Anything Goes for Kids @ SAS4K: Saturated Canary Violet

Happy Saturday! We made it to the weekend - woot! woot! 

It's Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge day and another end-of-summer easy-peasy challenge for you... Anything Goes!  This challenge is also a bit special as we say goodbye and best wishes to teamie Shelby who is moving on to other adventures. Her fun style and super coloring will be missed... but we do have a new teamie waiting in the wings for her debut coming up soon! =) Our sponsors for this challenge are Robyns Fetish (5 digis to the winner) and Saturated Canary (2 digis for our second winner) and the DT had the difficult decision of picking which image to color up for today's DT post. That was a challenge in itself! LOL

I finally landed on Violet... and to be honest, I had intended to go with some lovely violet Copic colors, but when I was riffling through my papers, this pink and blue-green combination from the Glam Gal DCWV stack caught my eye. So violet is now dressed  pink and blue-green! =)

Oops, bit wonky, that photo.... LOL

I colored Violet with my Copics.. the BG70 series was a little too dark and cold than I needed so I ended up using a technique of scribbling BG11 and BG13 onto an acrylic block and then picking up those colors with my BG70 and BG72 markers to get a brighter blue-green that matched my background papers. Her hair's a bit of a mess... got a little carried away trying to get the streaky look I wanted. Too much fun flicking and feathering! LOL If you squint your eyes while looking at the card though, it looks pretty good. LOL I added Viva Decor pen pearly dots in silver (on the skirt) and opal everywhere else.

I added a nice coating of Crystal Stickles with its green and yellowy-pink glitter for her underskirt and the rosette in her hair and bit of Stardust Stickles on the second rosette that I printed and cut out for the top corner of the card. The heart border is an older Martha Stewart punch. I used a bit of pink grosgrain ribbon to cover the seam and added three of the punched out hearts with a dot of the pearl pen to the bottom corner.

So now it's your turn... read up on all the challenge details and see the super cards for kids my teamies have created over on the Send A Smile 4 Kids challenge blog, then go get creative! Can't wait to see what you come up with! =)

Til my next post, happy crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Animal Cards for Kids - What's Up Giraffe

Happy Saturday, my crafty friends!

Time for another challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids and this one's another fun one for creating a kid's card: Animals!  Our sponsors for this challenge are Delicious Doodles and Stamping Dragon Designs who are offering 4 digi images so we'll have TWO random winners! Twice the fun! LOL

Our sponsors once again generously offered up some images to our DT members, and as I was surfing through Stamping Dragon Designs, this slightly rude giraffe caught my eye and this is what I chose to do with him:

Hee hee Love that tongue! LOL It reminds me of a favorite moment in the movie My Friend Totoro when the little girl and boy stick their tongues out at each other. =)   I colored him with Copics... actually I colored one image but didn't like the final blend from the E40s so I went with more red browns and I was much happier with this second image. Also, the practice for getting that blend on his forehead was very useful. I'm not sure I'm going to be coloring up too many realistically-drawn images, but it was a fun challenge from what has -so far- been my usual style.

I colored the sky the same way I did this Emerald Fairies image, laying in a relatively smooth base of blue, then using the colorless blender to pick up and push the ink into cloud shapes, then highlighting a bit with C00, C0 and C1. It takes several passes, but I don't have an airbrush, which is probably my favorite look I see on other cards. And as my image was printed on an inkjet this time, I didn't want to risk a Distress Ink sky bleeding my image lines even though I'd heat set them with a Ranger heat tool. I layered my image and inked all the cardstock edges with a combination of Scattered Straw and a touch of Walnut Stain here and there, which nicely mimics the giraffe skin pattern.

I randomly cut out a tree branch from brown cardstock and used a CC Cutter, Leafy Branches, for the leaves, dabbing them with Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint DI. There are some very tiny foam pieces in there to help keep the dimension. I like the effect and hope to use that again. =)

I layered a tan grosgrain ribbon over a sheer brown that tied into the background paper and added pearls, chocolate on the ribbons and champagne in the corners. Last I added my sentiment which I created in Word.

Hope you are feeling inspired to pull out an animal image of your own and get creating... there are lots of fantastic creations by my Teamies over on SAS4K so be sure to stop by!

