Some of my favorite things

Hi everyone. Over on my niece's blog, she posted that she tends to use the same basic five items over and over. In no particular order, here are my top five items. Oh yes, my ATG gun. When I first got it, I thought it was a bit bulky, but it really isn't. It's light and works perfectly!

My favorite scissors. The little Cutterbee scissors. I call them my bumble bee scissors. I love these scissors because they are sharp and small.

Inks. We all need inks if we're going to stamp! I use these two different types of inks: The Memento ink I use for stamping images that I want to color with my Copics and the Versafine for images I color with my Prismacolor pencils. I think the Versafine gives a sharper image than the Memento, but you can't use Versafine ink with Copics unless you heat emboss the image.

My Prismacolor pencils. I love these pencils. I store my pencils in highball glasses. I have 3-4 pencils of each color. I do this for a couple of reasons. One, I'm a pencil pig. Two, I figure if I have 3-4 of each color, when I go to look for a particular color, I won't have to search for the color. Oh, and I like the look of the full pencil cups. :)

And last but certainly not least, my Copics. It's about 50/50 now when I color an image. Sometimes it's Prismas and sometimes it's my Copics. I love these sketch markers and can't imagine crafting without them.

Thanks, Dana, for your post. How about you? What are your top five items you couldn't craft without?

Thanks for stopping by today!

House Mouse Monday Challenge #25

I tell myself I'm going to do a couple of challenges a week. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't, but I have good intentions. One of the challenge blogs I like a lot is the House Mouse Monday Challenge blog. They give you a sketch and all you have to do is use a HM stamp on the card. Sometimes they give away blog candy! Here is my take on this weeks sketch:

This stamp is called "Bear-ied in Paperwork". Reminds me of this specific time of the year - tax time! Oh, how I hate tax time. No, I don't do my own taxes. I just hate to get all the junk together for the tax guy, and I am not organized all year to keep it together. I'm busy being creative!

Ok, so there is a flower on this card. The original sketch has a bow tied there. You are free to change the sketch how you want - make it smaller, bigger, turn it upside down, sideways, etc., so I put a flower there. I cannot tie a nice bow to save my cards. Really. I even tie my shoes crooked. I didn't have a nice brown Prima flower, either, so I took a white one and colored it with my Copic marker. My card measures 5.5 x 5.5 and I colored the image with my Prismacolor pencils.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Cat chipboard book

I am so far behind I don't know when or if I'll catch up. Here's a book I've been working on this weekend. A friend of mine just had a litter of kittens. No, not HER! Her cat! haha!! I crack myself up sometimes. This is the front of the book. My sweet sister sent me this cat-shaped book for my birthday. It's so cute! I used DCWV Pet Paper for the book. I used some justjohanna Odd Bird Planet stamps on these facing pages. Aren't they just too cute?

This next layout is fun. I had this brown leather frame with lime green stitching in my embellishments drawer. I put foam dots around three of the edges to raise it up. See where the little green dot sticks out from the top? That's so you can pull out the picture from the frame. I colored the little kitty and put her in there until my friend puts her own kitty picture in there.

This one, I stamped and colored the Crazy Cat Lady in Training. The television set is a QuicKutz die for my Revolution. I raised up the television frame on three sides and put a ribbon pull on the left side to slide the picture in and out of the frame. The tag is for journaling.

I love the bright colors in the layout below. I have these little wooden flower pots that are cut in half. I got them at Michael's. I colored the wooden flower pot with my Copics and then put in some flowers with some glue. After that dried, I just glued it to the book.

I used another of my QuicKutz dies for the layout below. It's a file folder diecut. Two diecuts, actually. One for the cover and one for the tabbed inserts. I stamped and colored the image on the outside. Colored with my Prismas. There are six pages for pictures of kitties in this little booklet. YAY!

A long time ago, I was RAK'd with a bunch of kitty cat stuff and these stickers were part of that RAK. I thought it was cute to put the ingredients for a cat on the back of the photo book.

This book does not lay flat when closed. It's already about 6" thick. I tied some ribbons to the top of the book as you can see by the front view (first picture). I really enjoy making these little chipboard books. I hope my friend enjoys this book as much as I enjoyed making it for her.

Thanks for stopping by today.

I am Certified!

You notice I said "Certified" not "Certifiable", right? Ok, just wanted to get that straight.

On January 23rd, I drove up to Anaheim, CA to take the Copics Certification class. The class was fun, entertaining and informative. I really enjoyed learning the shading techniques that Marianne taught. We got to look through her sketch and coloring books, too. Woo hoo! The gals I sat with at the table were so much fun. Thanks gals!

I think the most impressive thing I learned was choosing the right type of paper for the job. Marianne gave us samples of different types of papers to try. My favorite one was the Prism paper that is just slightly glossy. The ink doesn't bleed over the stamped image line and I like the smooth look. The other paper I liked was the Neenah paper. It allowed the ink to soak into the paper all the way to the back with out bleeding out all over the place. You all know NOT to use watercolor paper, right? It will suck your markers dry very quickly. Also, choose your inks carefully. Since Copics are alcohol-based, you'll want to use a dye-based ink. If you use an alcohol-based ink, such as Staz-On, the ink will bleed into the marker and vice versa. Probably not the look you were going for, I'm guessing. I use Memento Tuxedo Black ink. You can get it at most every stamp or scrapbook store, but I get mine at the Paper Garden Store. You can also get your Copics there, and by the way, THEY ARE ON SALE RIGHT NOW! Here's a picture of me receiving my certificate from Marianne Walker herself. Thanks for stopping by today!