PCJ DT Card: Summer! - Daniel Summertime

Happy Saturday!

It is H.O.T. here and has been all week.... high 90s every day with strong sunshine (that's 36, 37-ish for you Celsius followers. LOL) It's too hot to think and I'm wondering if some of my brain has melted... I went to do my post for today's SAS4K cards and I realized I never did my PCJ DT post on Thursday!  I hope it cools off soon!

So... the challenge this fornight at Paper-Crafting Journey is SUMMER!!!!

That's whatever SUMMER means to you... weddings, beaches, vacations, colors, water... maybe even Christmas for you peeps south of the 'quator! =) Our challenge is sponsored by Fresh Brewed Designs and they have some great digital stamp images plus they'll be having a blog hop soon to celebrate the release of some new rubber stamps on July 14-16 with some special giveaways!  For our challenge, the randomly chosen winner will get to choose three of their digis!

Summer to me always reminds me of my childhood. We didn't go to the beach much, but there were lots of swimming pools and playing outside in the dirt.... and tans. Even though I used to get a lovely honey brown color every summer, I haven't gotten a tan since I was 18 years old. That summer I saw the face of an older relative who tanned all the time, even sometimes in tanning beds, and I decided I didn't want to look like that in 20 years. I haven't used an SPF under 30 in nearly a decade. I guess it worked, because when people found out that this past birthday was the big 4-0, responses were mostly "no way!" and "you're not 40!" I find this particularly ironic because in my midteens I was always mistaken for being older than I was. LOL It's also funny to see me next to a couple of my brothers who inherited their coloring from my mother's Native American ancestor as I'm so pale and they, well, my mother once misidentified her own son at a distance, thinking he was latino. hee hee

Anyway... So I chose this cute little boy, Daniel Summertime...

I colored him with Copics and chose darker skin tones than I have been using to get that tan look. It took a little more blending and layers of coloring, but it came out ok. I decided that Summer also meant bright, vibrant colors, so I took my color cues from these super digital papers from the Flipflopsicle kit by Summer Driggs. (Summertime Designs are FABULOUS papers and FREE!)The two center panels were taped together and popped up over a jute ribbon. I fussy cut Daniel and popped him up as well.

The sandcastle and bucket buttons are from a pack I picked up at Wal-Mart and the piece de resistance is my flip flop. It's one of those keychains you get from Oriental Trading Company or party stores to give to kids as favors. I stuck a little clear gem in the hole from the chain. Isn't it cute? A few last gems in the corners and done!

So there you have it... my idea of Summertime... what's yours?  Be sure to join us at Paper-Crafting Journey and post your Summer paper craft! =)  And don't forget -- 12 more days to submit for our Design Team Call here! 

Happy Crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Buttons and ribbons (and a bow if you're not me)

Hello again, my crafty friends! 

OK, so I've been crazy-super-busy the past few weeks and oddly hinting that I would share the why with you. Last week was National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week and as an admin, I'm on the Committee that plans and puts together all the celebrations. This year I had stepped down my commitments and was "only" assigned a few pre-Week tasks. These included both a Tshirt sale and... candygrams.

I suppose I have only myself to blame as several years ago I suggested it as a way to improve morale, get more people interested, and create a way to sort of "advertise" our week elsewhere in the hospital. Our Lab employees buy a card that they fill out on one side with the name and mailcode of the recipient, who may be anywhere in our health system, and the other side with a little message. Then a group of us get together and prep little white paper sacks of candy, fold em up, staple on the cards and mail out at the beginning of Lab Week. The most we'd ever done was about 800 altogether... mostly chocolates, but some hard/chewy candies and we even offer sugar free chocolates and sugar free non-chocolate candies for the diabetics among us.

This year.... this year we topped out at a jaw-dropping 1760! There was a BIG jump in the number of candygrams sent out to non-lab departments. I am soooooo lucky that this year I actually had a handful of volunteers because some years it has been just me, or me and one other person with her two kids. This year I had two adults and five kids (kids make great candybag filling slaves! LOL) most of the day and a few hours each from three other adults. Also fortunately it's very organized and well-thought out assembly line style which really keeps the pace up. We did 1400 in 8 hours and I did another 300 the next day and 60 more latecomers early in the week. None of them had ever helped before and one told me that she if never sees another little white bag full of candy again it will be too soon. LOL  If I can get a picture one of them took of the tables full of little white paper sacks standing at attention and being filled up with sweets, I'll share it... but what I can share with you is my photo of how much candy I bought on my first run to the store.