I'm linking my card up to
Inspire Me Fridays - #68 Anything Goes
Ruby's Rainbow Challenges - #33 Cute Animals (he's not soft and cuddly, but that tongue makes him cute to me!)
Make It Monday

ATCs and Cards with Attitude - #18 Anything Goes

Have a great weekend and happy crafting!
Christy

Bugaboo Christmas in July

This week Bugaboo ran a Christmas in July celebration, with challenges every day. I wasn't able to participate in all of the daily challenges, but I did get two cards finished so I'm going to post them quick before bed.

I had so much fun coloring these up... I love Christmas cards and I love these simple graphic images that are cheerful and easy to color. My inner child was having a blast. LOL

The first card is for the Sparkle and Shine challenge from Thursday. I used that adorable penguin Poppi.

I colored Poppi and shadowed the ornament with Copics and glittered the heck out of that ornament. A nice coat of Stardust Stickles. I used Stardust's larger cousin, Crystal Ice, to coat the Martha Stewart snowflakes. The dark red paper is pearlized and there's a thin line of metallic blue gel pen around the background paper. Lots of glitz! =) I popped up Poppi and all the snowflakes on foam dots. Simple but colorful, sparkly and fun!

My second card is for the Monday challenge... create a Christmas card using a non-Christmas image. I chose this Brat image, World Boy...

Again, I used Copics to color. A Star Circle Nestabilities die was used to cut out my computer-generated sentiment. I popped the die cut up on thin foam and the image on thicker foam for dimension and layered both over the same dark red pearlized paper that I used on the first card. I wanted to keep it simple and use earth tones (har har) so that that colorful globe stood out so I inked the edges and adhered everything to a kraft cardstock card base and added some star buttons with a little foam to the corners. 

Easy peasy! There are a few other challenges I'm entering, but it's late and only the Bugaboo has a deadline tonight, so I'll be back with my edit. In the meantime, check out Bugaboo Stamps for yourself - great digis and you can find Jodie's images in rubber too over at Totally Stampalicious!

Happy Crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Birthday Fun - A Groovy Flower Power Birthday!

Good morning, my crafty friends (and Mom & Ken! LOL)...

First, a whine about Blogger. Apparently Blogger can't decide how many blogs I'm actually following. Over the past week the number has grown to the accurate 200+ and shrunk by 30. I'm missing fun crafty posts and it's making me a bit cranky! So if I haven't been to visit lately, it's because Blogger and Google Reader have been hiding you from me! Either that or they are developing software alzheimers. =[ Sigh. Anyway, hope to catch up with all my MIA bloggy friends soon!

Now.... on to the FUN!  Time again for a fantastic challenge to Send A Smile 4 Kids...  Birthday Fun! As usual we have some terrific sponsors who are offering up prizes for some randomly chosen winners:

 Stamp Shoppe Creations ~ a $15 gift certificate

Tickled Pink ~ 2 digis of the winner's choice

and Shelley's Images ~ a $9 gift certificate

Tickled Pink also generously provided my teamies and I images to play with! There were lots of birthday images with presents and balloons and such, but 60s Willow caught my eye as I was browsing through the website and I inspired to create something with some girly Flower Power:

Although I kept the embellies a bit simpler as I do on my kids cards, I love how this one turned out. My pictures are a bit better but yes, Ken, I do need to figure out my lighting and build a little box out of white poster board. Plus I haven't had time to figure out how to knock the camera off the autoISO setting so I can play with it a bit. (Having a photographer in the family can make photo-taking quite intimidating hahaha)

I colored Willow with  combination of Copics and ProMarkers (for the pink top). I had a problem with a bit of bleeding this time because of my depth perception issues and that the details and lines of this image are so tiny. It felt like I was trying to park a jumbo jet in a mini Cooper-sized parking space. LOL From a normal distance it looks good, so imagine my embarrassment when my closeups revealed all my flaws! LOL But it's ok... I wasn't planning on going pro anytime soon. ;)

My floral paper is from a Provocraft Spring stack, with dark purple and green cardstock to set it off from my card base, which was a super light purple that I have inked to death with Dusty Concord Distress Ink. I can't remember which number it is, but I used a Nestabilities die in two sizes for the center panels, then cut dark purple squares to layer them. I ended up rounding off the corners of the purple cardstock as the pointy corners seemed, well... too pointy. LOL

I used a scrap of tie-dye glitter cardstock to create a couple of flowers with my C.C. Designs Five Point Flowers die. Unfortunately the bigger flower fell on the floor and was taste-tested by my lab, Zoe, but it recovered nicely. LOL I added pearls to the centers and popped them up on foam dots.

