Southern Santa

Beach related cards is the theme this month at Sparkle N Sprinkle.  For today's card, I decided to do something I have never done before, but for a good reason :-).  If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you know how much I love to color, especially with Copic markers.  Well, a friend of mine was saying how she wished she had time to color and but she didn't like pre-colored images because that felt like she was cheating (almost as if she went and bought a store-bought card. Gasp!)  So this card is dedicated to her.  You can use a pre-colored image and "make it your own" by adding to it.

My card uses the digi version of Southern Santa and after printing it out in color, I went about "making it my own".  I started out by die cutting the image with Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangles die.  Gypsy Red velvet glitter was added to Santa's hat and the flowers on his swimsuit.  Cyclamen was added to the cute umbrella in his cocktail and each of the Christmas lights has glitter on them: Sunny Daze, Elegant Emerald, and Gypsy Red.  I also used a Sakura glue pen to add adhesive around the stitching and this was covered with Neon Flamingo glitter.   The wiring for the strand of Christmas lights was heat embossed with Black Detail.  I used a black gel pen and traced over the wire, covered it with Black Detail, and heat embossed.  Demo Donna has used this same trick in one of her videos using a regular ball point pen.  Glossy Accents was also added to both flamingos' beaks as well as Santa's shades.

The edge of my sentiment, which was part of a kit I received once upon a time, was also covered in Gypsy Red glitter.

So what do you think?  Is this an acceptable alternative for when you don't think you have enough time to color your own image, or do you think it's sort of cheating?  I have to fess up that this is probably the only time you will see me using a pre-colored image...I love coloring with my Copics too much :-).