Golfer card

I got this stamp from a sidewalk sale at one of the local stamp stores. It's so cute! Yes, I bought it because it looked fun to color. Of course, I did.

The stamp is by Stamps Happen, Inc. and it's called Birdie.

I colored this with Prismacolor pencils. I'm ok with most of this image with the only part I don't like is the sky. I initially colored it with a lighter blue and then decided it needed to be darker. Instead of coloring hard, I left my coloring light-handed and it came out like this. Yuck. Inconsistent areas and I don't like the see-through areas.

Does anyone care what colors I used? Do you want me to list them or don't you care? I'm thinking of doing a tutorial on coloring an image. It would be a video tutorial. I'm due to make some more tutorials anyways.

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your comments.

A few Christmas Cards

I felt like making a few Christmas cards today, so I got out my Holly Jolly collection of papers made my Flair and made some cards. This first card is made with baby dango reindeer right, baby dango reindeer left, sign on a post, double note, single note. I placed the images on the cardstock using my stamp positioner, and then colored everything with my Copics. I edged that cardstock with gold Krylon and then mounted it on matching brown cardstock. I put that on the Flair paper and then attached to the white card base, which I outlined with the gold Krylon pen. The "Magic" is a sticker from the sticker pack from Flair that I trimmed down to fit on the sign. This was a very easy card. I used the three bubble topiary (I love all the OBP topiaries!!) and Michelle's Merry Christmas sentiment. The santa and reindeer paper is from Flair and made it very easy to make this card. I paper-pieced the topiary and colored in the sentiment with a red Sharpie pen. I put some stickles on the reindeer nose and his collar and on Santa. I love this reindeer head. It's so fun to color. I used one of the sticker frames from Flair and placed it over the reindeer. The Holly Jolly tag is another sticker and I just added a ribbon bow. I cut out the trees at the bottom of the card from another piece of Flair paper. Oh, if you like this reindeer head, order it now. It's on sale!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Happy Turkey Day

Garden Party challenge card

I'm finally getting my *%$! together and participating in challenges again. I was in a funk, but I'm climbing out now.

This is my submission for the Garden Party Challenge this week. Here's the picture for the inspiration.

For this card, I used all Odd Bird Planet stamps: Banner Tree, 'Tis the Season, Priscilla Cane Cat. I used a little liquid applique on Priscilla's hat. The paper is from the Flair Christmas collection. I can't tie a bow for nothin', so I made a knot. It's crooked, I know, but by the time I got it tied neatly, I wasn't going to stress over placement. I need bow lessons again, I guess.

I colored these images with my Prismacolor pencils. I was going to use my Copics, but I could see my pencils getting lonely, so I thought I'd keep them happy before they threw themselves all over the floor. Hey, it's happened before.....

Thanks for stopping by. Stop by the Paper Garden and give the weekly challenge a try. It's fun!

Monday Morning Comic

Wild Abandon

This is another image from Bombshell Stamps. I love this big image. I colored it with Copics and edged the white card with silver Krylon pen. A piece of lavender Prism paper is behind that and it was mounted to a piece of Lasting Impressions paper. I got a book of rub-ons from the last rubber stamp expo I went to and used one of those sentiments on this card. I kind of messed up the rub-on since I don't use them that often. Come back on Monday - I've got a new Monday Morning Comic! Thanks for stopping by today.

November A La Tart

I got my a la tart kit from OBP last night and I got to play with it a bit. Let me tell you, I love the papers, the embellishments and the STAMPS! Did you know you get new, unreleased, wood-mounted stamps in the a la tart kits now? In this month's kit, you get that cute little mouse dude over there and the sticks of candy in the next card. You can get a look at the kits over on the Odd Bird Planet site or if you are in Australia, you can get it from Lime Tart and save some moolah on shipping. I colored the little mouse with Copics and then cut him out. The laser cut tree was first colored with Copics, but the color didn't show up well, so I covered that with Shimmer (Thanks, Ryann), but that didn't sparkle enough for me, so went straight for the Stickles. Yes! I added a gem star and some opalescent mica chips for snow. I cut out the sentiment from the vinyl sheet included in the kit. For this card, I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig and lined up the candy stamps in a row. I colored it all with Copics. I didn't know what to call this card and asked the other crafters for suggestions on sentiments and this is the best one we came up with. Instead of stamping the sentiment, I used the rub-ons that are included in the kit. I'm not sure of the wonky letters, but it's a done deal now. I like how these candies look like candy as well as flowers. I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of this stamp. BTW, isn't that pom-pom strip just the cutest? Yep, you get some of that in the kit, too. Oh yeah, baby! Another card made with the a la tart kit. I just love those pink pom-poms. The other embellishments in the kit include the buttons, some brads, a small jar of glitter and charm paper clips.

I haven't shown you all the cards I made because, well, the other ones are odd and not worth taking up bandwidth or server space.

I almost forgot to post this easy card. As I was perusing some inspirational magazines, I saw a card with the Cuttle-Bugged background like this one. I was instantly enamored and had to reproduce it. I borrowed Tiff's CB and folders and went for it. You put your cardstock in about 2/3 way into the embossing folder and emboss. That's the top part here. Then you use your Scor-Pal or whatever you use to score stuff and score two narrow parallel lines after the CB area. Then put the other end of the cardstock a little less than 1/3 of the way into another CB folder. Emboss. Then do the parallel line thing again. That's it. How fun is that? I know I'll be doing this technique again and again. It'll be fun to mix up the CB folders in different combinations.

Thanks for stopping by today.

I call her 8-ball girl

I've been going a little crazy for Bombshell Stamps lately. I just got another 4 sets from them. Sa-weeeet! I call this card, 8-ball girl for obvious reasons. Where do I find a top like that and do they make it in bowling ball size? haha just kiddin'.