My sentiment was made on the computer with a font called Bell Bottoms and I used a thinner foam to give that some dimension, too. (I will leave it to my *ahem* older brother to let me if "groovy" was actually in use in the late 60s. hee hee)  My ribbons are Berwick-Offray... a white sheer and a light lavendar rickrack.

I used Distress Stickles in Spun Sugar and Milled Lavender on the flowers on the jeans. The look I wanted is the color of painted jeans and the Distress Stickles worked perfectly for what I wanted. I used a little bit of Yellow regular Stickles and used Stardust Stickles on the little flowers on the jeans and a few of the flowers in her hair. A few little Liquid Pearl dots were added to the jeans, too.

My final touches were these silvery Robin's Nest tear drops that remind me of the little silver studs on jean designs and a few pearls scattered about around the sentiment. Voila! =)

So that's my take on Birthday Fun - hope you like it!  Don't forget to head on over to Send A Smile 4 Kids to see the rest of the fun Birthday bonanza my teamies and our guest designer have created for you!

In the meantime, I will be adding my card to the following challenges and link-ups...

Crafty Ann's Challenge - #67 It's  Girl Thing!
Inspire Me Fridays - #63 Anything Goes
Stampin with the Dragon - Anything Goes
Aud Sentiments Challenge - #56 Any sentiment suitable for a child's birthday
Cute Card Thursday - #221 Punch Drunk
The Lollipop Ladies - #47 Jelly Babies
The Paper Shelter - #68 Anything Goes
Sassy Cheryl - #119 Birthday Celebration
Bunny Zoe Crafts - #25 Girls, Girls, Girls
Craft Your Passion - #114 Anything Goes
Creative Stamp Friends - #53 Birthday
Lexi's Creations - #67 Happy Birthday

Til my next card... happy crafting!
Christy

PCJ DT Card: Colour It Up - Mermaid Magic!

Hello, everyone!

So glad the week is winding to a halt and the weekend is just about here! I had the most marvelous time with Mom on Monday celebrating my birthday. I came to the conclusion that we should run away from home more often. hee hee! I was even a good girl - I didn't even think about looking at my work email, not even once! Which, many people will tell you, is a miracle in itself. It's not that I think I'm indispensable; I just don't like the idea of someone being stressed out because they needed information. Plus, I came back to more than 60 emails. For a single day off. Crazytown, right? And having to cram five days' worth of work into four is always... interesting. LOL

Annnnyway, I had a great time coloring up my image for the newest Paper-Crafting Journey Challenge: Colour It Up! Show us your hand-colored images. Pens, markers, pencils, chalk, distress ink, watercolor... just color it up! =)

Our prize sponsor this week is Inked Treasures who will offer the winner 4 digistamps of their choice! 

For my card this week, I used this sweet Mermaid from Pink Cat Studio:

I got a new camera but haven't had time to work it all out yet, so my pics are mostly from my old camera and not very good. I had a hard time getting the shots and I don't have much in the way of software to make a silk purse out of these particular sow's ears. LOL The colors are not nearly as rich as on the original card which makes me sad as I really love how the jeweltone purples and blues and greens came out on this card.  (And I'm sure my brother Ken will be cringing as he is a professional photographer. Sigh. Just look away, Ken... look away!)

My color inspiration came from the gorgeous poly ribbon which has a beautiful blue-green-purple swirl and is metallic and shiny and has a gorgeous textured impression. I love it! I hated covering up as much of it as I did in the end... will have to find another CAS project to showcase it! LOL The colors are beautiful and remind me of a peacock's feathers.

I used Copics and ProMarkers to color my image and added Stickles to her scales and bikini top and headband. A rich purple satin ribbon and a strip of lilac pearlized paper cut with a Martha Stewart art deco shell design border punch and dotted with teeny tiny pearls was added along with two rows of pale blue pearl paper cut into waves using an EK Success punch.

I added lots of texture using a Bubbles Cuttlebug embossing folder on a light blue sheet of glitter paper and a ribbon that reminds me of fishnet and seasponges, which I cut unevenly along its length to give it some interest. I had far too much fun adding little gems of various colors and sizes... stopping was very difficult! LOL I also added something that still makes me smile with a glee that only a fellow papercrafter could understand - my newest purchase, a Magnolia Doohickey swirl die. Although the poly ribbon was a little difficult to work with, I managed a beautiful swirl. (Yes, I am in love with this ribbon. LOL)

Last I added a sentiment stamp from Lili of the Valley and dotted with teeny tiny gems. a couple more pearls in the corners and voila! One shimmery glittered magic Mermaid! 

