Paint it Red

Good evening! I hope everyone has had a great weekend. I have been able to spend most of mine here at the house, so that is a great weekend to me. Other than church and the grocery store, I have been home. My card tonight is for the Twisted Thursday Challenge on the Shirley's 2 Girls challenge blog. The twist to the sketch provided was to Paint it Red and make red your primary color. My image uses a digital download that I got a couple of weeks ago on SNR Card Universe. The image was colored with Copic and Prisma Markers and I used  Spica markers on the glasses and the things sprouting out of the flowers. The paper is Daisy Ds and the card stock is DCWV and the eyelets and twine are from my stash. I had an interesting experience with those eyelets, I punched the hole and put the eyelet in place and when I went to set it, my hand slipped and I slammed my hand into the desk somehow. I am fine, but it smarted for a little while. That's the first time I have ever been injured by an eyelet! Have a great start to your week and thanks for stopping by. I love reading all the comments, thanks for taking the time to do that.

Riley Birthday Card

One of my blogging buddies, Peggy has a son in Basic Training. His birthday was this week and she wanted him to get as many cards as possible. I don't blame her, happy mail is good anytime, but especially on your birthday while you are away and working so hard. I decided to use this Riley stamp from Hanna Stamps. Somehow this guy made it to my house and has been sitting here a while and had never gotten inky. I colored the image with Copic Markers then used papers from DCWV for the card. I am not sure of the maker of the kraft paper though. I picked up a pack of it somewhere and can't remember where I got it! The Happy Birthday sentiment is from CTMH and was stamped with their Chocolate ink. I hope he enjoyed his birthday card.

The weekend is almost here! The bathroom project is officially completed and now it is time to start another room. I really want the crafting space done, but it is such an overwhelming project, I don't even know where to start. Maybe inspiration (and motivation!) will hit me in the next 24-48 hours. 

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

I get later and later with these Thursday challenges, but fortunately I have until Wednesday night to get them done! These sketches are a lot of fun, check them out some time. This was a Twisted Thursday Challenge and the twist to the sketch provided was to use any punch on our card. I created my polka dots on the background with a standard size hole punch and then I just glued down the dots where I wanted them to be. I had to adjust the size of the image panel just a bit so that I could fit the image I chose on there. The image is from Shirley's 2 Girls and was stamped with Memento ink and then colored it with Copic markers. I went over the black stripes in the shirt with a Spica marker. The little flower at the bottom is also a stamp in this set and I embossed it with Ranger Red Tinsel embossing powder. I could not get it to emboss evenly so I went over it with a little red glitter glue. All papers and card stock are DCWV. 

Thanks for all the comments on my bathroom redo! I am very happy with the way that it turned out, and my husband likes it too. Decorating is not something that I have done a lot of since we got married but I have decided that I would like to take one room at a time until the whole house is done. 

Bathroom Re-Do and Original Art

This is my new shower curtain in our main bathroom. Actually the curtain, toothbrush holder, towels and everything are new. I love bright colors and this just made me smile when I saw it. I didn't paint the walls, I really do prefer neutral walls and then add my color against that. There are several reasons I like that, the main one being that you can change out a room much easier without the hassle of painting or worse yet, wallpaper. Until now the walls have been plain, nothing at all on them so I decided some bright colored art work would do the trick. If you are looking at the sink then this arrangement is to your left and the shower to the right.
Samantha and I spent the afternoon painting some original artwork for the bathroom. I bought these square canvas panels at Hobby Lobby and we painted them with matching acrylic paints. We did out best to mimic the circles in the shower curtain. 
We had two panels left over and Samantha decided some flowers would be nice. We used the same colors of paint and she painted one flower and I painted the other one. 
I love to paint, but it isn't one of my great talents! I love the way everything turned out. Let me know what you think!