This is what $1000 worth of candy looks like:

And yes, I got many, many, many weird looks while shopping. Usually people selling candy buy the full bars and people assume they're at a stand or filling vending machines. But bags and bags and bags of miniatures really had them guessing. I had to make another trip to pick up sugar free items and more chocolates as we sold probably close to 1500 of those. So, with making flyers, candy shopping excursions, printing candygram cards, the TShirt sale, assisting with planning the educational lectures and helping with some other prep work, I was lucky to be home to let the dogs out to pee on a regular basis, poor pups.

Anyway, I am now free from Lab Week responsibilities and ready to get back to my normal crafty creativity. This week I got to spend some time coloring!

Send A Smile 4 Kids has a great challenge up today.... buttons and ribbons and/or bows!  I jumped on the "and/or" because I just don't seem to leave room in my imagination quite yet for bows when I'm thinking through my design... or I never have just the right ribbon I would want to use.

Our sponsors this week have generously granted us some great prizes for THREE randomly chosen winners:

$10 for Di's Digi Downloads

$20 for The Paper Shelter

$12 for A Day For Daisies

There's something about the angles in so many of her drawings that made me pick A Day for Daisies as the focus of my card for the challenge. I chose the image Puppy Love.

Although I am no Delphine or Coops, I have been practicing my coloring, although not as much as I'd like, and played a bit more with texture and light sources, which are two of the things I admire most about these very different card artists. I particularly worked on getting the sort of mottled look of some of the acid-washed, beat to death denims we have these days, but without any rips or tears. And I decided on a stronger light source this time and from a definite direction. If this little charmer's blond hair doesn't point you the right direction of my light source, I really failed. LOL I also see now why some Copics coloring champions also use pencils to deepen the darkest edges. Getting what should be dark crevices the right color is going to take (much) more practice, but I'm happy with what I've learned so far. One thing I'm not happy with is the errant gray mark on his ear that I had to kind of color over and blend in... I have some depth perception issues and I have to be more careful about how far away from the paper my pen tip is or "oops!" happens a lot. LOL

The papers are DCWV The Pet Stack. I love the bits of blue in all the earthy colors in this stack. I wish that DCWV did more smaller papers and brought the pattern down to scale. I used Walnut Distress Ink on all my edges. The buttons and the twine are from the candy stash that I won from Michelle O last year. I haven't really buttoned up much, but she sent a whole bunch of vintage buttons and I love the look with the colors of the DCWV papers. My ribbons are a mesh wired ribbon layered with a brown sheer, both from Berwick-Offray. A little puppy button from Jesse James adorns my sentiment and a few teeny pearls finish my other corners. My image is ... (you know what's coming) popped up on foam dots. I did use a stylus to just slightly round out my image a bit around the edges too.

My teamies have beribboned, buttoned and bowed up some fabulously gorgeous cards... head on over to Send A Smile 4 Kids Challenge to oooh and aaaah over them, then get to crafting and share your kid-friendly cards with us for a chance at those super prizes. Even better, follow the guidelines here and make a couple to send some cheer to a girl or boy of any age who's stuck in hospital on these gorgeous spring days! (And even if it's raining and the world is waterlogged, who wants to be stuck indoors at a hospital?)

Thanks for hanging in for this VLP (very looooong post) and have a crafty week! I will see you all soon!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: For the Boys - Super Kid & Summer Monkey

Hey, everyone! This is going to be a shorter post than my usual... wait, who just yelled "woohoo!"???  Shush!  As I was saying... short post. I'll fill you in later on my buzy week, but I have about 30 minutes to get this done, so to the point I go...

It's time for a new challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids! This challenge is all about cards FOR THE BOYS. Snips, snails, puppy dog tails...  or in my case a cape and the ol' undies-over-tights outfit and a monkey splish-splashing his way into summer. LOL Our sponsors this week are Karen's Doodles - offering 3 digis, Bugaboo Stamps - 7 digis, and the Stamp Shoppe - a $15 gift certificate.

My first card is a Karen's Doodle image.

I colored first and then fussed forever to find patterned papers. I finally came up with creating the black and white rays in Word. This is third attempt at coloring black and I really like how his outfit came out, at least the real life version (the pic is a little lighter than it looks IRL). Not perfect, but better than I expected, which is always a nice surprise. LOL Elements on this one are Star Nestabilities, EK Success Sticko glitter star and dot stickers, Christmas Red Stickles and a sentiment done on the computer. And my ever-present foam dots.

