Hello bellas!

Amy here with you, and today’s Scenic Saturday card will have you singing, ‘Happy trails to you’. As I sat down to create this week, I found myself drawn to this sassy cowgirl from the Uptown Cowboy Parents set. Her pose has such attitude and I really love this sentiment that comes with her too.

I didn’t want her to be alone so I also pulled put the Uptown Cowboy Pets set with the original intention to pair her with the cute dog. That plan changed when I saw the horse and realized the size difference between the stamps would make for a good example of how to create the illusion of perspective when it comes to our scene building. In reality this horse would be much larger than our cowgirl if she were standing right next to it, but if we were to stamp both of these images on roughly the same plain, meaning her feet and its hooves at the same level, the horse would look more like a small pony. Now if that’s the story you are going for, great, you’re done… but if you want that horse to appear to be full sized within your scene then you have to really think about where you place it on the card.

Once you’ve established the foreground with your closest character or object, the higher up on the card front you stamp the rest of your characters and objects, the further back they will appear to be. A “cheat” that I like to use when stamping up two characters like this is to keep both of their eye lines on roughly the same level instead of their feet.

A second trick that I did to help push the horse back into the distance was to stamp some of the small cacti from the Cacti set (minus the pots) in front of it by using the masking technique. While adding another cactus behind the cowgirl also helped to bring her forward.

For more scene building options check out the Cowboy Backdrop, Uptown Cowboy Kids set, and the Country Western Sentiment Set. There’s also a fun Gnome Cowboy stamp!

Never forget that effective scene building with your stamps is all about building up those layers. 🙂

Stay crafty my friends!