Creative Team call

Purple Onion Designs is looking for a new creative team. Click HERE to read about it and to download the application. They are looking for U.S. and international designers. Go for it. They have some really cool stamps!

Comics coming soon

Sorry about no Monday morning comics yet today. I didn't have time to post it. We were gone on a whirlwind trip to San Francisco this past weekend. I'll post the comic later on this evening. Be sure to come back!

Garden Party!

Howdy!

Over at the Paper Garden, Cathy has a challenge every week. Her challenge is that she takes a picture from a magazine and you recreate it in your own way. Here is the inspiration picture and this is my interpretation of the picture. I used only two Odd Bird Planet stamps in this card, Emily's rooster left and the layered flower. The rest I doodled freehand. I colored everything with Prisma pencils. For the circles, I used my new Martha Stewart circle cutter, only I put a pen in the hole I wanted and just drew a circle instead of cutting out a circle. This card was really fun. Why don't you add the Paper Garden to your feed list and participate in the next garden challenge?

Monday Morning Comic

CPS sketch #78 p1

Have you been over Card Positioning Systems yet? There's a new sketch posted and this is my card for sketch #78. All stamps are Odd Bird Planet. Paper is from the Full Tart from Lime Tart. Such fun papers! I colored the teapot, teacups and owl hair with Prismas. The black rick rack is velour. Yummy. As usual, my scanner blurs around 3D objects.

Art Journal 2

Todays page brought to you by the one-season series, Freaks and Geeks. It debuted in September 1999 and only ran for one season. I got the DVD set and watch it every so often. I love the characters and the storyline. It's about two classes of kids in high school. The freaks, who are the stoners and class-skippers and trouble-makers, and the geeks, the do-gooders and mathletes. The one family has a freak and a geek. Lots of young actors in this series and it's fun for me to see them now in television and the movies. I'm not going to say whether I'm pleased with each page or not, because I can always find something I don't like about it. I'm just doing it and moving on to the next day. Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Birthday to Tony!

A little Haiku for my son:

Free-spirited boy

protector of animals

the love of my life

12 on the 12th

On the 12th day of each month, you take 12 pictures from your day and post them. Well, you are really supposed to scrap them, but I'm not much of a scrapbooker, so I'm going to scrap them by posting them. So here are my pics for August.This is an old standby breakfast of mine. Coffee and a peanut butter sandwich made with low-fat peanut butter. This breakfast seems to keep me fulfilled until lunch. Here is where I work. I've been there for 13 years now and I love it. It's only 1.5 miles from my front door to work. That saves me a ton of money on gas. Woo hoo!Here's my messy desk at work. I think I was looking up sewer availability for a customer. I know, exciting as all hell. Hey, it pays the bills.I went home for lunch because I forgot something I needed to take to work, so I took a few pics and watched a little tv. Remember I only live 1.5 miles from work, so it's a quick trip home. I watched Jon and Kate plus 8. I love that show. It's on Discovery Health channel.Here's a picture of part of the fountain I got on Craigslist. It was only $60. This is the bottom bowl and it's about 52" across and about 6" deep. I have to get the paint off the tiles, though. Can you believe someone painted over those gorgeous tiles? Yeah, I know!And here is Gizmo, chillin' in the shade. He loves it when I go home for lunch because he knows he can go outside. He is an indoor kitty, but he can go outside if supervised. He mostly likes to sit on the bbq island or snooze in the shade. Sometimes he makes a bee-line for the front driveway and I have to make him go inside. He looks so sad then.This is Cheeto, scratching his bugs or something. I put Advantage on these cats but they insist on rolling around in the dirt. Whatever.On the way back to work, I stopped at Carl's Jr. and got a Famous burger, no cheese. Yuck, I hate that processed cheese food. I don't particularly like fast food burgers, but at least CJ meat looks like meat, unlike MickyD's. Eww. In the employee dining room, we have a table set up for puzzles. There is a small group of us that like to do puzzles on our breaks. We do a puzzle about every 10 days or so, depending on the puzzle. We get our puzzles at the used book store in Escondido. We get them for about 50 cents a piece after you count the trade-in value. It passes the time and promotes comeraderie. One of the jobs of the engineering department is to take down the flags and lock the front gate every day. This week was my week, so after I took down the flags and locked the front gate, I took a picture. See that hill in the background? I live on the bottom of that hill to the right. You can't see my house, so stop looking. This is a picture of a swallow's nest at the roofline of the bldg at work. There are three of them up there. Pretty neat, huh? So that was my day. Nothing much happened the rest of the evening. Set your calendar to do your own 12 on the 12th. It'll be fun to see everyone's days. EDITED: I'm still laughing. You guys make me laugh with your posts. Ok, ok, I'm going to scrap these photos and then I'll post them AS A SCRAPBOOK PAGE! LOL