Samantha's Party Goodies

This is what I have been working on this week! A couple of weeks ago, I showed you the invitations and thank you cards that I made for my friend's daughter. Samantha invited a few friends to spend the day at the zoo. We continued the theme to her party bags too. Since she was taking a group of kids to the zoo, my friend decided that matching t-shirts would be a good idea. And as a former preschool teacher, I completely agreed with that idea! Samantha wanted the shirts decorated with a giraffe. The shirts were yellow so that was a great choice. The originally was to find some iron ons and make a quick t-shirt. But the only giraffes that we could find looked like something you would make a baby onesie with, not something for a seven year old.  I finally found this foam giraffe stamp in the kid's section at Hobby Lobby. I used Butterscotch fabric paint to stamp the giraffe onto the t-shirts. 
When I went to the Copic class and made these Samantha has been wanting me to make some for her and I promised to make them for her birthday treat bags. The idea came from Candace and they were so cute and easy to make. I bought the little mazes from the party favor section at Hobby Lobby, popped off the back and traced the circle onto white card stock. Be careful taking off the back because that little ball falls out and if it bounces away, you will never find it again! Still keeping with her theme, I used Gigi Giraffe from Clear Dollar Stamps, stamped her with Memento ink and then colored with Copic markers. After it was colored, I put it on top of the original cardboard and then pushed it back into place. They were six for a dollar and it only took me a few minutes to make each one, and they matched the party perfectly! Thanks for stopping by tonight!

Acorn Dress

While I had my fall papers and pencils out the other day coloring my scarecrow card, I decided to color some additional fall images. I love the fall color palette more than just about any other I think.  I started with this great stamp from Lockhart Stamps and then colored it with Prismacolor pencils. This was the first stamp that I picked out on that shopping trip, I just love it because it is a little different. There are several of stamps in this style, using flowers, vegetables and other items, but the two autumn ones are my favorite. After coloring the image, I looked through my papers to find these from DCWV. To do something a little different I wanted to make my colored image look like it is a painting hanging on the wall. I added some sheer ribbon and a great decorative brad from Making Memories. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thanks for visiting! 

Jeep Girl

I have always loved Jeeps. Even as a little girl, I wanted a yellow Jeep Wrangler and told everyone that I was going to get one when I grew up.  I still love those, but when the Jeep Libertys came out, I fell in love with them too. Kip surprised me and bought one right before our first anniversary. My old car was dying a slow death so we were already planning to replace it. One night we went to look at the Jeeps and  I didn't even have my license with me so I couldn't test drive it outside of the parking lot! Next thing I knew we were in the office filling out paperwork. So when I saw this stamp from Stamping Bella, I just had to have it! Of course I had to give it a yellow paint job too. The image was stamped with Memento ink and then colored with Prismacolor pencils. I used some Glossy Accents on the headlights. Papers and card stock are from DCWV, thread in the buttons is DMC and I am not sure of the maker of the buttons. 

I have spent the afternoon on another project. Decorating the house isn't something I do that often, but I decided I wanted to redo the upstairs bathroom. This is the main bathroom in the house and the one that guests would use. As most of you know, I love bright colors, so my bathroom is now bright blues. pinks and greens. Bright colors and polka dots, I absolutely love it. Samantha and I are going to paint some artwork to hang on the walls and then I will take a picture to show everyone. I hope my husband likes it!

Scarecrow on a Fence

Good evening! I pulled out some of my fall stamps to play with the other day. This is one of the stamps that I bought at Papertrix after the Coloring Pencil Technique class with Karen Lockhart. My Mom was with me that day shopping after the class, I bought several stamps that day, things that I thought I would enjoy coloring, including this one. Then my non-stamping Mom bought several more just because she liked them! Of course there were no complaints from me on that! I love scarecrows from some reason, stamps and decorations. I love the fall season, I think that has something to do with it. My card tonight uses a stamp from Lockhart stamps stamped with Memento ink and then colored with Prismacolor pencils. I used s scalloped edge punch from fiskars on the brown DP, but that detail doesn't show up in the picture as well as it did in person. The flower is from Jo-Ann's, the button is from Making Memories, papers are DCWV and the twine is just from this giant roll that sits on my desk!

