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

A Sunny Day For Squirrel

Isn't he the cutest widdle squirrel ever?!  Squee!

Hello, my crafty friends! Back with another card I had to wait a few days to post as it needed to make a short hop over the Pond before I could share it. =)  For this one I went for a sort of  uber cute with a nice pop of color but a grown-up touch. Sort of pleasing the inner child and the outer adult all at the same time. LOL Anyway, here's my clean and simple sunny day card that I made for my best bloggy buddy, Squirrel -

Sorry he pictures are a little wonky and a bit fuzzy... I didn't have much time and the batteries in my camera were going dead. But the postman doesn't wait around. LOL

The red swirl paper has been in my stash a very long time, maybe even as long as decade. Scary. I'm not even sure what I originally planned to do with it, but I thought it was pretty and I loved it. LOL Sad when you have a paper addiction before you ever become a card crafter. =)  The blue sky background paper is a new purchase from Nitwit Collections, part of the At the Park set. Love! It was perfect for my Pink Cat Studio digi squirrel and his heart-full branch. The sun is also from PCS... a freebie sentiment stamp, but I masked off the sentiment before I printed it.

I colored the three stamp images with Copics and then used the large-balled end of an embossing stylus to round out the images a bit. I focused on the squirrel's tail tip, his eyes, his cheeks, his little acorn, the branch, and the center of the sun are all popped out just a bit more.  I also cut a second layer of hearts for the branch which I embossed and then smothered in Glossy Accents. I attached everything with different heights of foam dots. Here are some angled pics that kind of show the dimension...

 

I also glittered up the center of the sun with some beautiful yellow Stickles and punched out my computer-generated sentiment on two cloud punches (Fiskars) which I touched up with a bit of Copics - a light grey on the top edges and a pale blue on the bottom. As a last touch I added a few small gems, one on the cloud and three teensy tiny ones in the bottom corner.  

I'm entering my Sunny Squirrel card in the following challenges:

Craft Your Days Away - All Creatures Great and Small

Moving Along With The Times - Keep It Real!

Cardmadfairy Digi Days - Clean and Simple

Crafty Sentiments - Bingo: Patterned Paper, Colored Image, Punches or Die Cuts

Top Tip Tuesday - Clean and Simple

Kaboodle Doodles - Clean and Simple

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything Goes

That's all for now... back soon! 'Til then, happy crafting!

Christy

PCJ DT Card: Make It Cute Challenge - Lily Valentine Ballerina

 Hello again, my bloggy friends!   It's Thursday morning and time again for another challenge over at Paper-Crafting Journey!

My mom had a bit of worry over me for the last challenge, as I pre-schedule my posts to release at the same time as the challenge. Our blog owner, Lisa, is in the UK while I'm here on the eastern coast of the US, so there's a 5-hour difference and I post at 3 a.m. to match her 8 a.m. post. My mom didn't know that and had a real bit of worry that I'd been up to the wee hours and would have a rough day at work. So... <whispering quietly> Mom, it's actually 9 on Wednesday night, shhhhhhh! =) Even as grownups we kids give our moms a rough time, eh? LOL

The card productivity has been light the past couple weeks as I'd been having some vision issues with painless migraines which made detailed crafty work a little difficult. I have, however, been practicing some techniques which will be showing up in the next month or so, and am now back to being able to get back to my regular crafty play. Yay! <insert moment of futterwacken>

 So... on to the challenge... 

This fortnightly challenge is Make It Cute! This challenge was a great fit for me as cute is my comfort zone and our sponsor is a fave of mine, Pink Cat Studios! Melissa has the cutest line of stamps which are available as digis on her site and in good old-fashioned rubbah at a number of retail locations worldwide (find a list here). For this challenge, the winner will pick up 5--yes, FIVE--of her images. =)

For my DT card I used Lily Valentine Ballerina to create this simple little valentine...

