Sweet Pea Card

Good Morning! I have a card to show you today that I made using a Sweet Pea image. The image is from artist Elaine Cox and is called Mirima. Normally when I make a project, I will start with an image and decide what colors I want to use and then after it is fully colored, I will then look for matching papers and embellishments. But every once in a while I will fid an embellishment I want to use or papers that I really like and then look for an image that will give it the look I am going for. I found this paper at Jo-Ann's and really liked it for some reason. It has an ever so slight peachy tone to it so I grabbed some peach colored card stock since it isn't a color that I work with very often. Then as I was leaving, those seashells from K & Co caught by eye and I had my embellishment. I knew I wanted an image that looked like it came from the ocean and I knew that I had several Sweet Pea images that would fit the bill. So for this card, the image that is normally my starting point ended up being the very last element that I chose. Details: all the papers came from Jo-Anns, the ribbon I found at Big Lots a while back, shell is K & CO, I used some Stickles on the flower and a pearl pen on the bubbles, image is from Sweet Pea stamps and was colored with Copic Markers.

I hope you have a great weekend. There is a yearly fair held at a local park near us that features artists from many different places. There are lots of pottery exhibits, jewelry makers, stained glass works, paintings and photography. There are also times that you can go and see featured artists at work. Last year was the first year that we attended and we had a great time so we wanted to be sure and go back this year. Kip is working part of the weekend and then we are going there. I LOVE pottery for some reason, not making it, but I love looking at it and buying pieces here and there. I also really enjoy looking at the all of the stained glass pieces. I am sure we will go and see The Avengers at some point too, but that pretty much sums up my weekend plans.

Have a great weekend!

Miranda

Good Monday Morning! I am not sure how you come up with your card designs and color pallets, but I often will sit down and color several images at once and then will search through my vast paper collection for what I think are the perfect papers to go with my image. Sometimes I will color the same image in different color themes or I will color a bunch of different images using the same color families. This card though was the opposite for me. I saw this paper in Hobby Lobby the other day and this image came to mind immediately. I wanted the colors I chose to make her appear part of the paper but to still stand out some too. I was very happy that I was able to really achieve what I saw in my mind while I was standing there in the paper aisle at Hobby Lobby.

The image is an Elaine Cox image from Sweet Pea Stamps, was colored with Copic markers and all the papers came from Hobby Lobby.

Mermaid Card

Hello! I have a mermaid card to show you today. Isn't she so sweet looking? This is an Elaine Cox image from Sweet Pea Stamps. Everything was colored with Copics and a white gel pen, papers, ribbon and pearl accents are from Hobby Lobby. The pearls came out of the bridal section. I have been very good staying out of the craft stores for the past couple of months. I had Jenna and Samantha over here the other day. Jenna was working on a summer reading project so we stopped by Hobby Lobby to see if we could find anything for her project. For once I couldn't think of anything that I had that would really work. The project was to make a travel brochure for a fictional cruise line that featured locations mentioned in The Odyssey. Yeah, I was fresh out of the stuff! Well anyway, since we were in Hobby Lobby we had to look at the entire store and I was surprised to find lots of new goodies, especially the jewels in the bridal section. I have to get one of everything! And since paper was on sale I had to get some of that too.

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I know it has been a while since I have posted. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I spent a little over a week with my parents in my home town during the last part of June/first part of July. Since I was going to be gone for so long, I didn't really want to broadcast that on here. I scheduled some posts while I was gone and for some reason the pictures showed up but no text. I never did figure that one out. I went to help my Mom work on some things around the house and wasn't online very much at all during that time.

When I came back, my creative inspiration was evidently still on vacation. I sat and colored a few things that I wasn't happy with and couldn't get a project to pull together at all. So I decided to take a week long break of no crafting. For an entire week I did not sit at the craft table, look at my craft supplies or even touch my Copics. I felt refreshed after that week was over and ready to craft again.

After that we have been having intermittent internet issues. It would work, then I would sit down to do something online and it wouldn't be working. It got pretty frustrating. Kip finally narrowed down the problem to a faulty splitter and after he replaced that the internet has been working just fine.

Also during this time I joined my local YMCA. I had been working out at home with the few weights I have and then walking on the treadmill. I knew it was time to add something extra to push my weight loss to the next level and I decided that the Y would be the best fit for me. I didn't know what to really do either so I worked with a trainer to get a routine in place. It took me a couple of weeks to build my endurance, but then I decided that I could really do this! Exercising has been taking up a big chunk of time lately. (that feels weird to even type that!). I am happy with the results--as of Friday's weigh in, I have lost 40 pounds. But it has taken me a little while to work that into the rest of my day without giving up something.

I will probably be posting about every other day until school starts back, but after that I will go back to my regular posting. Thanks for your patience! I'm off to visit the blogs of all my friends that I have been missing!