One layer card

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. It's getting to be that time of year when I need a bunch of cards to donate to the church bazaar. Clean and simple options are always quick to do, and can be striking. I had a card base handy, so I masked off an L-shape with sticky notes and sponged on some distress ink (Victorian Velvet and Stormy Sky). It seemed to need a horizontal silhouette vignette. Since I didn't have the perfect stamp for that (gasp!), I had to improvise. I found this lovely shorebird (Old Island Stamp Company) and stamped it on in black and added some extra ripple lines with my Micron. I found a suitable sentiment for underneath (A Muse) and added some birds in flight, again with the pen. The all-seeing eye of Sauron the Scanner has revealed my sponging shortcomings, but I'm hoping the hurly burly of the Christmas bazaar will mask (ha ha! who says puns are the lowest form of humour? I refuse to believe it) any imperfections.

NSR: We're getting into Hallowe'en here - costumes have been chosen, pumpkins purchased and ready for carving, candy bought for trick-or-treaters. We had a party at work yesterday and I had the dubious honour of winning the Thematic Costume category. I wore a buttoned dress shirt with my husband's tie, a brown fedora and a glued-on mustache, and toted my iron. Can you guess what I was? (Hint - I foreshadowed my love of puns in the previous paragraph.) Yes, you guessed it - I went as Iron Man. My friend at work said I looked like Everyman on a New York subway. At least that's what she said when she stopped hooting with laughter long enough to come up for air. Then she insisted I refer to women as "dames" for the rest of the day and pretend I worked for Barney Miller down at the precinct. I think it was the mustache. It was quite realistic (ca. 1978). My kids just couldn't stop looking at it, and touching it. I think it really freaked them out. I would post a picture except this is the internet and people from work might see it. Oh yeah. They saw it in person. I'm still not going to post it. It was one of those magical moments that had to be experienced in person.

Windy Day

Hello! What a wonderful couple of days at Heather's Stamping Haven, taking Krista Schneider's workshops on colouring with Tombow and Copic markers. Eighteen projects later, I'm worn out but enjoying the creative intensity of the last two days. Friday was a day off from work (!) and Tombow markers. We did 11 Christmas cards and fell in love with lots of stamps and colour combinations. Saturday was 8 projects and lots of great Copic colour combinations to try out. This particular card was one of my favourites and it is such a great image from The Artful Stamper. This stamp was discontinued for a bit, but they have brought it back. Yay! If you can't find it at your local stamp store, get in touch with Heather and she can probably get it to you.

The top left card is the one that Krista taught us, but she said it would be great in all sorts of colour combinations, especially a monochromatic with a hit of red for Christmas. I thought that would be fun too, but I owed my family some time. So I came home and played with the kids for a bit after supper. We alphabetized my chalk re-inkers as I had dumped the box (a second time, immediately after sorting them and was too fed up to re-sort). It was great fun. My five-year-old particularly enjoyed it. (We are quite the party family. Who likes to rock the party? We like to rock the party.) They loved that so much, they begged to alphabetize something else so we alphabetized my stickle drawer. This is quite hilarious given the rest of my stamp room which, although tidier than it generally is, is not exactly organized to military standards. An alphabetical stickle drawer in my stamping space is sort of like having a flashmob where only two people in the crowd are singing the same song. (Speaking of flashmobs, it was one of my New Year's Resolutions to see one and I still haven't. Do you have to be Twittered to find out about them? Because I am not signed up to Twitter. I use another social media interface for the purposes of playing Scrabble and "liking" cool Stampbord projects but I can't see myself joining something else just to see what #twitspace is going on in 45 characters or less. I tend to prefer formats that allow for lengthy ramblings. Hah!)

