Christmas Card

Hello!  This will be a quick post before we dash off to church.  Today is the Advent Pageant - always a good time. 

I was "cleaning up" the stamp room yesterday and found two of these trees stamped and embossed on watercolour paper and decided to "whip up" another two Christmas cards.  I had thought I was done Christmas cards, but those were only the mailing ones.  I realized I needed another 30 or so...

I had been doing a lot of red and green cards so I decided to try something else and used bluey greens, oranges and pinks here.  I used Tombow markers and blended them with a paint brush.  I like it for the most part, but I think the traditional colours are still my favourite.  Still, it was fun to get out the new Stickles that don't get much use.  The Eucalyptus, Mystic Green and Tropical Tangerine were *perfect* here and this card has more sparkle and glitz than a Vegas showgirl.

Well, I must dash and feed Thing 2.  (Thing 1 is at a sleepover birthday party.)

Thanks for stopping by!

PS.  Dear Santa, Please bring me a clean and decorated house, some tins of home baking (including Granny Borrowman's gingerbread please) and some clean and folded laundry.  Thank you! 

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.

Baby Card or BasicGrey's New Flag

Hello! Here's a baby card I made last night. When I saw this stamp, I fell head over heels in love. First, I love my clothesline. I love hanging out clothes, being outside listening to the birds, pinning things out, seeing them blowing in the breeze, and when they come in they are so fresh and sweet-smelling. And I just loved seeing a line full of diapers, all marching like an orderly little row of soldiers, so pleasing in their symmetry. Second, my littlest girl has a bear just like that one, and just this weekend, Bear had a trip through the washing machine and a day on the line in the sun. Bear got lovingly soaped down with lavender soap, then DD2 watched her get all sudsy and spinning round and and round through the washer window. Then she checked up on her on the line, a few times during the day. It was very dear. She wasn't upset that Bear was getting washed, but she was definitely keeping an eye on the process. And now Bear is lovely and clean, "all sweet and clean and smelly" as our family saying goes.

I stamped the image in versamark and embossed in chocolate brown, then coloured with Tombows and blended with a paintbrush. When I'm trying to match paper, I experiment with colours first on a scrap, and then when I get a combination I like, I jot it down on the back of the paper pack. Here, I'm using BasicGrey's Offbeat, and discovered (again) that Tombow needs a better light blue. I must write a letter to Tombow to suggest it. Many of their blues are quite bright and are either purple or green in tone. They really need one that's more like faded denim. Anyway..... Coloured with Tombows, accented with stickles (waterfall, crystal, candy cane, diamond, patina) and dimensional pearls (espresso), and a doodly frame. I like how the layout turned out, more by accident than design. I had already pulled my papers that I wanted to use, and they didn't quite fit across my 5x7 card, so I fiddled a bit and came up with this. I now see that this isn't at all original, it's the layout of half the flags in the world. I present to you, drum roll please, BasicGrey's new flag! [insert trumpet fanfare, and ideally some bagpipes too]

Thanks for stopping by!

Quick card

Hello! I made this quickie this week, mostly because that little scrap of alcohol ink background was too pretty to throw out and too small to put away. I recently came home with this pear stamp by The Artful Stamper (my treat for last week, never could resist a pear stamp), and it seemed like the perfect thing to go on this little scrap. I had made up a bunch of this paper for an ATC swap and this was what was left over. I think the colours were lettuce, butterscotch and espresso (and maybe pesto). The pears were stamped in India Ink and left to dry overnight. (So while this was a quick card in real time, it did take three evenings to put together.) The pears are mounted on a black mat, then on a gold mat, then another black mat for good measure. I'm not normally so zealous when it comes to matting, but I liked it here. It was a fairly small piece and it really bulked it up. (Mats are the new protein shake!) The card base is black, with a panel of music collage from a Tim Holtz patterned paper block, with some tissue tape stuck down in a willy-nilly "L" to cradle the focal image. I also gave the card a spritz with some gold smooch before adding the pear panel. Oh yeah, and my favourite thing about the pears was highlighting them with some Twinkling H20s. I've never used those on glossy before, but it really seemed to work here - just defined the pears that little bit against the background. And I drew in a shadow with a dark grey copic marker. So there you have it: a 15 minute card that took 3 weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