My second card was not what I started with for this challenge. A last-minute disaster as I was taking photographs on Wednesday involving a cup of tea and a rather large furry doofus I might have mentioned recently who has taken to popping her head out from under the craft table at random moments during my crafting. So... I had to color up a new Bugaboo image and create a whole new card at the last minute! Here's my second card...

I know, I just did a Christmas/winter card with a snowflake, crying over missing the best bits of winter. Ah, well, blame that on my Gemini horoscope as well. haha  If I had to do it over again, I might make the image bigger, but it still is cute! Elements for this one are a Bugaboo image (love this monkey!), an EK Success beachy border punch, I think the wave border punch is also EK Success, more of those EK Success Sticko dots, a blue foot paperclip from the Walmart office supply aisle, papers from DCWV, foam dots (for the image and under the sentiment (which was done in Word) and the painted wooden umbrella from my stash.

I will say I've been experimenting with my coloring a bit more and had a lot of fun with both these images this week. If your mojo isn't chomping at the bit to get started yet, click on over to the SAS4K blog and see what my teamies were up to and get your creative juices flowin'!

Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks!  See you soon and 'til then...

Happy crafting!

Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Mother's & Father's Day - Bears and Roses

Good morning!  Sorry I'm a little late to the party this morning but Blogger is, well... the software gremlins are up and about today. Need to add some anti-glitchy gremlin spray to my shopping list. =)

It's the first Saturday of the month... time for another great challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids! This fortnight our challenge is Mother's and Father's Day cards for kids to give to their parents. And we have FOUR terrific prizes from our sponsors:

* 5 digis of your choice from  Whimsy Stamps *

* Digi Doodle Shop is offering a $10 gift voucher *

* $15 towards a purchase at the Crop Stop *

* 5 quid to spend at Cuddly Buddly *

Prizes are picked randomly, so anyone can win! And better yet, you can send in your cards to be donated to children in one of seven hospitals. See here for more details!

Digi Doodle Shop and Cuddly Buddly generously offered the DT some images... I knew right away when I saw this little guy that I wanted to paper piece him. And I knew just what papers I was going to use...

Except for the dark blue cardstock, this card is entirely digital papers and paper-piecing! I used Summertime Designs' Fathers and Fedoras Kit and Vintage Oreos. She has some fabulous, fabulous kits... and free! I used several prints from the Fathers kit for the layers and for my bear's little hat and coat. I still don't like my fur coloring yet, so I used the lighter and darker damask papers in her Oreos set, tweaked just a bit for color temperature in Word, for the bear's fur and the Hedgehog's prickles.

 I started by printing my digi on white cardstock for the base layer before printing all my designer papers out on 20-lb printer paper and running them back through to print my bear image over them. I layered them up one at a time starting with the bear's fur; since the paper is so thin, there's not as much dimension as using cardstock and burnishing it in the style of Mariska (LOVE!), but it still adds a little something in person.  I used a black pen to add in some more spiky detail on the hedgie and colored his face, hands and feet with Copics, too.  I added some Copics grays on the bear fur and his little plaid outfit in an attempt to achieve a little more dimension. Plus (of course!) I popped him them up on foam dots. I admit my addictions. LOL

My sentiment was created Word, using the old style Word Art and filling the "Dad" with one of the digi papers. The finishing touch on my clean and simple card were two gray screw-head brads I picked up at Michael's. I see this morning that my teamie Karen had similar ideas with paper piecing and used similar brads. Great minds! LOL 

  

For my Digi Doodle card, I looked through the website a few times to let something 'speak' to me. Lots of images were shouting, so it was a hard decision! I finally settled on this lovely floral heart.

I colored my image with Copics, sticking with the R30s for the roses to get a coral color that would match my digi papers, which this time are from Nitwit Collections - Thimbles and Threads. I spent some time burnishing my floral heart image with a large-balled stylus so it would have that great dimensional curviness when I popped it up on foam dots.

 Again, I went thin and printed on basic printer paper, except I printed a bit of the quilted coral on cardstock to punch my Martha Stewart butterflies. I kept seeing these teeny tiny beauties on other cards, so I finally located a punch and bought it. I keep resisting the urge to punch butterflies out of everything I see. LOL I took some light orange and yellow pearls which I touched up with R35 Copics to more closely match my papers.  