** Back to the cards! (Click the image to see it in a larger version.) After the kids were in bed, I coloured up a few more and mounted them. I made a pastel one (top right) and a blue-grey one (bottom left, love that one!) and then finally channelled Krista a bit to do the last one, the monochromatic one with hits of red (bottom right). I didn't want red leaves, so I drew a few birds on with the Copic multiliner and coloured them in. For the snowy scenes, I used Rock Candy stickles on the snow, and then coordinating stickles from my (temporarily) alphabetized drawer. I confess they are no longer completely alphabetical (sorry LH!), but the drawer wasn't full enough too keep them from sliding out of order. I don't know which confession is worse: I have enough stickles to alphabetize, I let them get out of order within hours of being sorted, or I don't have enough to fill a drawer all the way to the back. Actually, I like them all in a tumble-jumble because I can rootle through them and re-acquaint myself with all the options whenever I am looking for one. If they're all standing up, I just zoom to the one I want, and forget to notice neglected colours.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope this makes you think about different ways to colour an image to create different results.

ATC Class Nov 12th

Hello! Just a quick post this morning before I dash off to work. Here are the ATCs I made for an upcoming class at Heather's Stamping Haven. It's going to be from 2-5 on Saturday, November 12th. If you'd like to take the class, please register with the store.

I tried to make ATCs in several different styles, and I will also give people some sketched designs for how to use ATCs as card-starters.

I love all of them, but I think my favourite is the Snowy Day one, which has some surprises hidden inside.

Hope to see you on the 12th! In the meantime, I am going to be a parent volunteer on the kindergarten field trip. Naturally it's the coldest day we've had so far, 8 degrees, windy and rainy. Good thing I'm made of stern stuff. Then tomorrow and Saturday are the all-day classes with Krista Schneider at Heather's! Can't wait - two full days of colouring with Copics and Tombows, 18 projects over the two days. I love it.

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. Stamps: Heather's Stamping Haven, Sunshine Designs, Hero Arts (gold flower), Stampers Anonymous (butterfly ATC). Sorry about the formatting. Ran out of time and patience to get it any better.

Scrap Sunday 13 - on Monday

Here's a card I made this evening from some scraps. I'm calling it a Scrap Sunday card since today is a holiday (Thanksgiving), so it's still the weekend. I had a piece of green flecked paper that I'd made from some spray I think (guessing lettuce and mushroom Adirondack color wash). I stamped it with this lovely calligraphy stamp from Quietfire Designs and matted it on a scrap of cork, then over a scrap of lovely handmade olive paper, and the card base is a cream coloured linen. Very quick and easy! (If I don't count all the false starts and the dead ends along the way.) I love cards like this that count as "cleaning off the stamp desk". Also, it's my reward for working hard on my holiday to get all the laundry done. Today and yesterday were gorgeous, so I was a laundry dervish, washing and hanging out to dry about 8 loads. All three clotheslines were pressed into service, and nearly all the clothespins. And even better - all the laundry is put away, and I even ironed! Pretty soon my husband is going to say, "Where is Karen? What have you done with her? Unless this imposter can cook, I want my real wife back!"

Happy Thanksgiving! So much to be thankful for.