Folk Tree

Here's what I coloured in last night when we were watching TV (rented Wall Street for some 80's memories, thought I don't think I saw it at the time). The image is Artful Stamper, a new image by Krista Schneider. I saw it on her website in the new illustrations and fell in love with it and a few others which I hope to ink very soon. I stamped this on some Neenah crest I think, using Memento black ink. This image is perfect for Copics - nice detail, but the spaces aren't too tiny for those big tips to work in. (I only have the brush/chisel tips, only one of the tiny tip.) I went with a rustic colour palette of red, yellow, green and blue. I went for a quick and easy base: Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green stamped with chalk ink using a Cornish Heritage Farm backgrounder, and a scrap of Pacific Point. All piecses were inked with Memories Art Print Brown. I used stickles to accent (Tiara, yellow, Xmas Red, Crystal) and a PTI button with crochet cotton. I debated the button with hubby, who felt it was unnecessary and distracted from the card. I told him if I wanted is opinion, I would give it to him. He settled on deciding that looking at the button made the tippy tree less noticeable. I told him it was meant to be like that, "It's a folk tree." He just asked where they guy wires were. Sigh. [On the upside, I know what Christmas card I am going to make for him! bwahahahahahah]

Thanks for stopping by!

Scrap Stash Sunday 5

Here's a card I made with a piece of Ecoline paper, a scrap card base, and a scrap of patterned paper. I had made the Ecoline sheet a while ago, but hadn't used it yet. In real life it has some lovely gold bits on it.

I stamped this bare tree (Artful Stamper) in black archival and tried to emboss, but the ep didn't really stick. So I have patchy embossing that I am telling myself is "weathered". Possibly could consider it a new technique, but that's a bit iffy. Still, for this card it looks all right. I accented the image with a bit of pencil crayon on the trees, some white gel pen on the swirls, and some rust marker on the leaves. The card base is stamped with a Sunshine Designs hydrangea flower, which I find makes a good background stamp because it sort of loses its flowery look stamped en masse, but has a nice loose feel to it. The patterned paper is from the Granola pack (BasicGrey) and it's a SU rub on. I thought this might be a good sympathy or thinking of you card for the stash.

Well, school is well and truly underway. DD1 goes everyday and DD2 starts later this week. This is my opportunity to morph into unflappable organized mom, who maintains a well-oiled household machine, where meals are homemade (from preplanned menu and ingredients shopped for), laundry makes it from clothesline to drawers, library books are never overdue, exercise is effortlessly added to routine, and clutter is whisked away each evening before bed. All this with a pleasant demeanour, cheerful outlook, and sleekly smooth hair. Clearly I am meant to write fiction. Nanny McPhee, I need you!

Butterfly birthday card

I got this stamp a while ago and have been waiting for a good time to use it. (That makes it sounds like there is ever a bad time to use a stamp!) I wanted to make a special birthday card for a very special person, and this butterfly stamp just leaped off the shelf into my hands. (And no, DH, that's metaphorically speaking, not a comment on my teetery piles of stamping gear...)

I stamped the butterflies in chocolate chip craft ink and embossed with Espresso embossing powder. It's a lovely soft brown. My new favourite ep! The image was painted with a variety of colours of twinkling H20's and accented with stickles. I did layered butterflies for depth. The image is mounted on a couple of colours of cardstock and the card base is textured Soft Sky, stamped with one of Heather's nice scroll stamps (in creamy brown chalk ink). I accented with some espresso acrylic paint in the corners, just to frame it. Inside the card it says, "May every part of your birthday have happy in it."

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamps: The Artful Stamper, Heather's Stamping Haven; Ink: chocolate chip craft ink, creamy brown chalk ink - Colorbox; paper: watercolour, elegant eggplant, close to cocoa, textured soft sky; Other: twinkling H20's, stickles, espresso acrylic paint - Adirondack/Ranger.