To finish, I added some peachy-pink sheer wired ribbon. I had it the way I liked it for about 60 seconds, before a nosy dog peeked up from under the craft table, knocking it out of my hands. The bow went wonky and I ended up fussing and faffing about with that darn bow forEVER. So much so that looking at it now, I see I forgot to add the tails. No wonder it doesn't look right. LOL  Well, I can always give up bows like my friend Squirrel (although between you and me, I think she's a right bit harder on herself than she needs to be). I added one of the punched butterflies with some pearls to the bow as my last touch. The finished card isn't exactly what I pictured, but it's pretty... and each card is a learning experience for the next one. (Bows with tails, Christy... bows with tails.)

 

My teamies have whipped up some fantastic creations of their own... click on over to the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge blog and get inspired!



See you soon, and until then... happy crafting!
Christy

PCJ DT Card: Jellypark - Photo Inspiration

Greetings, crafters!  Yes, time is flying and it's already time for another challenge at Paper-Crafting Journey!

This week's challenge is a photo inspiration

Photo Source

and our sponsor is Jellypark, home of some really cute digital images!

Before I get to my card for this challenge, I want to mention Jellypark's special stamp collection. 100% of the proceeds from the 2012 sales of their special collection of Fundraising Stamps go to support Little Havens Children's Hospice in the UK. More details about this charitable project and Little Havens can be found at Jellypark here and you can visit the Litte Havens site here. Check them out - super cute stamps and a really great charity! =)

So... my card for this week. Jellypark provided a few images for the design team, but I thought they were so cute I went to check out their site and I fell in love with two of their images and was inspired to create this:

From the photo inspiration, I took the idea of cake (yum!) and originally the colors pink and blue as my main card colors. As my card developed, I ended up replacing the pink dp with a warm yellow, but I've got lots of pink touches, from the cupcake srapper to the pink pearls and the pink in the printed cardstock. All the printed cardstock is from the DCWV stack Sweet and I used a textured white cardstock as the 6"x6" card base.

I immediately saw this sweet little guy as baby brother to this darling little girl with her cupcake. He is part of the set Let's Fly Away that also includes a kite and a balloon. I flipped him in Word and sized him to stand next to his big sister. =) I also bought the Happy Birthday tag. The bunting is from this set.

I colored all my images with Copics. I wanted some texture to my cupcake icing, so I tried Adirondack acrylic paint dabber in Snow Cap. While it was wet I sprinkled a tiny bit of Doodleburg glitter in Bumblebee over it and I added Distress Stickles in Spun Sugar to what looks like a little gumdrop on top of the cupcake.

After I colored and fussy cut all my images, I tucked the birthday tag under the little boy's arm and tied a little bow on the tag with some twine. I did a little embossing, rubbing a large-balled stylus around the back to give a bit of a curve and dimension to the kids and popped them up on foam squares. Then I went a bit crazy with the pearls. I just got a bunch of Hero Arts pearls and I couldn't resist them! Last but not least I added a little silver "M" for Melissa, whose birthday was this week.

I also did a very simple inside using the bunting again and a small image of the Cake Shop. I did a quick coloring for the inside, not trying to be too careful or detailed, almost like an imcomplete watercolor. 

So, there's my Jellypark birthday card... I still love those two kids... so cute! I will definitely be visiting the Jellypark shop and creating some Jellypark magic again. =) 

In the meantime, why don't you head on over to Paper-Crafting Journey and see the other DT cards - they are FABULOUS! 

Have a great couple of days 'til the weekend and I'll see you soon!

Happy Crafting!

Christy  

SAS4K DT Card - Anything Goes!

Happy Saturday! =)

I'm back with my first SAS4K DT card! Today's challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids is an easy one: Anything Goes for Kids!  Even better, there are FOUR generous sponsors for our challenge and they are offfering you a chance to win some really great prizes:

One winner will receive $15 to spend at CropStop,

Krista at Saturated Canary will gift someone with 2 digis of their choice,

someone will get 3 digis of their choice from Karen's Doodles and

Susana at Susana's Custom Art and Card Design (SCACD) is offering this awesome Sylvia Zet stamp set:



See more details about the stamp set here

You can check out all the detils over at the Send A Smile 4 Kids Challenge Blog!