ArT JoURnaL dEBut

I feel like I'm taking a big step. For some reason last night,I decided to actually start my daily art journal. I have always been inspired by Julie, who does freakin' fantastic pages in her journal. Her pages seem to be so well thought out, so perfect, but I've watched her work, and it's not ALL thought out. She might put a particular color or medium on the page, but then she might scribble something, ink, paint, on another section and then cover it all with another color. In the end, it looks perfect and thought out, but I know differently. I've also been looking at YouTube a lot and checking out other people's work.

I think you have to put your mind in free-spin. Just let it out whatever is in there at the moment. I don't mean go all tourette's, but get the idea and get it on paper. So, I decided to give it a go. I told myself, the first page will NOT be perfect. Holy crap, it WON'T???? No, Debbie, it won't. You can't do everythign perfectly the first time, I've been telling you that your whole life. Now RELAX!!!

Ok, so I relaxed. I just started drawing. I decided to make a self-portrait. I know I am not a good drawer, but I just decided that it would be what it would be. This page is not going to the Louvre, for god's sake. So a-drawin' I did, and it doesn't look half-bad! I think it kinda looks like me in a artsy way. I drew everything first then colored with pencils. I used a black micron pen for drawing. I colored almost all of it last night and thought I'd better finish it this morning. Bad move. I was not in the same groove as last night and I'm not happy with the last part I colored, which is the pink/red/orange color around the bottom and right side. From now on, I will either finish it, or leave it alone.

So that's it.

Feeling Gnomish

Have you seen the newest releases from the Odd Bird Planet? Wowee, there are some cute stamps! Do ya like gnomes? How about mushrooms? Baby stuff? OMG there is some really cute baby stuff. Oh, and there's my favorite, OWLOWEEN!!! There's like a zillion million new OWLS!! Well, ok not quite that many, but you know what Imean. I can't wait to get my hands on those stamps! So let me tell you about these cards and what stamps I used so you know what to order. :)

This first one, I used Kelly's gnome with birds right, Kelly's hedge, and Kelly's sad gnome girl. I colored the images with my Prismacolor pencils. No gamsol. The sentiment is from a Daisy D's paper pack I got in a kit at the Paper Garden Projects store.

The second card has six different stamps on it: Kelly's Smiley Ladybug, Kelly's gnome baby striped hat right, Kelly's gnome baby striped hat left, gnome sweet gnome sentiment, Cathrine's mushroom corner left, and Cathrine's mushroom corner right. I colored it all with my Prismas. The paper is from the same Daisy D's paper pack from the Paper Garden Projects store. There is some really cool paper in that pack and I must tell you that I am hoarding it because it's so pretty. I mean, I know where to get more, but c'mon, you know what I mean right? I can't be the only paper hoarder in blogland.

Just Monkeying Around

I was over at Card Positioning Systems checking out their newest sketch and realized I had the perfect stamps to go with it.

These are the stamps from the August Limited Edition Kit from Odd Bird Planet. It's all about monkeys. In fact, the kit is called Monkey Business. You get five monkey bodies/heads, six arms, 3 legs and a tail to play mix and match. This paper is from the blue kit, but the kit is offered in green and one in vintage, too. The same stamps are in each kit. You get all kinds of embellishment goodies along with the paper and unmounted stamps for only $25.