Circle of Friends

Another Christmas card! I really did get an early start on my cards this year. Every year I say I am going get started early and every year, I am starting them in November or December. This card used a stamp from Stamping Bella called Circle of Friends. I love the non-traditional view of this group of snowmen, especially the one that is looking straight up. I stamped the image with Memento ink and then colored everyone's scarves and hats and things with Prismacolor pencils. Since my snowmen are white and they were stamped onto a white background, I used a light blue to create some shading on the bodies of the snowmen. It gives them a little more definition and makes them stand out a little bit more against the white background. I used Marvy scalloped circle punches to punch out the image and the backing circle and then sponged some dark blue ink onto the background circle. All papers and card stock are from DCWV and the snowflake brad is from my stash, I think it is from The Paper Studio. Thanks for visiting me today!

Glittery Me

I have glitter everywhere! I remember now why I like glitter pens, Stickles and glitter glue so much. There is glitter all over me, my desk, the floor, the cats and, I have tracked it throughout most of the house. IRL you can see the image better than you can in this picture and it is very pretty. More than likely this is a one of a kind original. The glitter is the more clear kind but every picture I took made the glitter layer look thicker. The stamp is from Stampendous and was one that I purchased on my last trip to Papertrix. I stamped the image with Memento ink and then colored everything with Prismacolor pencils. Then I sprayed the entire image with spray adhesive and added the iridescent glitter. The paper, card stocks and the die cut glitter stars I used are all from DCWV.

For someone that doesn't enjoy using glitter all that much, I sure have accumulated a lot of it! I have entire drawer full of it, in all colors. The sad thing is that I also have duplicates of several of those colors. I taught preschool for 12+ years and I think that might have something to do with my glitter reluctance. But in the quest to use supplies on hand, I have opened that drawer and glittered everything within reach! I hope you are having a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Twisted Thursday Challenge

My Shirley's 2 Girl's Twisted Thursday Challenge is showing up on Saturday! I rarely have any extra time on Thursdays so I glad I still have time to play along with these challenges. The challenge was to use the sketch provided and the twist was to use four brads. I decided to do something different with this image, I have always colored these with Copics but I wanted to see what they would look like colored with Prismacolor pencils. In addition to the pencils, I used a little of a glitter pen to color the metalware on the bag. About the sketch, I rotated it onto it's side because of the size of the image I chose to use. The pink paper was embossed with a Quick Kutz embossing folder and I chose this one because I think it mimics the pattern in the bag and I chose four heart brads since the sentiment mentioned love. The patterned paper is from Bo Bunny, the card stock pieces are from DCWV and the brads are from Jo-Ann's.

If you remember last month, I challenged myself not to purchase anything new and to use up some of my stash? I did very well with that challenge and am continuing to decrease some of the items I have been hoarding. Since I do enjoy challenging myself, one of the things I am doing this month is to change up the way I color things. I tend to always use the same medium to color a particular brand of stamp. For instance the S2G stamps I always uses Copics, same thing with Hannas and Rileys, MFTs and stamps from The Greeting Farm. I always use pencils on Lockhart stamps, House Mouse and most anything with flowers or scenery. The only company I mix pretty much equally is Clear Dollar Stamps, it depends on the image I am using but I do use both pencils and markers with their stamp sets. So for the past week or so, I have been coloring them different than I normally do. It has been an interesting experiment and definitely made me think in a different direction.

I loved reading everyone's comments on their creative processes. Especially the ones that mentioned finding new ideas in the clutter on their desks! I am so happy to know that I am not the only one that finds new ideas on my messy desk. I am actually working on mine right now since it has been overtake by half finished projects. I wish those messy little gremlins would stop messing up my work space when I go to bed! Enjoy your weekend.

White on Black Rooster

This was one of the images that I had colored in the coloring pencil class that I took with Karen Lockhart a couple of months ago. The image is a Lockhart stamp and was stamped onto black card stock using white ink. Then we were to go over the stamped lines using different strokes to create shadows, lines of varying thicknesses and color in parts of the rooster using a white Prismacolor pencil. This was really hard for me! I think it took me longer to do this rooster with one color than it do to do just about anything else we did that day. It was a great exercise though and it did teach me different strokes to make when using pencils to create different effects. I like the way it looks but I couldn't decided what to do with it until tonight. I was playing around with some different papers and patterns and when I pulled out this gray striped paper from DCWV, it started coming together. I decided it did need a little bit of color and I thought the red would be a good choice. After I found the gingham ribbon, I knew red would be the way to go. 

