Porridge again?

I thought this image from Dover was darling, but I had no idea how to use it on a card until I looked at it with Mother's Day in mind:

On the inside left it says:

Mother Bear felt vindicated when her family saw that someone was willing to break into their home in order to eat the meal they had snubbed earlier that day.

I thought it would be an amusing card for a girlfriend.  I colored the image using the Penciled Twinks technique.

Challenges:

• Digi Haven - Mother's Day
• Southern Girls - sentiment
• Vicky's Place - bears with food
• Rhedd and Rosie's - fantasy
• The Stamping Chef - Animals

Our Lady of Gourdes

One of my yahoogroups is having a swap - an arch card featuring a pumpkin.  The swap did not appeal to me at first.  I'd never done an arch - they always seemed baroque or even gothic to me, and I didn't see a pumpkin in that setting.  Then I was looking at an arch stamp I own and had never inked, of an angel holding a lamb, and I thought it would be hysterically funny if I replaced the lamb she was holding with a pumpkin.  How to do it?  I decided that it was not possible to do well with a rubber stamp, so I looked for digital images I could manipulate.  I found a free coloring book page of a stained glass window in Chartes and a clipart of a pumpkin, and it all just came together.

I colored it with the Penciled Twinks technique, so it really sparkles.  I have a few people who might find this as funny as I do, so I saved the basic image as a free digistamp, which you may download by clicking the thumbnail below.

Challenges:

• Di's Digi Designs - fall colors
• Crafty Catz - sparkle
• Digi Haven - anything goes with freebie digi
• Sweet n Sassy - shaped card with digi
• Creative Belli - harvest

Free digi - Season's Tweetings

It started out as a way to annoy my mother - I told her that I was going to use this sentiment with this image from Just Some Lines.  Terrible puns are a family tradition.

The image is super easy to cut out, and I whipped out some liquid applique to fluff up the birdie's hat.  The background - well, I used the sketch from Inspired by Stamping, but the papers are all scraps that were cluttering up my desk.  I really need to either clean more or stamp more, maybe both.

Would you like my sentiment?  I know I'm not the only person who likes birds on her Christmas cards.

Click for full size image.  I love sentiments that I can color to match my image!

Other challenges:

• Quirky Crafts - Christmas in July
• Sentimental Sundays - things with wings
• 2 Sisters - Christmas plus an animal
• Hiding in my Craft Room - lots of layers

egg inchies

These cute eggs are by McMahon Five Designs.  I did some digital stuff and there is a touch of glitter on them, but anything else would have been too much, I think.

Challenges:
Raise the Bar - picture inspiration
AIFactory - things with wings
Meljens - dots
Cooking it up with Kate - cute, green, Easter
Simply create - monchromatic (well, they are, separately)
By the Cute and Girly - Springtime
Cheerful Stamp Pad - Spring

bathtub

There is a freebie on the Dude Time Doodles blog this week, and I have admit, it is not an easy image to work with.  I was discussing it with a friend, and I pointed out that everyone who submitted a card with the image colored it the same way.  She dared me to color it differently, so I did.

 

This is colored using the Outside the Lines Technique.  You may have noticed that I altered the original image somewhat - I didn't really want a sea monster or a snorkeler on my card.  I just wanted the bathtub.  Anyway, I used some things for the very first time (background paper, dies),and some things that I haven't used in a long while (gold leafing pen, blender pen).

This card continues my current theme of expressing sympathy in non-standard situations.  This is for a friend who is having to move out of her home as part of her divorce process.   

Challenges:
Dude Time Doodles - freebie
Gingersnap Creations - jewel colors plus gold
Paper Sundaes - keep it simple
Anything Goes - die cuts
Going Grey with Scrap-Creations - anything goes

mcschmidty

There aren't a lot of people who would appreciate a card like this, even if I left the name off.  However, I have special friends.  I had fun putting it together - that's the important part.

Those are green staples at the corners, and the writing and embellishment is green stardust pen.  Coloring is digital, and the image is from Dude Time Doodles.

