Happy Snow Days, Billy!

Hi, it's me again! Please, don't fall over in shock. I'd hate for you to break something this close to the holidays. LOL I just finished up a wintery card that was inspired by a trip through a bunch of challenge sites yesterday and I figured I'd post it before bed. (And at least it's not 2 a.m. this time!)

I present to you... Happy Snow Days! starring Billy from the Pink Cat Studio:

The glitter--mostly Stardust and Waterfall Stickles--really sparkles in real life. Alas, even with two lamps, these angle shots were the best I could get. But he's still pretty. Wait, boys aren't supposed to be pretty, are they? Ok, well, the sparkly snow is pretty then. =)

 I colored my digital Billy up with my Promarkers, with just a touch of T1 Copics to tone down the blue I used for his snowsuit. I wanted to use bright blue and orange together and then I found this paper buried in my stash - what luck! I used two light blue Color Box chalk inks together to sponge the background and then layered two pieces of white cardstock for the snow, glittering the edges with a combination of Stardust and Waterfall Stickles. The shadow under his feet is a bit of Promarkers in blue and grey with some Waterfall Stickles over it. The snowflakes are all Martha Stewart. The little ones are from the Aspen Punch-Around-the-Page punch. These are the positives from punching out on a blue card for another project. The sentiment was done on the computer. A bit of grosgrain in two widths was glued down first, then I used various thicknesses of foam dots. Billy himself has foam squares behind his head and upper body, but his feet are glued to the top snow layer. I thought the shadowing and glitter at his feet would make more sense with his feet actually touching the ground instead of magically hovering above it. LOL

Well, that's it for today. I am posting Billy in the following challenges:

Craft Your Passions - Tis the Season
Kaboodle Doodles Challenge Blog - Bundle Up for Winter
Lollipop Crafts - Challenge #59: B is for... (in this case Billy, Boy and Blue!)
PaperCrafting Journey - Anything Goes
Sweet Stampin' - Punches and Dies
Crazy 4 Challenges - C4C115 Snow!!!
Send a Smile for Kids - Happy Holiday Wishes 
Paper Sundaes - Winter Wonderland
Crafty Calendar Challenge - Winter Wardrobe

Now I'm off to let the dogs have one more potty break and we're all off to bed. See you soon!
Happy Crafting,
Christy

THANKS... this one's for Squirrel!

Just a quick stop this morning as I'm waaaaaaaaay overdue for bed. (Um, yes, Mom, I know. I will be tired at work tomorrow. Sigh.)

Earlier this month I won a candy draw from my bloggy friend Squirrel who does some absolutely fabulous Distress Inks coloring. Tim Holtz himself even said so. (nudge and wink) haha (You can find her great tutorials Part 1 here and Part 2 here at Squirrel's World.) Anyhoo, I won the cutest little Henry hugging a heart from Whiff of Joy and he made the journey safely across the Pond, through the US Postal Service to my mailbox and has settled right in to his new home in my craft room. =) I figured inking him up and putting him to use was the best way to say thank you... and what could be more appropriate than using him for... a thank you card!

I used ProMarkers to color Henry, a little pumice stone and spun sugar on the Nestie circle behind him, and dazzled up his little heart with some fruit punch Stickles. The sentiment is from a Popcorn Bear set from Crafter's Companion and the papers are DCWV textured cardstocks and an older Provocraft pack, I believe. The bit of ribbon was a clearance find at WalMart. I added a couple of pink rhinestones as the tag was a little boring.  Pretty simple, but I wanted Henry to be the star of the show.

On to the challenges...

All That Scraps would like us to Give Thanks this week

Crafting 4 All Seasons this week is #14, Thanksgiving, Thank You or a Sketch

It's Being Thankful week #47 at PaperPlay Challenges

and Anything Goes over at Samuel Taylor's

Well, Squirrel, my bloggy friend, I hope you feel I did little Henry justice! =) Thanks again!

Happy Crafting and Happy Monday, everyone!

Christy

(Love ya, Mom!)

Sweet Lil Guy

I'm back... already! As I said in yesterday's post, I've been playing with side step cards. This baby card for a coworker is based on the dresser side-step card that I've seen on a number of blogs in the past year.

Ok, I know I made it, but isn't it totally sweet! This is a new stamp I got from The Greeting Farm in a Build-a-Onesie clear stamp set which is adorable. And versatile with all the add-ons to change out the image on the onesie. I got both the boy and the girl set in a recent sale.

