...so here's my chance to post some art on Mom's digital fridge. I never went to kindergarten and my school didn't have art class,
so I never got to experience the classic childhood "Art Gallery Refrigerator". My mom's my best friend but I don't get to see her
as much as I want to these days, so this blog is my way of getting to share with her my love for card crafting.
Thanks for visiting and happy crafting!

Showing posts with label Karen's Doodles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karen's Doodles. Show all posts

Saturday, April 21, 2012

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

Sunday, March 18, 2012

SAS4K Challenge DT Card: Things with Wings - Dragon Tales & Tropical Ostrich

For my PCJ DT card, click here
For my Flutterby Wednesday Guest DT cards, click here

Time again for another Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge... and this fortnight it's Things with Wings! Birds, bees, butterflies, fairies, angels, flying insects... or dragons! If it has wings, we want to see it on a card made for a kid!

This week we are especially pleased to be linking up with Flutterby Wednesday to do a card drive. Fellow SAS4K teamie Hilde and I are both guest designers on this week's Inspiration post - check out the challenge details here, and guidelines for donating cards here!

Our prize sponsors for this challenge are the lovely Stamping Dragon Designs and Karen's Doodles - both are offering up a few of their digis as prizes. Check out the details on the SAS4K challenge post!

Our sponsors also offered the DT some images to play with... my first pick was SDD's Jiggy's Book. I know the world of reading is going electronic, and although I am a fan of all the conveniences of modern life, one thing I will never be able to give up is my love for "dead tree" books. There is something about the tactile experience of holding a book, turning the pages, flipping back to reread, carrying it around with your finger between the pages to mark your spot while you visit the fridge for a drink... the smell of books in a library... the feeling of knowing you've only got a fraction of an inch's pages to read til you get to the end and slowing down to savor every last page. None of that do I get from swiping my finger across a screen or tapping a button. And the smell of electronics is not very interesting. LOL Anyway, I decided to make a removable bookmark with my little dragon image to encourage the dead-tree book habit in a younger generation.

After I submitted my DT photo for the SAS4K page, I decided that my card and bookmark needed a little glitter. I was worried about ruining it, so I held off for as long as I could, but you know me and those bottles of Stickles just can't be kept apart for long. LOL

Here is the before...


And here's the after...  what do you think?

I love these papers... they are from the DCWV pack Once Upon A Time. Lovely ethereal castles in the fog... prints and colors that make me think of my favorite tales of medieval-based fantasy worlds where swordfighting and magic and dragons are part and parcel of everyday life. So Jiggy reading his book on Dragon Tales might find himself at one of those castles. I used a lot of Tea Dye and Walnut Distress Inks on the papers, inking the edges and sponging over my papers.  

The set comes with both black and white and a colored image. I chose to use the colored image as it was exactly the colors I wanted, if a little bright. I used Word to tone down the brightness and used the mosaic bubbles effect to give a little aging. I also lightly sponged a bit of Antique Linen and Walnut Distress Inks over the printed image.

My Once Upon a Time sentiment stamp is from Magnolia. I also used an Italian font stamp from Hero Arts and both stamps were printed using DI.

The stamps that I used at the bottom and top of the bookmark are Flourishes by Crafty Secrets I used Walnut DI and then stamped again randomly using Versamark and embossing with clear UTEE for some gloss and shine. I tied on a bit of chocolate brown ribbon around the top.

I used Versamark and platinum gold Perfect Pearls burnished in with my fingertip on the border around the center piece and stamped over it with a celtic knot in gold. I cut two of the emblem circles (and in the end glittered the top one) which form a little pocket together with the sentiment flag to hold my bookmark.

Here they are separated.

 And a few more gratuitous shots in case you haven't already overdosed on photos...  LOL


My second card, which ended up being quite challenging for some reason, was Ollie Ostrich from Karen's Doodles...

I had fun coloring up Ollie, and I used white Liquid Applique on his feathery ruff to give it some dimension. I was planning to use the image as a rectangular white piece and highlighted him in a light blue, but then decided he needed to be trimmed out. I used an embossing stylus to round him out a bit and popped him up off the black cardstock with foam dots, which is why he doesn't look like he fits the black trim around him, unless you look at him straight on. I was fighting like mad with my paper cutter to cut straight so my cuts are all a bit wonky and driving me crazy. I've since sussed out the problem, so I'll probably take this apart and recut the black pieces before sending him off. Drunk crafter was not the look I was going for. LOL  The flowers are WOC and the pink ribbon is Offray-Berwick. Not too many embellies as I wanted simple and colorful. =)

So... hope you are inspired. There are lots of fantastic creations over on the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge blog from my teamies, so head on over there and do consider joining the card drive challenge at Flutterby Wednesday as well as the SAS4K challenge! Happy Crafting!

Christy

Saturday, February 4, 2012

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