Grinning like a Cheshire Cat

The stamp I have used for this card is Sweet Pea Ching-chou Kuik's Cheshire Cat Illusion.  I must admit, I have had this stamp sitting in my collection for ages and have never used it as, to be honest, the cat scared me!  No, I don't mean I was frightened of it, more that I was scared of colouring it.  The original artwork shows the cat as wispy and almost not there, as indeed the Cheshire Cat is portrayed in the book, afterall he is just a grin at some points, and I was worried how to go about colouring him so that he was neither here nor there.  I opted for grey promarkers and a touch of clear star gelly roll pen in the end to try and create an illusion of being partly invisible.  I only used cool grey 1 and 2 for the head and a touch of pastel green for the eyes.

For Alice herself, I used powder blue and sky blue and really blended them into each other at one side to add depth.  Her skin is coloured with satin and sunkissed pink and her hair a combination of buttercup and canary with accents of gold gelly roll pen.  The toadstools are coloured again with sunkissed pink, pink carnation and ruby, with the stalks being cooly greys 1 & 2.  The background is denim blue and powder blue blended into each other to give a misty effect.


I cut the imaged out using a nestie and then stuck it to some silvery paper and trimmed it to follow the lines of the nestie diecut as I didn't have one larger.  The background papers I created myself using starburst stains on one side which is embossed, then overembossed with moonglow powders to emphasise the patterning.  The other side is blue and pink starburst stains with sepia brown swirled about on photo paper and then stamped onto using a frondy flowery stamp plate I picked up for just 50p on the sale table in my local art shop.  I have no idea who makes it but it's fab don't you think?  The 'seam' between the 2 backgrounds is covered with a piece of shimmery lilac ribbon and then I added a few tiny gems for a bit of bling.  I decided to make this into an easel card and used a long border stamp again a 50p bargain on a scrap of the photo paper and an Alice in Wonderland quote printed on vellum to create the stop.

I would like to enter this for the following challenges:
 
Quirky Craft Challenges - Alice in Wonderland
Sparkles Forum Challenge - Pink, Brown. Blue