I used a Spellbinder Nestie to cut out the bottom of the dresser. It's kind of utilitarian since I don't have some of the fancier labels, but it's for a boy, so it works. Copper brads on some simple rectangular cuts for drawer pulls and some distress inks to age it a bit and voila! =) I used Copics for coloring the onesie and I free-handed a bib around the Lil Guy stamp to hang on the top dresser, using white DMC floss for the ties. I didn't have any fabric (although thinking about it, I could have colored some felt, duh!) so I wet a blue and white polka dot paper and molded it a bit, then glued a 1/4" blue grosgrain ribbon folded over the paper edges and added a white pompom on the corner to create a blanket to hang over the bottom drawer.

The sentiment is a cheap dollar stamp from Michaels. I stamped it in baby blue chalk ink and using a large needle from my cross-stitch supplies to get the skinny bits, I covered it in Stardust Stickles which has that nice pastel sparkle. Pop dots as usual under the onesie, the sentiment and the drawers (will I ever create anything completely flat and just two-dimenstional again? LOL).

 It's hard to tell from the pictures how small this card seems, especially compared to yesterday's birthday card. That card started as an 8-1/2x11" while this one began at 5-1/2x8-1/2". The finished baby card looks like a miniature in comparison. =) Why does everything look so much cuter when it's small like that?

Challenges for my li'l blue baby card...

A Gem of A Challenge is on challenge #35, monochromatic (baby blue!) + not Christmas + a sentiment

There doesn't seem to be an entry limit on Lollipop Crafts (and no prize this week so I think it's ok), so this is another one for #58 Anything Goes.

And Creative Inspirations challenge #139 is the color challenge of blue-grey-white this week.

So there you have it... two cards in two days. Scary, huh? Well, back to the craftroom for me! See you soon!

Happy Crafting,
Christy

Hopefully this card is too cool for you...

One of my nieces turns 16 in early December and, as many teens think, adults are just not cool. So I'm hoping that I managed to come up with a card that wasn't too eye-roll inducing. LOL

I have been playing with side steps... a few others are in the works I'll be sharing soon... and I love the interest and depth. Such a little effort to slice and dice the paper in the right place has such a big impact. I found a DCWV pack at Michaels on Sunday that caught my eye more for my 11-year-old niece who adores pink and purple everything and while not a frilly, frou-frou dress wearer still likes girly colors. The soon-to-be 16-year-old isn't a tomboy per se, but she wears a lot of burgundy, hunter green, navy... unisex colors, I guess... and the ubiquitous blue jeans.=) So I picked a Kenny K image that attracted my attention months ago (looooove those sneakers!) and pulled out the burgundy in the dp, using the dark teal and dark pink coordinating papers for an accent. I admit to having cropped out those drips under her hand on the original digistamp. They just weirded me out. LOL

I had a hard time getting a good pic from the front view since it's so dark out and I kept overlighting one area or another and what looks like smooth color transition in person is sharper here than IRL(pretty please Santa Claus, bring me a new camera!), but I like the side views:

 You can just see the inside which I also decorated. I made a little pocket with the teal silver-glitter heart paper to hold a $20 bill or a gift card. The other side I made my message spot. =)

Still working on my coloring but I flipped back to ProMarkers this week as I don't have any burgundy or teal/green-grey shades in Copics. A little frosted lace Stickles over baby pink made a really pretty ice cream color. =) Gel stickers are EK Success, heart and star are Colorbok pearlescent paper cut with Sizzix dies, and the cupcake brad is Doodlebug, I think. I bought some thinner 1/16th inch foam squares to mix up my dimension a bit, so I used those on my Troublemaker image so she's still close to the wall. I think she looks more like she's leaning against it that way.

This one was a lot of fun to do. It's amazing how some color can bring alive a stamp. I think I'm going to be hooked on cardmaking for a long time! =)

And luckily enough, I managed to fit my design to suit a few challenges:

Sweet Stampin' Challenge is doing BIRTHDAY to celebrate their own 2nd birthday

Kenny K's Krafty Girlz Challenge is focusing on Kids (even though at 16 she doesn't think she's a kid! ha!)
Lollipop Crafts Challenge #58 is the always easy ANYTHING GOES
and I <3 ProMarkers is also on an ANYTHING GOES (#93) this week.

Back soon with another crafty creation... I have about 4 or 5 cards in the works at once this week. Time to finish something already! LOL  See you soon! 

Happy Crafting,
Christy

Glitter and Shimmer - an LOTV for my Mom

Hi! Mojo is in high gear here at Beansville. =)  

Last week I got the best present for myself... a Wild Orchid Crafts order!

