Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

William Blake penned the following lines at the end of his poem, Tiger:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I will forgive Mr. Blake the blatant misuse of an adjective in place of an adverb if he will forgive me attempting to frame a tiger. Because that's just what I did for this week's Fitztown Design Team post.

For this card, I used Fitztown's Tiger digistamp (available here).

I printed it out on ivory colored cardstock and then colored it in with Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. If you're not familiar with these amazing pencils, you are missing out! I love working with them - they can be used as regular old colored pencils or you can dip them in water for a more intense color, or brush over them with a wet paintbrush for a softer watercolor effect.

I colored in the tiger and the leaves and then very lightly went over much of it with a damp brush.

From there, it was time to move on to the frame. To cut it I used my trusty old Coluzzal... does anybody use those any more?! I don't have any of the fancy cutting/embossing machines, and this has always worked just fine for me for mini matting/framing needs. It also takes up no room on my desk!

I wanted to give the frame a little depth, so I used my Tim Holtz canvas stencil and sponged in a little distress ink. Then I put some darker brown spatter effect on it using an old Stampin' Up! stamp. To give it some good border and draw the eye back in, I went around the edges of the rectangle as well as the edges of the oval with a sponge that I'd swiped on the same brown ink.

All that was left was to assemble the card and trim off the excess ivory cardstock.

For those of you who aren't satisfied with a mere taste of William Blake's work (I never am!), I invite you to read the entire poem (here). I promise, you read the entire thing and you'll be checking behind you to make sure there's not a tiger crouching and ready to pounce.