Polar Bear Hugs – Wait, aren’t Polar Bears White?

I finally broke down and did it. I made a winter card! I tend to avoid winter cards until it’s well into winter but since we got snow, real stay-on-the-ground snow two days ago, I was inspired to make this card.

The polar bears are stamps by Hero Arts stamped on Arches rough paper; I used the same paper for the background. So I have a story about polar bears and what colour they are. Did you know that polar bear fur isn’t white; it isn’t actually a colour at all. It’s clear and hollow. So any colour you see, is reflected light, or dirt. My dentist is an amazing photographer and he’s been to many places to take pictures of animals. He has a coffee table book in his office of each trip. One, of course, is of his trip to photograph polar bears. They look pretty yellow-ish brown in most of his photos. So I tried to copy the colours from his photos.

The sky gave me some problems. I was trying desperately to portray an aurora borealis but it’s harder than I thought. This was my third attempt but I finally converted it to a galaxy background. I cut the hugs dies from Simon Says Stamp from silver mirrored cardstock and vellum. They look black here but if you look at the edges you can see they are silver. The little hearts dies are from SSS too, also cut from silver paper. The sentiment is from the same polar bear stamp set. I’ve tried many products to add snow/stars to watercolour backgrounds. I found this time that slightly diluted Copic opaque white gave me the perfect tiny droplets that stayed white after drying. I’ve used white acrylic paint and white gouache as well as silver and white watercolour paints. This definitely gave me the best results.

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Enjoy, Rebecca

Entering In:

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Starry Night

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Animal Antics