This was an interesting coloring experience... her face is darker than I intended as I have discovered the danger in having too many markers lying out at once on my desk. One of my blending passes was supposed to be E000 and ended up being E01. And I'm still having a maddening time getting consistent hair coloring, so half way through I ended up coloring it more or less solid. Hopefully I'll be able to log some practice time this weekend. =)

The red heart doily is a cheapie from my local grocery store. You never know where you might find a crafty item! Since it was a bit intricate, I stayed pretty simple in my paper choices, using only a red marbled paper from an old ProvoCraft slab and some textured black and cream cardstock from Colorbok and DCWV.  I didn't want to cover up too much of the doily so my usual image treatment (fussy cut with a bit of a white edge, popped up on foam dots) was perfect. =)

I used a lot of Glossy Accents on this one - I punched out two sizes of hearts from the red marbled paper and coated them with Glossy Accents, fixing them to my card after they'd hardened. I used Stardust Stickles on her sleeves and dress hem and her heart wand. After it dried, I used Glossy Accents over the Stickles on her wand. I really like how it looks, so that will definitely be showing up in future. =) The sentiment is a dollar Studio G stamp from either Michaels or Wal-Mart.

The three roses are from WOC and I tried to leave them plain, really I did. For all of an hour. Then the Stickles bottle was calling to me and my sparkle addiction kicked in and I just got all caught up in the glittery goodness. Sigh. I did, however, manage a tiny bit of restraint and it's just the merest hint along the very edges of the rose petals.

Hope you were inspired to craft yourself up a bit of cute and join us over at Paper-Crafting Journey and if you need more, come see the super cute creations from my fellow teamies! Good luck and happy crafting! =)

Christy

Glass Slide Christmas Ornaments

Hello again!

This year for my 13 team members at work I decided to make ornaments. I used a different image for each of them.  These are my favorites:

 

3 Snowmen from Dustin Pike's DoodleDragonStudios.com



  

 (These are Pure Innocence, Meijen, and Pink Cat Studios digital images)

I printed out my images on 24 lb. paper and colored with Copics. It took a few tries to get the hang of not overinking as the thin paper bled much more than the smooth cardstocks I’ve been using for Copics coloring. Then I chose some DCWV papers for backers and glued the fussy-cut images down. I glittered with Stardust Stickles in most cases and some have twine or ribbon and snowflake positives from the Martha Stewart Aspen punch-around-the-page punches.  I created sentiments for the backs on the computer:

I created a sandwich of these between two 2x3 plain microscope slides. (I saw ornaments made with Memory Glass, but microscope slides are much cheaper!) I used Scor-Tape around all the edges and dipped it in embossing powder. I chose some ultrasparkly powders - Blue Blaze by Recollections and Red Dragon by Stamp-N Stuff. On some not pictured I also used an opaque white with silver sparkle called Winter Wonderland by Stamp-N Stuff. Then I heated the powder to melt and set aside on a craft sheet to cool. I had originally intended to put the hanging wire in the sandwich and to seal it in, but the wire made too much of a gap, so I fudged it a bit by using some Glossy Accents to glue it to the outer edge.

When that dried, I added some more glue and dipped in embossing powder, heat and set aside to cool. It’s a little bumpy, but not too noticeable, especially when it’s hanging on a tree. =)

I did add the ornaments to a card as “gift wrap”:

These cards were simply a Penny Black stamp, Pine Silhouettes, stamped in Evergreen Bough distress inks on a parchment cardstock.  I handwrote a Merry Christmas in red pen on each one as you see and tied the ornament on with red and white twine.

I fell in love with a couple of them, so I am going to have to take what I learned and make more… for ME! LOL

Challenges…

The Dustin Pike images only for Pike’s Playground challenge - Anything But a Card

Digital Tuesday – #141 Winter Wonderland

Crafting For All Seasons – #16 Christmas Projects

Glitter Geeks – #28 Anything Goes

Craft Your Days Away – #35 Snowmen

Hiding in My Craft Room – #25 Embossing

One Stop Crafting – #162 Christmas Sparkle

Paper Crafting Journey – Christmas Challenge

Well, I’m off to get ready for work. Fun times. Will be back with a couple last-minute cards and some other Christmas gifts! =)

Happy Crafting and Happiest of Holidays!
Christy

(Winter) Fairy Best Wishes

  

Hi! Managed several hours in the craft room tonight and worked on Christmas cards for two of my nieces... the first of which is a Pink Cat Studio fairy card in my favorite winter and Christmas colors - blue and white.