I couldn't wait to post this card. I love these monkeys. If you like them, you'd better get them while you can. Once they're gone, they're gone!

Sing it with me now: Five little monkeys jumpin' on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, "NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPIN' ON THE BED!"

OBP August Special Deal and Lime Tart Kits

It's August, and it's time for the August Special Deal from Odd Bird Planet. This month, there are five stamps in the deal. They are:

* You are (sentiment)

* Debbie's Flower * Dotty Corner * Hoot * Madricaine If you buy all five stamps, you get 25% off the retail price. Regular price is $37.00 but you get it for only $27.75. What a deal! These are the two cards I made using the special deal stamps. This first one I used the dotty corner, You are, Hoot and Madricaine. I made the frame by lining up the dotty corner with my stamp positioner. Oh, I can hear some of you groaning! You must make friends with your stamp positioner. It is not difficult to use and it makes it easier to use your stamps, especially when you want to make a frame like this or if you want to mask images. I paper-pieced Madricaine on this card. The tree is chipboard. I painted the trunk and then glued on paper for the rest of the tree. The paper and chipboard are from the July Full Tart from OBP. This second card also uses the paper from the July Lime Tart Kit, the Full Tart. Isn't the paper too much fun?? Again, I used my stamp positioner A LOT on this card. I had to line up 4 of the dotty corners, place the flowers and place Madricaine on the flower stem. Have you ordered your Lime Tart kit yet? I love getting the Lime Tart kit every month. I love the Full Tart, but you can get the A La Tart or the Half Tart, or you can be greedy and get the Greedy Tart, which is the Full and Half-tarts and you save 10%. There is a new tart, too. You can get the Queen of Tarts and get all THREE Lime Tart kits. If you do, you save 15% off the retail price. Sweet! Did you know you can save something like 40% if you subscribe monthly and subscribe for a year? You can get any combination of Tarts. There is a great variety of fantastic paper, ribbons, cut-outs, chipboard, buttons, brads or glitter in the kits. Oh and in some of the kits you get STAMPS! OMG, STAMPS!! There is plenty of paper to make a ton of cards or many scrapbook layouts. You can order Lime Tart kits from Odd Bird Planet or you can get them from Lime Tart. Ordering from Odd Bird Planet, you pay shipping from the USA. If you order from Lime Tart, you pay shipping from Australia. You pick where you get the cheaper shipping or where you shop the most. The kits are exactly the same. Think about it: You get lots of great coordinating paper and embellishments and you don't have to spend all day putting it all together. It's done for you. I don't think you will be disappointed, so give it a try. This month's Full Tart is da bomb!!

Monday Morning Comic

Good morning! Another Monday, another week starts. I'm ready for it this time, though. I've prepared myself for Monday morning by getting enough sleep. I never get enough sleep. Geez.

Oh, and I know this thing is wonky. I drew it three times and it just kept getting wonkier and wonkier, so I just kept the first one. Can you write in a straight line? I mean without writing uphill or downhill? I can't. I've never been able to write straight. I hear that people who write uphill are optimists. I guess that fits me. I'm a Sagittarius and we tend go through life with our head in the clouds most of the time.

Ok, so get to work. I hope you have a funny week!