Does anyone else create that way? Sometimes, I will just randomly pull out some papers, solids and patterns, then add some ribbon and other embellishments and try to make something out of it. I always pull out more than I would use on one card, but I have found some different combinations doing that. It seems to work the best for me when I am working with an image that has already been colored and the things I pull out will incorporate the colors or theme of my image. I love to color and seem to always have a stack of colored images ready to go! Thanks for visiting!

Happy Birthday Angela!!

My very, very good friend Angela had a birthday this past weekend. Since I was out of town on her birthday, I will be giving her gift to her tomorrow. Isn't that saying just the funniest? Especially knowing that I am giving her new stamps as a gift!! Not only is this new rubbah, but it is a line of stamps that neither one of us have bought yet. I can't wait to give her gift to her. Angela is my friend that I craft with the most, the one that I share ideas and supplies with the most too. The stamp of the woman is from Inky Antics and was stamped with Memento ink and colored with Copic markers. The sentiment is from a company called Stamp Verses. I used paper from 7 Gypsies, ribbon from Target's bridal section and brads from the Paper Studio. I asked Angela to make sure and not look at my blog before I get to work in the morning so she can see everything in person. I'd love to know what you think!

Polka Dot Mermaid

I made this card to play along with the Shirley's 2 Girls Twisted Thursday challenge this week. There was a sketch that was provided and the twist was to use polka dots. This is a new stamp that my wonderful hubby bought me this weekend. I stamped the image with Memento ink and then colored the image with Copic and Prisma markers. I used some liquid pearls and a Spica pen on the necklace and yellow Stickles in her hair. My polka dots are the ones I embossed with my new Polka Dot embossing folder from Quickuts. I used scalloped circle Nestabilities for my circles. I think one of these reasons that I like these stamps so much is the fact that they look great with the bright colors that I like to use. 

We had a great time in Indiana. Of course I paid a visit to the best stamp store in the world, Papertrix, which has been the hilight of all my trips to Indiana.  Man, I love that place! They have everything there. I came away with this stamp from S2G. a couple more Lockhart stamps, some gorgeous paper, a Scor-Bug and a couple of other odds and ends. In addition to shopping we had some time to just relax and be together, talking and hanging out. 

We also got a chance to see a movie. Kip went and saw GI Joe and his parents and I went and saw Julie and Julia. (BTW, we are both okay with going to the movies together and seeing different movies.) It was such a good movie, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The reviews I read weren't that glowing so I was pleasantly surprised. Thanks for dropping in tonight!

Make and Take at Archivers

We went to Archivers yesterday and they were having a Make and Take
weekend. I made a card and an 8 x 8 scrapbook page, all while my
husband and in-laws patiently waited for me. Here is a picture
(hopefully) of the things I made and a couple of the purchases we
made. I found some A2 size embossing folders! We are having a great
time so far and the Drum Corps compitition is tonight.

I'll be back on Monday!

We are headed out for a much, much needed long weekend away. I was going to try and get some cards made and schedule some posts, but I ran out of time! If I see anything exciting and/or beautiful I will take some pictures and post them from my phone. I haven't figured out how to add pictures and text on the same post when I am using my phone though.  

Zoo Thank You

I had a guest designer help me with the card design and layout. Since Samantha is going to the zoo for her birthday party, we stuck with the zoo theme for her thank you cards. She was standing over my shoulder approving every step of this card. We started with the Changito stamp from Stampendous and colored that with Copic markers, using a Sakura glitter pen to cover the "U". The bananas were stamped by my able assistant to make the white and yellow panels. We used the banana from the Lip Gloss set from Clear Dollar Stamps. She had to have some brads, so we used these orange brads from the Paper Studio. Samantha approves of the card because it uses her two favorite colors: yellow and orange. I have colored some of them and she is coloring them too. I do let her use my Copic and Prisma markers when I am there to supervise and I guess I have given her the "be careful" speech too much. As soon as she reached for the marker, she repeated it word for word to me! She and her sister have been using most all of my supplies for some time now and they know that the privilege will go away if they are not respectful. They also have their own supplies, some they have bought with their money so they know the value of what they are using.  Samantha especially likes to paint and she knows that real watercolors from the art section of the store cost more than the ones in the children's section, but that the colors are more vibrant and if we take care of what we have then we can have a wider variety. Works for me! 

