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

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

Summer Beach Monkey =)

Hi! Well, on to my 3rd project/card for an online challenge...  the pictures still suck. I know, I know.. it's nighttime and not the best for picture-taking, but I think my camera's got some scratches on the lens. I think it's 7 years old, and for a digital camera, just like a PC, that's ancient. LOL So the colors aren't the greatest in my photos, but they're as close as I'm going to get tonight.

I based this on Card Patterns sketch #118, but missed the deadline to get it finished for that challenge (it's been a loooooong week with few moments in the crafty space). The final size was larger than my (lately) normal 6"x6" card as I intend to use it as a decoration instead of a card.

I used one of my Bugaboo beach monkey digital stamps.  I used a die-cut scallop and tumbled glass distress ink to make the sky trying out a technique Bev Rochester posted on her site All the things I love. I really like the effect even on my first try, so with practice and a better cloud template, I think I'm going to be quite pleased with this technique in my arsenal. I used some faded jeans and broken china distress ink to paint in an ocean.



Colored my little monkey with Promarkers and added a touch of sand to his castle as well as to the curved beach. I used gold shimmer Mod Podge so there's a hint of golden shimmer between sand grains. Doesn't show on the photos, but IRL it's a nice effect. The sun was made in Word using a circle and a 12-point star shape both formatted in gradient shades of yellow and orange. A bit of twine to hide the bottom edge over a Martha Stewart punch and voila - summertime!  I used a striped sheet from a Provocraft Seasons & Celebrations paper pack I've had for a while (bought when I thought I might get papercrafty a few years ago and didn't). And the cardstock is cheapy Walmart stuff from about that same time period.  

Since I missed the Card Patterns entry deadline, this little guy is getting linked up to

Catch the Bug Challenge "June Anything Goes" and

Craft Your Passion challenge #61: "Anything Goes"

I must say, although it took me a while and things are still a little tight on time, I'm enjoying getting into the crafty spirit of cardmaking and papercrafting. It's nice to be able to work at something creative and have a finished product. So much of my "creativity" at work (if you want to call it that) is just problem-solving... which is nice, but there's not really a final product, a finished thing to look at or point to and say, "I did that."  Just new problems and more stuff to do in a never-ending to-do-list parade.  Sigh.

Well, thank goodness for crafting!  And blogs! =)  Happy crafting everyone!  'Til next time...