Coloring Red

There is a super tutorial on coloring with red markers over at I Like Markers - and I had to give it a try. My first attempt was my apple --- done in the "old fashioned" way of coloring the whole image with little circles of light then adding the darker colors and finally finishing with the original light color as a blender. Next I tried my octopus image with lots of feathering and no little circles. Then I sampled paper with the digi flowerpot - lots of people say SU is hard to work on, but I found the SU worked pretty well for me. The flowerpot is from Designed 2 Delight - you can get a free image there every week to play with.

Now ... do I chop them apart and make cards or save them as samples. hmmm. Dilemma.

Event Planner Amy Atlas

Amy Atlas creates events - and a lot of inspiration. Here is a card I made and you can see the inspiration on my computer screen.

Blog Hop Grunge ... Tribute to Amy

The Theme of this month's blog hop at Firecracker is GRUNGE ... and I decided to make it a real challenge and create an orchid/grunge card. This digital image is available over at Firecracker Designs along with a lot of other fun stuff.

The official start time of this Hop is Friday, at 8:00 AM (EST). If you arrived early, please be patient as all the links may not be live yet.

This is a “circular blog hop” where the beginning is wherever you start!! You will know you are at the end of your blog hop when you’ve come back to the blog you’ve started. We'll all be showing a different interpretation of grunge this month. Your comment at each blog will give you another chance to win a special treat. If you win, you will be contacted by Pamela via e-mail (so be sure to leave it with your comment.) and you can also find out on Pamela’s blog after the blog hop ends on Mon, at 8:00 PM (EST). If you want to hop right now, Chrissy is next on the list. Hop HERE ... or read the tutorial, there is another link at the end.



My card uses a digital image of an orchid from Firecracker. First I printed it on light brown cardstock and colored it with copics. Then I used a white pencil to lighten the places I wanted to add highlights. My prismacolor colored pencils worked great for highlighting.





I got some shelf lining at the dollar store. It makes a wonderful pattern on your brayer if you ink up your brayer, then run the brayer over the shelf runner before putting it on your paper. By running it over some Tim Holtz grunge letters, I was able to remove the ink from the letters creating the " Amy" outline that you see. I layered the grunge letters on top of the outlines, off-setting them a bit.

After cutting out my image, I roughed up the edges with a scissors. Then I layered everything together, added some embellishments, and I have a card ready for my dear friend. The digital drawing is of one of her favorite orchids.

So this card is my tribute to my favorite muse, Amy - she inspires me and cheers me on no matter what I do.


Now, to continue the circle, you will need to hop on over to Chrissy's Creations
and keep going until you’ve come back to where you’ve started!  Click on "comments" below to leave a comment with your email address and get another chance to win some Firecracker Rubber Stamps!

Another Wednesday sketch card

Another image I colored, this time with gray and red, and just a little yellow.  The image was free at Designed 2 Delight.

Wednesday Sketch Day!

I really had fun with this sketch. To start with, I love the orchid I drew for Amy and keep using it on card after card. Next I used soft suede which I also really find very pretty. The coloring came out just right - I was coloring a bunch of red things this morning and working on my technique of coloring. I can't believe I said that ... over 60 years old and she is practicing her coloring ... never thought the day would come.

I will be posting all my red coloring this weekend when I am gone to a brayer workshop with Michelle Zindorf in Wheaton, IL. So you can expect a lot more brayering next week!

Teapot Tuesday

If it is Tuesday, it is time for a teapot. I might head back to bed and make the card after the sun struggles its way up into the sky. Mike had to fly out at 6 am today so he had me up at 4 when he tripped over the dog dish in the kitchen after tiptoeing out of the bedroom. There I was in my nice warm snuggly and kept thinking, gee, I should really get up and say goodbye. By the time I crawled out of bed, I managed to see the taillights of the car as he left the driveway.

My son gave me the most beautiful stamps for my birthday. The lighthouse one is layered wood, clearly chosen by someone who appreciates fine wood ... and the cube of 4 ships has me yearning for the ocean. So this card was a cinch to make. It's too bad I left my treasure of teensy starfish to embellish in Florida - was saving them for a perfect inspiration.

