Spotlight technique

Today for my Pick of the Week over on The House That Stamps Built blog, I have an old but good technique to share with you: spotlighting.  It's been around for a long time, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the older techniques.  Spotlighting draws attention to specific areas of an image by coloring only those areas and leaving the rest of the image uncolored.  Here's what you need:

--a large image (I used the Flower Power Background)

--circle dies (smaller are better so you can highlight only small portions of the image)

--I also used a stitched rectangle die (not shown), a "thanks" die, and the "so much" sentiment from the "Thanks Cling Set"

 Start by stamping your image (then I used the stitched rectangle die to trim it to size), and decide which area(s) you want to spotlight.

 This is what it looks like after running it through the die cutting machine with the dies in place:

 Then, all you have to do is color the part(s) you want to put in the spotlight.  I find it helpful, every once in a while to stick the die cut back in place to make sure you are coloring all of it AND to make sure you don't color something that could be part of the image but isn't.  As you can see in the photo below, I did this while coloring the upper left flower and am so glad I did because I thought the space right beside my first colored petal was another petal and it isn't!

 Once you've colored the part(s) you wanted to spotlight, adhere the main panel onto a card base and carefully line up and adhere the die cuts back into place.

To finish everything off, I added pearls only to the center of the flowers that were in my spotlighted areas.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  This technique would be perfect for our current challenge: Circles!

Supplies:
Stamps: Repeat Impressions "Flower Power Background" and "Thanks Cling Set"
Dies: MFT "Blueprints 13" stitched rectangle; Spellbinders "Classic Circles, large"; Taylored Expressions "thanks"

Challenges:
Southern Girls--flower power
Crafty Friends #89--lace/ribbon
Try Stampin' On Tuesday #374--sketch

Cute Card Thursday #541--anything goes
CraftDee BowZ--anything goes with handmade bow
Crafting with an Attitude #42--anything goes
Craft Rocket #51--anything goes
Cardz TV #59--anything goes
Try Stampin' On Tuesday August Technique--dimension with no foam tape (I adhered 2 layers of my die cut word to create dimension)
Incy Wincy--ribbon and/or lace