Challenges:
Claudia and Co - for a boy 
Dude Time Doodles - colors (scan is off, sorry)
Ooh la la Creations - for someone special
C I Paint - Keep it sweet and simple
Sketchy Colors - colors
Stampin with the Dragon - anything goes

Level Up valentine

This is a really simple valentine.  The fact that the hearts are painted with stargazers and glued on (level up technique) gives it that crafty goodness that you don't find in a store-bought card.  You don't have to do a lot to give a card that home-made feel.

I also bypassed the whole red and pink thing - it gets old after a while.  The image is from CS Designs.

Challenges:
Card-makin' Mamas - Valentine
Crafty Catz - valentine/love
Fairy Knoll - hearts
Raise the Bar - valentine with no pink or red
Totally Papercrafts - clean and simple
Paper Romance - clean and simple valentine
For Fun Challenges - hearts
Cards and Things - purple, blue, and green
Digital Tuesday - heart + digi

I get a kick out of you!

Cat and I both like to draw images for our cards - design our own digistamps, if you will.  This is one that she really invested some effort into - four and a half hours drawing this image!  It's great though.  There are so many awful puns that go with a shoe.

I used some more of my pink crepe paper on this card, for the background layer and both hearts.  The reason the hearts are different colors is that the background cardstock  for each one is different.  Although I wouldn't normally use pink on a card for a man, for Valentines, you have to use pink or red, and red with green looks too much like Christmas.  I suppose I could have colored the shoe red...

Challenges:
Aly's Sunday Challenge - for the guys
Card Patterns - sketch
Paper Sundaes - Valentines
AIFactory - for boys
Meljen's - hearts
Truly Scrumptious - brown, pink, and green

Freebie! Xmas adage tickets

I was thinking earlier today that I liked the look of adage tickets, but that they were 1) overpriced for what they are, and 2) not exactly to my taste. I wanted ones that had Christmassy messsages so I could add a quick sentiment to my last-minute holiday cards and crafting, without a fussy background, so I could match them to my cards, and cheap - always cheap. It occurred to me that I could make my own, so I did.

These are the tickets I made, and I will tell you how I did it, so you can do it too.  First, I printed them out from the image I will be giving you in a bit.  I placed them in a tight grid, 40 tickets to a sheet of cardstock.  To get perforations between the individual tickets, I ran the sheet through my sewing machine UNTHREADED - that made the little holes.  then I took a regular sized circle hole punch and punched at the intersections of the tickets to get that ticket corner look (it's fast - you do 4 corners at once!).  Then I cut it into the strips you see here.

I printed these on white, with the thought that I could burnish them with distress inks for color, or even stamp or color them (picture candy stripes!)  I could also print them on any color or type of cardstock I wished.  Tickets are one of the few things that look really good on construction paper. 

However, for this card, I thought the plain white background looked very nice:

 

You may recognize the reindeer from papiersalat by janna.   Everything else is scraps.  I cut the layer circles freehand; it seems to go with the reindeer.

so, would you like the tickets to print yourself?  Here they are!  Just click to enlarge and save to your computer.

If you take them, and especially if you use them, please leave a comment!  I would love to see what you do with them. 

Challenges:

2 Sisters - T'was the night...

Allsorts - last minute projects

Ellephantastic - Xmas

Delicious Doodles - recipe

Digis with attitude - anything with a digi

Stamp Something - digi

Have fun!

Playing with my cat

I tried zentangling outside the cat this time. This was fun; I may have to print out more of these for zentangle cards.



I made some like this for a recycling swap. I decided the cat needed some yarn to play with. Can you guess what the base of this ATC is?



I had some more scraps, so I made a little quilt for my cat to recline upon. The faux stitching qualifies it for the Corrosive Challenge this week.



Finally, I have a color mingle in my inchie group, so I made these in the designated colors of dark green, yellow, and bright blue.

It's more fun playing with an image when it is your very own image!

A cat of my own

You may recall that I had to draw 30 cats for a drawing assignment; to be honest, I probably did fifty before I had enough. Then I looked at the book and there were some additional assignments. The first was to digitize (scan) our best cat and apply the faux offset printing effect on it.



You have wonder about a book that teaches you how to doodle cats, but assumes that you can already do a faux offset printing effect digitally (is that a PhotoShop thing? Because in PSP, you have to juggle layers to do it).