For my card, I chose one of the super cute Karen's Doodles images - Dragon Birthday. I knew the moment I saw him that he was meant to be red. It was fate! LOL

I colored my little dragon buddy first using the R20s series Copics, and then went paper shopping in my stash to coordinate the other colors. The papers are from two ProvoCraft slabs I've had for a while. The balloons paper is very likely to make an appearance again very soon... I love the colors and the sort of handpainted watercolor-and-pencil look to it. I found these cute little candles (another Jesse James Dress It Up item, I believe) hiding in a little drawer while I was looking for some button-y type of embellie. I layered it all up and added some red Offray grosgrain and the ever-present Stickles. <grin>  

I had a number six already cut and I thought it made the perfect addition in place of a sentiment (except for the fact that there are FIVE candles on the cake. shhhhhhh! Don't tell!), and glittered it up with the same Stickles I used on my dragon's belly and the Nestie circle mat around my image. As a final touch I added a few frosted gem buttons in the corners. My fingers itched to put a few more little doodads here and there, but I liked the relatively clean and simple look to this. For a six-year-old, glitter and bright colors and one cool red dragon breathing fire is high design. =)

So... are you inspired to whip up a card for a kid in your life? Hope so! Do come and join us over at the SAS4K Challenge Blog and check out the rest of the DT creations!

See you soon, my bloggy friends! Happy Crafting!

Christy 

Happy Newt Year!

Hello, hello! =) Every January my work gives us the chance to sell off some of our vacation time. I usually cash in so I can pay off Christmas bills and the like. This year I decided to invest in some anti-stress medication:

Prettiest meds I've ever seen  =)

I had a chance in July and then in September due to an out-of-stock raincheck to pick up some Copics at low prices (well, as low as Copic could get). I like ProMarkers, but I'm finding it easier to learn to color with the Copics, especially when it comes to choosing good colors to blend. Once I get more experienced, I know I'll be able to pick ProMarker colors better, too. And pencil colors, for that matter. But for now... I'll practice with Copics. The company ran another sale in December and now these beauties join my collection and are all organized and tucked away in a nice little rainbow on my desk. =) Don't hate. LOL  I spent the weekend coloring, blending, recoloring... and binning. LOL Most of my work ended in the bin, but that was ok. Mistakes = learning, right?

So... I saw this terrific New Year Newt over at Hambo stamps. I got done too late last night to enter the challenge with him, but I had fun anyway in this colorful, kind of masculine Newt Year card:

He's a digi, so I printed him and colored eveerything but his shirt in Copics. I really like how his head came out.with the dots. Kind of froggy-like. =) I planned to paper piece his shirt, but the tie-dye glitter cardstock was too thick, so I ended up doing something I don't want to do again for a very long time... I cut out the white space inside the lines to glue it over the cardstock. I had to use my black Copics to darken up all the lines on his shirt and I put buttons back on with some black enamel.

I have a stash from many years ago of holographic film samples. My inner crafty child's shiny quotient needed addressing. ;) I love how holographic materials give off that rainbow as they flash in the light. Hopefully I captured some of that for you in my pics. Turn it one way and get blues and pinks, turn it another and get greens and reds... It keeps me occupied for hours. hahahahaha 

I also couldn't wait to use another playtoy... the Star Circle Nestabilities!

I used a precious metals Recollections cardstock I picked up at Michaels, but it was too much white over the dark blue textured Wausau paper, so I used a circle Nestie to made it a ring of stars. I used the little star punchouts with some gems and a bit of silver metallic pen, a star Nestie cut out of some of the tie-dye paper and a sentiment done in Word in a matching orange-yellow hue. Ta-da! Very suitaable for a boy, I think.

Since I missed the Hambo challenge this week, I'm entering him in these...

Dutch Dare Challenge - New Beginnings (New Year!)

Inky Impressions - Anything Goes

Paper Play - Week 1 Happy New Year (New Year, new stash!)

Crafty Catz - #114  A New Beginning (New Year)

Fairy Tales - #32 Something New  (New digi, new Nestie, new Copics, New Year!)

Paper Cutz - #120 Brand New Year

Crazy4Challenges - C4C118 Do Something New (New digi, new dotty skin coloring, new Nesties!)

7 Kids College Fund - #38 Try Something New (New papers, new digi, new technique (dotty green skin), new Nesties)

That's it for now... I might be back tonight with a Bugaboo creation if I can get it done before bedtime, otherwise, I will see you tomorrow! Til then, happy crafting!
Christy

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