.
I CAN'T WAIT FOR SPRING!!!!
Okay, I will calm down now....and try to patiently wait.

In my wait for spring, I decided to do an American Goldfinch card. I love the stamp, it's from Northwood's Rubber Stamps. I used another technique from my all time favorite TJN (Technique Junkies Newsletter). This technique is the Marker Wash from the October 2007 issue.
I did use watercolor paper as they state in the instructions, and have found that the results are much better when you do. The water is able to float around better and give you awesome results, I think, anyway.
I basically just scribbled brown marker around the edges of the card, then loosely colored the bird and the tree branch. I then spritz it with water and hit it with my heat gun to speed up the process and to keep the edges distinct where the water pooled.

I have been admiring a lot of the paper piecing I have been seeing online, and decided to give it a try on this card. So I stamped a couple more goldfinches, colored them and cut them out...definitely time consuming...but I feel it was worth it. Then I used pop dots to put space between each layer.
Here is a close up of the layers. It's a little fuzzy...but you get the idea of the dimension.
I was going to layer this on a lighter brown card base..to match the edges, but DH thought it got lost in all the brown..so he suggested the orange card base....YAY hubby! It definitely made the goldfinch stand out like I wanted.