Finally Friday

I know, I know, I haven't been blogging. Whatever. So today is my Friday off. I am beginning to not like my every other Friday off because it seems like I wake up with a migraine every other Friday. It's not FUN!! Luckily, today I caught it early and it was gone by 10:00am. Went to Cat's today to cut rubber. It's kind of like cutting the cheese, only it doesn't stink and you don't fart. So, I guess it's really not like cutting cheese at all. We cut rubber for stamps for the Del Mar Stamp and Scrapbook Show. Click it. Scroll down. See it there? Justjohanna is going to be there!! How cool is that? Suffice it to say there is a lot of activity going on in the justjohanna household these days. I'm sure she has some fabulous stuff planned for the show. I know there will be make 'n takes because I am going to be helping out with that. So is Emily. I'm not going to blast my big mouth about the activities until Johanna says "okey dokey". So you'll have to stay tuned to see what Johanna has in store for the big weekend. So what have I been doing lately if I've not been blogging? Coloring, for one. I'm always coloring. This image is a Magenta stamp I got up at the stamp expo in Riverside. I have an idea of hat I want to do with it, so in this image, I'm playing with the colors. I got smart this time and wrote down what colors I used. I always think I'm going to remember what colors I've used but I never do. How could I remember that if I can't even remember if I put deodorant on? This is an ATC I made for Julie's swap, "Baby I got your number" swap on Stamp Shack. I've had this cactus stamp for ages, but never used it. I stamped it on the green cardstock and then underpainted the whole image white. Underpainting is when you put down a basecoat layer first. If I hadn't put down the white underpainting, all the other colors would've looked bland. The white makes the colors brighter. The sun is a justjhanna stamp. I hand lettered the sentiment (borrowed from jj). I sealed the card with clear acrylic spray to keep the image bright and to seal in the pencil. This was fun, but a lot of work since I had to make 13 of them - 12 for the swap and 1 for me. Here's a card made from a Paula Best stamp. I really like her stamps. Cat said she had quite a few Paula Best stamps in the store, but I never noticed. Hmmm. Anyhow, I love her stamps. I bought a bunch of them up in Riverside. You can't tell from this scan, but there is glitter on the necklace of the kitty. I'm not sure I like the layout, but I wanted something odd because the stamp is odd. I think images like this are fun to color because you can go wild with color. One thing I need to learn to do is do non-traditional colors. Like maybe next time do the cat in greens, the fish purple and the wings orange. Stay tuned, I may do that. Tony liked this image, so I'm going to do his Valentine's card with this image. I did post this card in blue in an earlier post, but I had to post the yellow one because I think it looks better in yellow. Also, I colored it differently. The shading is a bit different. I love coloring with yellows. It's such a happy color. It makes me feel good to color with yellow. People have asked me if I color to a specific type of music. Well, most of the time, I have the tv on for noise, but I tune it out. If I do play music, it's almost always LOUD and alternative. I'm finding I like to zone out to some trance mood, or some DJ mix of some sort. It lets my mind disconnect and just flow. I hate silence. I have tinnitus really bad and silence is not my friend. I hear my ears ring and it drives me mad, so music, and the louder the better. What's a blog without House Mouse? I love House Mouse stamps. This is one of my newer images I got from eBay. It's a really large stamp. I bought it for it's coloring capacity. I buy all my stamps for that reason- to color them. This image was fun to color, too. The only part I didn't like was the frogs. There seemed to be too much green in the picture already, so I had to color them brown. I don't think they came out that well, but hey, it's just a card, right? No, I do not like to turn out crappy cards, so I will fix the frogs before I make this into a card. There was a thread on the Stamp Shack about what people charge for their handmade cards. I hardly ever charge less than $5 for one of my cards. This image took over 2 hours to color. Why would I charge less than $5 for it? By the time I'm fnished with it, I will probably price this one at $8-10. Trust me, someone will buy it. I mostly sell my cards to the nice ladies at work. I don't want to overcharge for my cards, but I think if you give them a good product, they will pay. Besides, have you checked the price of a Hallmark card recently? I rest my case.