I printed my PCS digi and colored her up with just a touch of Copics and a ton of Stickles - Waterfall for her dress and Frosty Lace for her wings. I replaced the flower on her wand and added a sparkly Martha Stewart snowflake. I added a snowflake trail made of the positives from the Aspen PATP and a large snowflake made of two other Martha Stewart punches, glittered up and layered with foam dots, with a blue pearl to top it off. The paper is from my stash and I can't remember what set it came from. There are itty bitty pearls in the larger snowflakes in the Aspen border. I was having issues and lost three of those darn things while trying to get them on there. For all I know, one of the dogs is wearing them, as they park their big furry butts under the craft table while I work. =) haha  The sentiment was printed up from Word; the inside of the card reads "... for a sparkly holiday season" in the same font.

Here are some angle shots to show off the layering (love those foam dots!) and the glitter...

  

And a closeup of my fairy...

Fairies, sparkly-ness, icy blue and pretty snowflakes. My idea of winter perfection. =)

For challenges, I managed a bunch tonight... (hopefully I got it right that all these allow multiple challenges!)

ABC Christmas Challenge 2011: Y for YIPPEE! Christmas is almost here!

Kaboodle Doodles Challenge: #96 Colors of Christmas

Papertake Weekly Challenge: Anything Goes

Tuesday Throwdown: Celebrate the Season

Paper Crafting Journey: Christmas Challenge

Hiding in My Craft Room: Blue

Send A Smile 4 Kids: Winter Fun for Kids 

Totally Papercrafts: #95 Let It Snow

Simply Create Too: #1 All About Christmas

One Stop Crafting: #160 Let It Snow

Stamp, Scrap and Doodle Saturdays: Holiday Card

By the Cute and Girly: Let It Snow

Christmas Cards All Year Round: Anything Goes for December Card 1 of 5

Whew!  Ok, well, on to posting Card #2.  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

Papertake Weekly Sketch & A Graduation Card

The oldest son of one of my friends graduates this year. I was debating about what to make when I saw the Papertake Weekly sketch for this week:

Papertake Weekly Sketch #56

 As soon as I saw it, my card design popped into my head and the IRL card is pretty much as I first imagined it. (And much better than it looks in these awful pics.  Please forgive these horrid cellphone pics. My digital camera has gone MIA. Eek!)

The green and gold are his school colors.  The gold and black papers are Colorbok and have a delightful pearlescent sheen to them and the green is textured cardstock also from Colorbok. I used some Stickles in Platinum and Lime Zest for some sparkle here and there and to add some interest to the plain sheer black ribbon I chose. (How is it possible to have spool after spool after spool of ribbon and STILL not have just the "right" one?!)

I used my Spellbinders Nesties to create my stars, using the largest for the gold star and the next two sizes down together to make the black outline star. I paired those together behind my Pink Cat Studio Billy Graduate digi stamp which I colored with Promarkers and cut out. I didn't get too involved in shading. I keep smearing the printer ink when I use light colors (faces!); after some poking about online, I think I should try using the draft setting and see if that helps.  I used two layers of pop dots for lots of dimension.

On the inside I cut around the negative created from making the front gold star and made more stars out of my scraps. The larger white star is only glued down on 8 edges so there's space to tuck a check into it (under the little gold star.)

I stayed really simple with my papers. He's not a dp and embellishments kind of boy, so I used the sparkle and sheen and textures and dimension for interest. And, of course, the check that gets tucked into the larger white star on the left is the REAL focus anyway, right?  LOL 

The next projects coming up are all Girl birthdays of various ages and interests so I'll get lots more practice with mixing dps and embellies in the next couple weeks. =) Bring on the frills, fairies and flowers! =)

Happy Crafting!