Watercolor Challenge

And what a challenge this was for me! The challenge in the Hanna Stamps forum was to use watercolors. Normally if I am using watercolor paints it is to create a background of some sort. I rarely (only once I think!) them to actually paint and image. I bought some Peerless watercolors a while back and have only used them a time or two so it was time to pull them back out again. Have you seen these before? The color pigment is on sheets of paper, you simply trim off a small snip and then add them to water. It reminds me a little of those painting its I would get when I was a little girl, it would be a picture and then three or four strips of paper that had the paint on them. Anyone else remember those? The colors are much more vibrant with the Peerless watercolors though and you actually have enough to use over and over again. Back to the card; I stamped Riley onto watercolor paper using Memento ink and then painted him with my watercolors. I was able to get some shading on the water, but never did with the Riley image. Oh well, I guess I need more practice with this medium. I am happy with the way it turned out though. I raided the girls' beading supplies to find this white beading cord and tried to tie a cool nautical knot with it. You should have seen me sitting at my craft desk with my iPhone in one hand looking up sailor knots and the cord in the other trying to tie the knots. My name is Gina and I am a nerd!  The paper is DCWV, the star brads are from Color Bok and I used my square Nestabilities to punch out my image and the frame behind it. Have a great evening!

I love my computer

I loved this set from Hanna Stamps last release party. I spend just a little too much time on the computer and get just a little teasing about it. I used a computer generated sentiment. I heard this somewhere a long time ago and it stuck with me. Actually it makes me laugh! Here is the rest of the sentiment on the decorated inside of my card:
There was a challenge in the Hanna Stamps forum; it was to use this stamp set and to also use the colors pink, gray and black. I really like those colors too, that combo is on the short list for the color scheme when we redecorate downstairs. I wanted something fuzzy or furry for the rug below the desk. I couldn't think of anything until I saw some felt flowers on my desk and remembered that I had some felt squares that the girls and I had used for some project or another. I was very happy to see that there was some pink left! I stamped Hanna with Memento ink and then colored everything with Copic markers and then cut her out. The rug was also stamped using Memento ink directly onto the felt. It worked and it didn't smear, but isn't very dark. I drew in the wood floor and colored it with Copics too, added my section of "wallpaper" and then added in a white strip for my baseboard. The ribbon was just tied in the middle and then I spread them out a little so that you can see both colors. I used Fiskars Scallop punch on the border and then decided I wanted some more black so I added the black brads.

School starts back here tomorrow so my schedule changes too. I am not sure how it is going to work out yet, but hopefully I will still have time to craft and post on here every day. I have decided my personality is a lot better if I have some daily creative time! 

Samantha's Party Invites and a storage idea

I have been busy making party invitations, thank you cards and Pet scrapbooks! I have got to get busy on birthday cards too, my family has lots of birthdays August - October. I can't believe the summer is coming to an end, Monday is the first day of school here. One more set of invitations to show you! Samantha also has a birthday coming up soon and she is going to take a couple of friends to the zoo. I thought I would make her invitations to look like admission tickets. I used two different Clear Dollar Stamp sets, Monkey Madness and Zoo Critters. The images were stamped with Memento ink and colored with Copic and Prisma Markers. The lion's mane and tale were done with brown and yellow Liquid Applique.  The words on the sides were spelled using CTMH Solo letters and they were stamped with Brilliance ink. 

I was at Kroger the other day and had to go by the clearance rack.  And as any good crafter would do, I was looking for anything that I could repurpose for my crafting area. I found these metal silverware caddies with the other picnic supplies. when I saw this I thought it would be the perfect storage for my coloring pencils. The back side has three dividers in it to separate the color families. The other side is open and holds my bottle of OMS, bag of blending stumps, pencil sharpener, erasers and my little sandpaper thing. Not bad for $1.79.

ETA: I have the set of 120 Prismacolor pencils in this caddy plus the set of 24 Koh-I-Nor pencils. I was surprised that it held as many pencils as it did.
Thanks for visiting!