Update ... finally got the card posted - 7:30 PM !!! Please don't even notice that the "ship's knot" on the lighthouse piece is really not an official boy scouty knot at all. CORRECTION ... it is a lark's head. If it has a name, it is official. ( Thanks Juliet!)

Christmas Card Challenge -- May cards

The card on the right was my prototype --- then I decided that putting sticky tape on and trying to capture fine glitter was not the way to go with the snowflakes. Plus I really preferred coloring the snowmen with copics instead of marker and puff paint. So the cards on the left were the final product.

A card for Cathleen

A card for Cathleen, featured stamper at Splitcoast today.

Birthday Stamp

I received this stamp for my birthday and made bookmarks and a card with it. This was posted late because we went to an Amish quilt auction on Friday and I wasn't here to post.

April showers bring May flowers

But these MAY showers are giving me lots of coloring time. This is a digi image from Firecracker and I have been trying out different color combinations as well as different backgrounds. About the only thing I have settled on is the rocks --- I really like doing the rocks with a soft gray, a warm gray and a peach. Well, no, a couple of them have blue or green.

Photos aren't cropped. I couldn't get the scanner to work as well as the camera to take a picture that is true to color. Usually I go outside and use daylight but it is pouring right now.

Sketch challenge Wednesday

This sketch was really challenging for me with the angle on the top - maybe not my favorite card ever ... but gosh, this is for someone who has been getting birthday cards for 80 years, how can you top that !

teapot Tuesday

A dreary pot on a dreary day ... but I had fun creating the flowers to brighten it up. And the rain outside is certainly encouraging MY flowers to grow as well. Ok so one of my geranium pots has silk flowers that were on sale at JoAnnes ... and they aren't too likely to grow.

Inspired by blog hopping

My pal Barb is recovering and needed a card to cheer her up. How could this elephant not make her smile! I found the image online -- and loved it. Barb is a quilter so the card had to have stitches and buttons. The flamingo is a punch art steal from a card I saw online.

D2D Flowerpot

I grabbed the free digi at Designed to Delight this week and had a ball coloring the pot with different combinations of Copics. What a great multi-use card!


Doncha love the 2 colors in the square set on point? It was because I had a scrap of pink that wasn't big enough. I love how it looks! Adds just enough interest!

Bird day card

This Danish counting poster was the inspiration for my bird day card.

Queen card ... and more Christmas

5 more Christmas cards in the stack. They will have stickle sparkle but I wanted to scan them first.

Tuesday Teapot ... on Thursday

On Tuesday I said something to my husband about it being Monday and the start of the week. He looked at me with a look I anticipate more and more, that ***OH Honey, you are really losing it *** look and kindly informed me that it was Tuesday.
So don't be surprised that the Tuesday challenge appears on my blog on Thursday. At least I think it's Thursday! Oh my, I really am losing it!

So which do you prefer, sketchy or plain? Feel free to grab the images.

Brayering and Layering

Sketch challenge Wednesday





After seeing this card, I had to try a layered scene. This is what I came up with.

Directions are for the bare branch tree card. I cut the white cardstock in the shapes that I wanted for the sketch challenge and then used just a tiny bit of double stick tape under each one to position them.. . I used a punched out piece of post it to mask the moon I used a brayer to put the blue on the top and the brown on the bottom, but you could do it with a sponge or cotton ball. I took off the mask and stamped bare trees all over the layered card with my dark brown ink. I then used the same stamp and stamped with purple, kind of filling in empty spaces. Then I took it apart and put the dark color layer behind each piece which hid the edges that were left from stamping over the edges of the layers and re - layered it with permanent adhesive. There were big huge white spaces so it was easy to place everything back

Birthday card for a dog

That isn't a typo, it is not a card for a dog lover, it is a card for a dog. Delores will be ONE and my friend Lisa does the whole deal with a cake and party hats. It was a good chance to practice coloring with my copics.

More Christmas!

I am behind on my 10 a month plan ... so here is another card that I might reproduce a few more times.