Coloring with Markers, part 2

Back to the markers experiment. I colored all these images with my Prismacolor markers. This first image is a stamped image by Paula Best. It's one of my favorite images. In coloring this image, I was mostly playing with laying down color without leaving lines. I think I mastered that. I have to remember to keep that wet edge and it blends just fine. I'm not real thrilled with my color choices here. I could've chosen much brighter colors on her wings. I do like how I colored the skin tones and the shadowing on her skin and I like the letters colored in. This next image in one I drew with my Zig pen. I had the opportunity recently to play with various pens and see which ones worked best with the Prismacolor markers. The Zig pen won. Ok, so I drew this image and then colored it with the Prisma markers. I was playing with blending three greens together. It looks so-so to me. Not horrible, but nothing I would give to somone on a card. The rest of the coloring is just coloring. No new or practiced techniques. This third image is another one I drew and then colored. I was playing with the yellows in the letters to make them look sunset-y, but it didn't work. The colors I chose were too close together and they just made a mucky mess. Then I decided, after I colored the background with my Limepeel marker, that I would try to save the yucky letters by coloring another color on top and then highlighting them. Oh, it's just a mess, isn't it? Yeah. I finished coloring the image with basic coloring. No shading. These next two images are by Paula Best. These images are just a part of the whole stamp, which is like 4x5 or something. The first image was colored using some muted colors. I have to remember to write down the colors so I can remember what they are so I can recreate the shading again if I wanted to. I know with this one, that I colored the green and the yellow colors back and forth and over and over and over. Yes, my paper was rather saturated by the time I finished and some of the stamped lines are a little blurry to me. You can see how the red marker on the star on the face bled into the yellow/green. I should've let it dry more before I started putting other colors next to it. Same for the lips and eyebrows. This last one is just done with brighter colors. I am a big fan of bright colors. I rarely color anything light or muted. It just doesn't feel finished to me if it's not completely colored in and is bright. I do like my color choices in the face part of this image, but again, I should've waited until this saturated paper dried out completely before I put colors next to it. It blurred horribly. The other thing I need to do is get the right paper for my pens. I see many marker artists use Georgia Pacific paper. Need to make note of what paper exactly so I can get me some. If you look closely at the pink parts of this image, the surrounding areas, you'll see the stamped image is bluured. I think I used Versafine for this image. Not a good mix with the Prisma markers. It does work great with my pencils, but not markers. I'm learning and I'm happy about that. Oh, and you should know that Cathy St. Clair is a troublemaker. hahaha She sent me a surprise of some Copic markers in the mail. Trying to take me over to the dark side, she is. Away from my beloved (?) Prisma markers. I did get a chance to play with some Copics. See next post. Now I'm going to watch the Olympics.

Happy Birthdays!

Today, we celebrated two birthdays: my Mom and my friend, Naji. Five of us went to brunch today: Me, John, Mom, Naji and Gig. We drove down to Shelter Island to the Bali Hai for their brunch. It was really yummy! Here is their menu. Are you hungry now? Oh man, we stuffed ourselves with seafood and omelettes and roast beef and crab legs and oh, so much good stuff. Then they brought out a couple of desserts with birthday candles on top. YUMMY! Happy birthday to Mom. Happy birthday to Naji. We love you.

Picture is Debbie (with pink hair), John, across from John is Mom (by the window) and Naji in the cap. Gig took the pictures.

Oops, I missed it!

I forgot to post the Monday OBP comic! I'll do it later today when I get home. Sorry, there is just so much going on around our house. Here's a sneak peak at what one thing is: I'm so excited about this "thing" hanging in the air. More pictures later.

Gettin Inky!

Oh yeah, baby, gettin' inky! Check out the inks I got from the Paper Garden Projects Store! These are the new Tsukineko dye-based inks in the dew drop size! And yes, I got ALL the colors - all 24 of them. I know, I'm a pig. Ok, whatever. These ink pads are juicy, but not so juicy to be messy. I mean, you know how sometimes you get a dye ink pad and it stamps kinda dry-looking? Well, these don't. They stamp wet and then dry quickly. I love the size, too. The coverage on even my clear stamps is fantastic. The image stamps clear and bright. I really think you should get some of these. Oh heck, don't get some, get ALL of them! For the price of 7 big ink pads, you could have all 24 of these babies. The Paper Garden ships quickly and packages your items so cute! Oh, and you get a hand-crafted card, too. See the one I got there? So hop on over and check out the Paper Garden. (This has been a non-paid advertisement for the Paper Garden Store. No animals were harmed in the filming of this commercial. Contact your doctor immediately if you experience an er#^%@ lasting more than 4 hours.)