The colors are off - poor dead camera, sigh - but you can see the shimmer and glitter and dimension better tin these shots...

Ok... challenges for this cutie from the sea:

Bunny Zoe Crafts - Anything Goes

Top Tip Tuesday - Sparkles Galore

Tammy's Scrapin' Corner - For the Girls

Stampavie and More - For A Girl

Crafting for All Seasons - Many Layers

Hooked on Craft Challenges - All That Glitters

Stamps & Fun = Creativity - Bling Bling

Cutie Pie Challenge - Die Cuts & Punches

Cute Card Thursdays - Water

Crafter's Companion - Time to Embellish

Shelly's Images - Blingage

Sassy Studio Designs - Add a Splash (used Stickles)

Allsorts Challenge - Beside the Seaside

Crafty Boots Challenge - Anything Goes with bonus for bows (no bows for me however)

I'm off to ooh and aah over my new camera and figure out how to use it. =) Don't forget to head on over to Paper-Crafting Journey and check out the DT cards... and read the sad news that we are waving farewell to our girlies Suzie, Jessie, Hilde, and Laura. Sniff. Some other changes are also coming as Wendy takes over the blog from our founder Lisa... you can read all about it here. Hope you are inspired to Colour Something Up today!

Happy Crafting!
Christy

SAS4K DT Card: Bright Colors - Gerry Giraffe has a birthday!

Good morning! It's time again for another challenge at Send A Smile 4 Kids and this challenge is another fun one.... BRIGHT COLORS FOR KIDS!

We are sponsored by Prairie Fairy, offering a $15 gift certificate for one randomly chosen winner, and Little Miss Muffet, offering 3 digis of the winner's choice to another randomly chosen winner! Our sponsors were also generous enough to provide some digis for the DT to play with... and I chose a Prairie Fairy image set... Gerry's Birthday! 

Isn't he the sweetest giraffe? I also picked a pack of presents from this Birthday Party set that includes a cake image that I didn't use on my card.

My photos today are a bit of a problem, at least for me. The colors on my card are actually much deeper and richer on the original. More of a purple and burgundy than the blue and pink that they are in the photos. Unfortunately a combination of a new lamps and - the horror - a failing camera. The LED screen has died completely and my poor, overworked 9-year-old camera is dying. Sob.

But Monday is my birthday and my Mom and I are going on a day-long adventure so I will be camera shopping for sure! With the joint issues followed by hip surgery then one knee and finally the other knee, it's been a long, long time since Mom and I ran away together, so I took the day off from work, had the pager access turned off yesterday before I left and solemnly vow not to look at my work email until Tuesday morning when I get back to work. LOL

Anyway... back to my party boy Gerry. I colored him up with Copics and knew I wanted to use this old ProvoCraft balloon paper I used for my Dragon birthday card for an earlier SAS4K challenge this year. I fussed about forEVER trying to work in a shape or some kind of solid background so Gerry would be sure to stand out, but nothing seemed to work. I finally decided that if I placed the right colors behind him, a ribbon and some foam dots might do the trick just as well and I'm glad I didn't try to force in anything else.

I colored my images with a combination of Copics and ProMarkers. Instead of trimming all the way 'round Gerry I gave him a little bit of ground to sit on at the bottom and I like how it turned out. =) I glittered up different elements of the presents and Gerry's bowtie and the little poof at the top of his party hat. What's a birthday card without some glitter? LOL

I layered a sheer white ribbon that glistens and two thin grosgrain ribbons and popped up both Gerry and his presents over that. I added a bow made of the same sheer white and glued on a royal blue confetti Happy Birthday over the knot.  I added a purple cardstock behind my balloon paper (yes, I know it looks blue. Poor dying camera.) and then liberally sprinkled the edges with these cool glittered epoxy stickers from EK Success. The whole kit and kaboodle was then glued on to a textured white cardstock base.

My teamies have once again crafted up a cornucopia of brightly colored cards for kids... head on over to the SAS4K Challenge Blog and have a look! Hopefully we inspire you to have a bit of brightly colored fun of your own!

Happy weekend and 'til I see you again, happy crafting!