NSR. It's been a good weekend. Friday started out with a meet and greet at work, with the big head honcho (many, many levels above me). When I met her she knew my project and said kind things about it. That was neat - she has a lot of people working for her, doing a lot of things, so the fact that she knew what I'm doing was kind of neat. And unusual for me since I usually prefer to fly under the radar. Then Friday night we all went to the rector's house for a wine and cheese for the stewardship committee and their families. (Well kiddies got movies and snacks, not wine and cheese). Hubby is chairing the committee so it's a busy fall around here. It was a very nice evening, just a shame that I'm always totally worn out by Friday night. Then Saturday morning was a wonderful stamping class at Heather's Stamping Haven and we made some gorgeous projects with Caran d'Ache crayons. Then home to make pear salad and do some whirlwind cleaning while hubby took the kids to the park for a family fun day with the cousins. Then off to my brother's place for a huge turkey feast, thanks to my sister-in-law. Such a wonderful meal! The kids had a sleepover so the grown ups got to stay up late (i.e., past 8 pm) visiting. Sunday morning was church, hubby was duty warden so gone bright and early to let in the 8 o'clockers, so I got to sleep in and have my coffee in the comfy chair overlooking the woods, reading a good book, enjoying the sunny morning. Didn't have my watch on so enjoyed this solitary scenario for far too long, and rushed pell-mell to church, arriving just in the nick of time. The church looked so lovely with all the Thanksgiving decorations everywhere! In the afternoon we raked some leaves and played outside, then went for a drive to Lanark County and the Mill of Kintail just outside Almonte. There's a museum there in the old mill and some lovely walking trails, which we enjoyed. The kids' favourite part was playing Pooh Sticks on the bridge over the Indian River. Some notable surgeon-sculptor-scholar type person (R. Tait Mackenzie) converted the mill in the 1930s and lived there with his wife, a published poet. Wouldn't that be great? I would love to stumble on a ruined mill in the woods, see the potential, rebuild it fit for habitation and move in the next year. Today was a bit of a quieter day, playing outside in the leaves, picnic outside, bike ride and playground, and Addition Bingo after supper (do we party it up, or what?!). Also a fair bit of bustling and things around the house, inside and out so we can face with a minimum of dread the Sisphean task of getting the family through the week. That brings me to now, and a few minutes for stamping and blogging! Yay!

Copic Poppies

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted - I've been busy cleaning out the stamp room, and the computer has been in use during blogging hours. But this week the stamp room got clean enough to stamp this poppy image (Hero Arts), and colour it while watching tv. I tried out some new things I learned at the Intermediate Copic class, things like shading and shadows and different colour families. I am still no expert on shadows and shading, but will claim that my main source of light comes from some direction, and then random other sources of light and shadow may also come into play depending on the backstory of my image. So, for example, here, the sun is coming from more or less above, except for the parts where there was a child playing with a flashlight, and another part where another child was casting shadows. You see, if you can imagine a light source, you can imagine all sorts of things. (You are beginning to see why I have not yet been plucked from Copic obscurity and brought to design team fame and glory.)

Anyway, coloured up the poppies while watching Strike Back and seeing Sgts Scott and Stonebridge shoot their way out of this week's (seemingly) certain death. Not normally my sort of tv, but Sgt Stonebridge is extremely easy on the eyes and they do a cliffhanger every week that brings me back. We are on Story Arc #51 of Plot #3 and it's only 5 episodes in. I tell you, not much time to dither between YR31 and R02 or you will lose the thread completely. Oh yeah, it's the hunk shooting his way out of a sticky situation. So far the main difference between episodes seems to be which country he is shooting his way out of and which babe his sidekick is tomcatting around with. So far it's been India, South Africa, the Sudan, and Kosovo (or brainbox, blondie, Irish exhibitionist, doctor, journalist).

Oops - got a bit side tracked there. Back to the card. I masked off the poppies (just the flowers) and stamped the background music (Cornish Heritage Farms scrapblock) in Antique Linen distress ink. I also sponged in some Linen and Vintage Photo around the edges to soften the white paper (too stark). Decided a poppy should be popped up and coloured up another one. It's trimmed to 4"x5.5" so I could have a strip of red fleck down the side (I believe the paper is called poppy fleck - meant to be!). The sentiment (Papertrey Ink) is heat embossed in black, and the accents are Cello Glitter Ritz (Art Institute). Clearly I am a philistine since when I ordered it, I thought it might be clear glitter, as in cellophane. It's a lovely rich brown, as in cello the instrument. Edited to add: Copics used for poppies: YR31, YR02, R22, R08, E19; used for stems: BG93, YG93, YG97.

In non-stamping related news, my five-year-old washed the dishes tonight. She loves being helpful, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. She did a great job. I did the sharp knives and really grubby/heavy things, but she did all the little lunch containers and things like that. I was so proud of her!

Thanks for stopping by.