Anyway, the next thing we were supposed to do with our cat was to use it in our normal art. My normal art is inchies, ATCs, and cards, so I printed out a sheet of cats in three sizes. Here are some inchies:



The shape of this cat makes it very easy to cut out, and since I had relatively thick lines, it reduced very well. The think the plainness of the cat really offsets the backgrounds. Now, to the ATCs:



I thought that this would be a good size to embellish an ATC while allowing a lot of background to show. I just had this painted background lying around, plenty for this ATC and the inchies. This fits the Gingersnap Creations paint challenge. The thing about acrylic paint is that it resists water based media, but you can use alcohol markers and pens on it just fine.



This was a colorblocked background that I made from old scraps of paper. I realized that my largest cat would fit on it fine if I turned it to a landscape orientation.

I like a plain white cat, but it also occured to me that the cat would take well to coloring, paper piecing, and even this:



At this size, the lines are bold enough to hold their own against the zentangling. I was going to leave more white space so that the cat would look like this one that I know in real life, but I got carried away. The cat is in my computer, I guess I can do whatever I want with him.

What a coincidence that the theme at Fun with ATCs is cats!

Would you like to play with my cat? Here is the plain scanned HiRes image:



Just click it to see it full size. If you use it, I would love to see what you make! Share it and I will send some love your way.

Love never fails

This is a 6x6 inch card, which is an unusual size for me, but the text on the card would be really too small if I made it smaller, so I just ran with it. In a perfect world, this would be a rubber stamp, and I could have made a white card with the image embossed in gold, but this is a digistamp, given away free this week by Delightful Inspiration, but for sale after that at her shop, Designed2Delight. Are you confused yet? I had to read the rules 4 times before I could figure out what I was supposed to do.

Anyway, since I couldn't make a white and gold card with the digistamp (this is why rubber stamps will never go out of style), I thought it might look nice if I burnished some distress inks into it. Then, I got a little happy with the gel pens, and then I tried to find some coordinating papers. The end result is as you see above, inspired by this week's sketch at CPS. Not bad for a digi, I think.

IldiCo bear

I knew vintage images would look good on Vintage Silver Lustre, but how about contemporary ones? This cute bear is from Ildi Co. I used the Van Gogh technique to perk up the leaves, and some faux stitching.The layout sketch is from Truly Scrumptious.



I really like coloring on the Silver Lustre. This paper might make a digistamp fan out of me. Note that I used regular markers and a blending pen - remember those? People were blending their colors before there were copics.

I photographed this so you could see the shine of the sequins and the metallic ribbon, as well as the grain of the Vintage Silver Lustre Paper. The background is DCWV, and the little sentiment was a freebie stamp from TAC.

Trying to be open-minded

I have been fairly resistant to the idea of digistamps, which may amuse those of you who know about my digital design work, and others of you who know that I have used clipart on my cards since long before digital stamps were a common item. However, so many of my peers have extolled the virtues digital stamps, I thought I should give them another try.

Paper Popsicles has started a new thing, giving out a free digital stamp every Friday on their company blog, so I thought I would give it a try. It is a very lovely thing for them to do, and I am happy to send you all to their site to check them out. However, I had trouble with the image they sent. Perhaps it is all my fault, because I am cheap, I do not want to run an entire sheet of cardstock through my printer just to snag one image (this is my main complaint with Ten Two Studios, too). I want to be able to print out several at once, resize as necessary, even reverse and combine my digital stamps. Unfortunately, the image files come as PDFs, and I can't do any of that with my software, and I happen to think I have some pretty good software. However, my software will let me do a screen capture, so that is what I was reduced to doing - magnifying the image on my computer and doing a screen capture in order to render it in a format I could manipulate to my desire.

Anyway, once I got it printed out, I colored the image with marker watercoloring, Stargazers for shimmer, a little bit of direct marker coloring for the tiny bits, and highlighting with Stardust pens. The sentiment is handwritten with gold metallic gel pen and highlighted with the Stardust pen.



I chose to make a night sky to comply with the Saturday Spotlight Challenge to use a non-Halloween image to make a Halloween card, and I sparkled it up for the Sunflowers and Dragonflies challenge to Sparkle and Shine. The layout is Card Patterns 35. That makes 4 challenges in one card!