As you are no doubt aware by now, 2014 is Chinese Year of The Horse. I was reading about the Chinese Zodiac and enjoyed this explanation on Wikipedia of the order of the animals in the Zodiac cycle:

One account is that the order of the beings-of-the-year is due to their order in completing a contest of racing across a river, in the so-called Great Race: the race being to determine which creatures, in which order, would be the namesakes of the twelve-year cycle. The race was run, and swum, the finishing line being across a great river. The rat and the ox crossed easily enough (the rat hitchhiking on the ox’s back). Those powerful swimmers, tiger and dragon had little problem; nor did rabbit, with a little help from the dragon. The horse, an excellent runner; but, not as good of a swimmer, would have been next — but, the snake having crossed the river by stowing away on horse’s hoof, doing a sudden dismount, gained the finish line, just in front of the startled horse. Thus, it is said, despite the animal’s general swiftness, the horse finished the race only in the rank of the seventh position

I thought this would be the perfect time to finish a card using an image I coloured a while ago – Peaceful Warrior from the Eastern Dreams collection released late last year by SCACD Stamps. This stamp is also available on the full sheet Eastern Dreams along with an awesome dragon and other awesome stamps! I also used a newly released stamp set – Eastern Lanterns from the Montage release, again also available as part of a larger set – Montage Set #1.

2014_02_07_scacd_easterndreams_horse

Readers in the US can find all these stamps at Susana’s Custom Art & Card Design.

I stamped Peaceful Warrior on my favourite Make it Colour Blending Card before colouring with Touch Twin markers. The lanterns were stamped on vellum with red ink and then cut out. The background was created by inking with gold ink through a Dreamweaver stencil on to a Distress Ink background.

I hope you’ve enjoyed checking out my card today! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and pop back on Monday for some more fun.