Wednesday Sketch Day!

 I fell in love with this paper at the scrapbook store and had to match my copics to the paper - I think I did a pretty good job!

Oh my gosh, I have learned the secret of liquid pearls.   They leave this pointy thing, kind of like a chocolate chip. But if you tap tap tap the back of the card onto your table, they round out and look like ... well, PEARLS !!! Ok you probably knew that but it was a real revelation to me!

  My card has brayering again, and another one of those masked suns. I am beginning to think that when I die, somebody will have to pry my brayer out of my cold dead hands. Or better yet, bury me with it --- won't St. Peter wonder when I come knocking at the pearly gates. .... hmmm. I could pearl them.   Tap Tap  Tap

  

Tuesday Teapot

I've been zindorfed. I seem to need a sunrise or sunset on every card, along with brayered edges ... just can't seem to stop!

I actually made 2 cards for this challenge. One of them has everything BUT a flamingo. I have the best flamingo stamp ever --- and of course left it in Florida. Who would think I would want a flamingo stamp in Michigan? We do pigeons. Maybe seagulls. A lot of blackbirds. But flamingos, no, not so much.

What do you mean?

What do you mean, my granddaughter is a cat?  Well, my grandkitty is having a birthday tomorrow - and since she spends her days looking out of a window at the New York Skyline, this was an appropriate card to make.

I am tucking some catnip inside which will fall all over my daughter's clean floor when she opens the card ... such fun to be old and able to get my revenge for all the messes I cleaned up after her ;)

Sunset for David

This is using the boat stamp that David gave me for my birthday --- I was going to add an island and decided to leave well enough alone!  My camera didn't seem to want to pick up the colors too well, if you click on the photo you can see it better.

I'm taller!

I don't even want to discuss how long this card took!  The rhinestone gems are attempting to hide the crooked corners ... I REALLY should have used white bobbin thread instead of being too lazy to change out the brown bobbin, and I think I could learn to sew a little straighter! My card grew and grew until I ended up not having cardstock big enough to make the base card - so what you see as the back layer is a light green file folder cut down. 

I had my bone density checked today and was measured ... I am NO longer 4 foot 11 and a half. I used to always add that " and a half" just like a little kid proud to be closer to the next birthday ... Nope ... I am a sky scraping FIVE FEET !  I had her do it twice because I have never hit 5 feet by anyone measuring ever.

Possible causes are coming in like crazy --
Dear friend says that at the rate I am going I might need to change my logo to a giraffe instead of a cat.
DH said it's due to living in Florida part of the year.  We're at a lower latitude and we actually are spinning faster which creates a centripetal force that makes you taller.  Or,  maybe it's all of the swimming you do down there?  Or, maybe you hit a growth spurt?  But then he told me the sad truth ... people are usually taller first thing in the morning because the spine compresses during the day. Then the discs rehydrate during the night again.  Oh well, I was 5 feet tall for one brief moment. Guess it is not enough to go get my driver's license changed. ( Besides, they might ask me to update my weight ... we don't even want to talk about that!)

Wednesday Sketch Day!

A thank you for Michelle Zindorf. The lighthouse rays are a technique she taught us with the moonbeams.
(See my post from May 24 - Zindorf workshop cards)

It's easy with a sponge off the edge of a piece of cardstock or post it note.

After I printed out the text, it seemed a little extreme - kind of like I had joined a Brayer Cult or something.

Tuesday Teapot

                 I really love the fish I copied and if you want him, feel free to grab the image:  I put things on my blog not so much because I think anybody else wants them ( although I am flattered if you do) but because then when I want them again I can find them!

Yup, if you look closely, this IS a teapot. One wonders what manner of tea would be appropriate here - certainly not your usual black or green tea.  She's not an Earl Gray either --- I am thinking Chai with peach.  I colored with copics and used my blender pen to make scales and dots.

Zindorf workshop cards

We made 3 cards at the Advanced Brayer class with Michelle Zindorf in Wheaton this weekend. I can't wait to try and see if I can duplicate what I learned now that I am home!

Mike went running in Chicago

Mike was out enjoying the lakefront - so I pulled out my bag of copics and played!

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.