I've been practicing coloring my skin tones with my Copics. I think I'm kind of getting it. At least there is more than one color for her skin. Not all one color like I used to color. Trying to get the knack of shading. When I color, I imagine the light source and try to think of the image having three dimensions so I can apply the shading correctly.

I added some crystal lacquer to the little red hearts on the background and pop-dotted the Luck and Fate banner and the girl image.

As always, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your comments.

Veteran's Day

Today is Veteran's Day in the USA. It's a day to remember and honor our veterans and their service to our country. There's always a parade and people get out their flags and fly them.

Our dad was a veteran. He was in the Korean war as a member of the US Marine Corps. What was the Korean war? I don't really know. What were we doing there? Keeping the north from invading the south? I'm ashamed to say that I don't really know. I don't really know what exactly Dad did in the Korean war, either. He never wanted to talk about it. I think it had something to do with explosives or demolition.

He did take a lot of pictures when he was there. Mostly pictures of his buddies hanging out in the barracks or eating or dressing up in kimonos or something. He looked happy in those pictures, but he never wanted to talk about his actual job.

So, to all veterans, Happy Veteran's Day. We honor you in all you do to keep our country safe and free. As the saying goes, "All gave some. Some gave all." Thank you to all of you. And to you Dad, I'm thinking of you today as I do everyday. I love you and miss you.

Patio

Yes, my cats are spoiled. I admit it. If you don't know it already, we have 3 cats: Cheeto, Frankie and Gizmo. Cheeto is the cat in the picture to the left. He is the old man of the house and the dominant male. Frankie is the only girl and the tiniest of our kitties. She is a small fluffy orange kitty. Then there's Gizmo. He is a Bengal and is supposed to be an indoor kitty, but we do allow him outside visits with supervision. Gizmo has figured out that the waterbowl on top of the island gets filled with cold water from the fridge there, so when he goes outside, he jumps right up there and meows until I open the fridge and get out the water bottle of cold water for him. Well, not all the cats do it and they only like the cold water from the fridge now. Spoiled rotten cats and I love them so much! This is a shot of some of our new patio furniture. I won't bore you with the story of how we got it, but suffice it to say that you don't find too much patio furniture for sale in November, but we found some and we love it. We now have six barstools and six chairs for the table. I think we need to have a party now! C'mon over, lets have some fun. There's a jacuzzi in the back corner, too. I am really loving our yard now. If you'd like to see more pictures, go to my Flickr site to see the yard progress.

I can't believe it!

This is from Saturday afternoon. And to think that when I filled up on Tuesday, I paid $2.91 for premium and thought it was fantastic it was finally under $3.00.

November Special Deal

The November Special Deal from the Odd Bird Planet is here! These stamps are so darn cute, I can hardly stand it. I love these little Charles birds so much! I love coloring them all different colors. Red is just perfect for Christmas, don't you think? Ok, well enough of my gushing. Let's get on with the details, shall we? So over here to the left is the group of stamps you get with this month's special deal. You get: Charles Cardinal Left Charles Cardinal Right Birdbath Nest with Eggs "A Bird's Gotta Do What a Bird's Gotta Do" You get ALL of these stamps for 25% off! Click HERE. Here are the card samples I made with the stamps for the special deal. I colored all of these images with my Prismacolor markers. I don't use them often, but I really like them. After I put this little scene together, I decided it needed something extra, so I just started doodling. I drew some lines all around the image. I like it because it's different, but I'm not sure I'd do it all the time. So here we are with the nests in a circle. I often play with stamps in different ways, especially in circles. After stamping the nests in a circle using my Stamp-a-ma-jig, I carefully cut it all out. I stamped, cut out and adhered the birds to the wreath after adhering the wreath to the polka dot paper. This last one is really my favorite. I like the button flower and I like the little worm in his mouth. A bird's gotta do what a bird's gotta do! I think it's fun to paper piece instead of coloring everything. I don't know that it saves time with all that cutting out of images, but it's a different look.

Coloring Experiment 1

Sorry I've been gone so long.

I started playing with my coloring materials the other day. I was trying to decide which ones I liked best. The answer? It depends.

For this experiment, I stamped the OBP topiary three times for three different coloring techniques. I tried to use very similar colors for the pencils and markers.

Starting on the right, I used only my Prismacolor pencils. I blended pencils with pencils. No gamsol, no colorless blender. This is the way I like to color with pencils. It takes a long time because I go over and over the colors until I get it the way I think it should look.

For the center topiary, I used my Copics. I made sure I had plenty of ink on the paper so I could blend the colors. At one point, I put too much Forest Green on the topiary, so I used my colorless blender to lift that color off and expose the Apple Green underneath.

The topiary on the far left is by far my unfavorite. I used Prisma pencils and gamsol. I really don't use gamsol that much, and maybe that's why I really don't like using it, but I'm trying to give it a go for variety in my coloring. What I didn't like about it most was that I felt that once the color was blended out, I couldn't do anything with it - couldn't lighten it, couldn't add color to it, etc., without saturating the paper with gamsol and making the colors run outside the lines. Plus, using that blending stump makes my teeth itch. It's just weird.

So, it's really a close call between the Copics and the Prismas. It really is faster to color with the Copics and I like that. My projects get done a lot faster, BUT I just don't feel like I get the look of the blending that I want that I get with the Prisma pencils.

Which look do you like and why? Which technique do you use and why?

Copycat

You know how you find some card artist and you just love their layouts? Well, I love Jennifer's layouts, so I decided I needed to copy one.

Here is the link to the card she made and well, here is the card I made. I think mine is a reasonable facsimile, what do you think?

House Mouse image colored with Copics.