A crafty gift to myself. I couldn't get everything I wanted - some things were out of stock - so I picked some alternatives and stuck mostly to basic pinks and white to color myself with shimmery spritzes or distress inks to give my purchases more flexibility. I also ordered new paper to color on, a few more Copics, some textured cardstock and a few other new crafty toys.  I spent my vacation last week ordering and receiving craft supplies and planning out my Christmas gift to-do list, as well as getting started, although nothing is completely done yet. I didn't get into my DIs much, so no inky fingers, but I glittered and shimmered all week. Very festive! haha  I had a really great, fun week. Just me, the dogs, the cat and more crafting supplies than I should admit to owning at this point... ;)  I also really enjoyed popping in to blogs during the day and having time to really post comments on others' blogs.

Coming down a little from my crafty high to get back into the working groove was not so much fun. So I was happy when my mom who had a knee replacement surgery today asked me to make her a card to 'keep her company' at the hospital. I pulled out one of my uninked LOTV stamps (ok, so most of my LOTV stamps are still uninked... give me time! ha) and went to work.

I followed a sketch from A Gem of a Challenge because I liked it when I saw it, but I didn't follow the other requirements for their challenge.

This is the card before I Wild Orchid Crafts'ed it.

Her hair was bit challenging since I couldn't quite get the curve of her head for a highlight, but I think she's pretty. Of course, as others have mentioned, how can you go wrong with an LOTV stamp? Papers are mix of ProvoCraft in my stash and Nitwits which I recolored purple in Microsoft Word and the cardstock is DCWV. Martha Stewart border punch and a couple of Nestabilities and ribbon I picked up at Wal-Mart.

I liked my card, but I was dying to add some of those paper floral beauties, so here are the "after" shots.

The gardenia is Stardust Stickle'd and I used Smooch Spritz in a couple of colors on the roses and aster daisy to give it glimmer, glitter and shine. I also did up Rosie's skirt in Stardust Stickles.  After I took photos I added two smaller pearls on the upper left hand corner of the card since it seemed to need just a wee bit more. 

I am entering this card in the ABC Challenge this week - D for Dazzle and Stamptacular Sunday Challenge's PUNCH It!

Hope you enjoy - I'll be back very soon with more! Happy Crafting!

Christy Beans

Bugaboo Monkey & His Birthday Cake

Hello!  Whew - what a month October was... fast, furious and kinda freaky.

Snow before Halloween = CRAZY!

I just browsed back through some of my postings and I'm not sure if I've been spending too much time talking about how I created my cards... what started out as a way to talk to my mom about my new hobby is now actually getting viewed by other crafters who already know the techniques and the lingo, so with 9 months of blogging (albeit sparingly) and checking out other blogs (Lord, there's always a new one to see!), it seems like it's time to give birth to something new and hopefully improved in the next couple of weeks. =)

Today I'm just popping in for a quick post of a birthday card I did for a coworker's birthday. Her bday was yesterday, but an unforeseen furbaby escape from the backyard delayed production until last night. haha

She loves monkeys, so this Bugaboo digi was perfect. I used a combination of Copics and ProMarkers to color it up - I'm getting better and more comfortable with them, but I was using plain basic cheap-o cardstock. I ordered some of the Heavenly White I liked from The Paper Temptress for next week's adventure (more details to come on that) so I'll be able to get in lots of practice. =) The purples of the cake and the papers are a better match IRL.

I used Deco Arts Snow Writer for the icing and then while it was wet, coated it in Bumblebee glitter from Doodlebug. (Looks so much better IRL than these quickie photos!) Some pearls on the cake and in the corners... and I replaced the little hat strings with a little white pom-pom that I coated in Grape Ice Stickles. My love of popping up my elements on foam dots makes its usual appearance, and inking all the paper edges with Distress Inks.  I had made some banana paper with a stamp, Mustard Seed DI and Copics to color, but I ended up only using a little piece for the sentiment and a greeting space on the inside.

Inside is one of the Valentine Monkeys from Bugaboo, except he lost his little heart accent. I love his bowtie, even if you only see a bit of it. =)  I colored him first as practice for the cake monkey. Figured it was better to have the learning curve on the INSIDE of the card. LOL

Poor monkey... his brother has all the cake on the front and he's separated from its deliciousness by all that cardstock. LOL

Anyway, sorry the pics are a rush job from this morning before work. So dark outside that early and the battery in my camera was on its last little spark. =( Sigh.

Happy Crafting, everyone and I will e you all soon!

Christy Beans