Christy

Guest DT Card: Flutterby Wednesday's Card Drive Challenge

For my Paper-Crafting Journey Pretty Pastels Challenge post, click here

This week Hilde and I are guest DTs over at Flutterby Wednesday challenge blog where they are doing a Card Drive for Send A Smile 4 Kids! You can check out the challenge details here and see all the Design Team's flutterby and fairy creations on their Inspiration Post! This week everyone who enters is encouraged to send their creations in to Send A Smile 4 Kids to be forwarded on to children in hospitals:

Send A Smile 4 Kids is a charitable blog created for the purpose of collecting donated handmade cards to be distributed to children while they are inpatient at Children’s Hospitals. Currently we are donating them to the Children’s Hospitals in Neenah and Milwaukee, WI, University of Iowa Children's Hospital, Iowa City, IA, Blank Children's Hospital, Des Moines, IA, Sandford Children's Hospital, Sioux Falls, SD, and to the B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia and Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada.   On any given day, there are many children inpatient in these hospitals so we would love to receive as many cards as you can send to cheer them and their families. 

My first card is a fairy card, using Sweet November Josie's Cupcake, available from All That Scraps as both rubber and digi stamps.

I won this stamp - and nearly all of the supplies I used on the card, including the card base - from Amy over at A Thousand Sheets of Paper during the release bloghop a couple months ago. Josie is one of the Fairwees and they are ADORABLE! I can't wait to get them all. =)

 I used Copics to color my stamp, with a little Stardust Stickles for Josie's fairwee wings, Liquid Pearls for the icing decorations and some Perfect Pearls mixed with water for a shimmery icing.  

The papers are DCWV Sweet and I used some yellow dotted ribbon and aqua twine that was part of the kit Amy sent me. I used a Martha Stewart border punch and deckled oval Nesties from my own stash. I couldn't find a sentiment stamp that quite fit and I wasn't in the mood to create one in Word so I handwrote my sentiment in a dark purple metallic gel pen. The last accent were some of the flatbacked pearls Amy had also included. It was really nice having such a wonderful collection of papers, cardstock, ribbons, buttons, embellies and flowers to work with. I have enough to make lots of cards yet, so you'll be seeing more of these bits soon!

Challenges for this sweet treat: 

All That Scraps - Anything Goes

Stamping with the Dragon - Challenge #6 Things With Wings

My second card was this cute butterfly from a Paper Smooches set I picked up recently. I love the kid-friendly graphic look of Paper Smooches stamps and I always marvel at the stunning CAS creations she features on her blog... there are lots of her sets on my wishlist. =)  You can even pick up some great digi freebies here.

I started with these ProvoCraft papers and went for a very girly pink and purple scheme. I inked the edges of my papers with Dusty Concord Distress Ink and layered them up.  I used Copics to color my pretty little flutterby and used something new in my stash - White Picket Fence Distress Stickles - to give a subtle shimmer and glint to her wings.

I cut a cardstock circle and a Spellbinders Dahlia, inked the edges and stamped on a sentiment from the same Paper Smooches set, using Dusty Concord Distress Ink. After an errant water drop made the s bleed a bit, I recovered by using my purple metallic gel pen over the stamp lines and added some random dots.

I also used something new in my toolbox... this 5-point flower die from CC Designs, also available at All That Scraps. I cut two large, two medium and one small flower out of lavender cardstock and another dp from the same ProvoCraft slab and very lightly inked all the edges with Dusty Concord and Spun Sugar Distress Inks. I spent a bit of time playing around, bending petals back and forth to get some dimension to my flower. I popped through the middle with a tiny little brad from Making Memories and then glued it down over some sweet pink and white twine. I can see why everyone is falling in love with this stuff. =)

 I added a few pearls here and there then stood back and died of diabetic shock from the final sugary-sweet girly cuteness of it all. LOL  I do love this one. My inner crafty four-year-old doesn't want to give this one away. I may have to wait until she's asleep so my outer adult can get it into an envelope, address and mail it so that a 'real' child can enjoy it. <grin> 

I'm springing this card into these challenges:
Frosted Designs - Things with Wings
Penny Black and More @ Allsorts - Springtime
Let's Ink It Up - #21 Flowers
Crafty Sentiments - Things With Wings
Simply Create Too - #9 It's Spring

Don't forget to flutter on over to Flutterby Wednesday for inspiration and join us this week in the card drive for Send A Smile 4 Kids! You can find some simple guidelines for creating cards to donate HERE.


I'll be back soon with my DT post for our SAS4K challenge! 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