Sweet Pea in Blue

Good Morning! I have been in a blue mood lately--not sad, I just keep finding myself reaching for my blue Copics, blue paints and blue papers! I went to Jo-Ann's a couple of weeks ago and they had paper on sale and after I got home I realized that almost every sheet I bought had a lot of blue in it. My card today uses an image from Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copics. I added some ribbon that is held together with the pearl brad. 

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Today is election day. I am not going to try and convince you to vote one way or the other, I just want to encourage you to vote. Vote for the candidate that most reflects what is important to you. I will be going to vote when I get off this afternoon. I never vote early, I like going out on election day for some reason. Since Kip and I have been married we always go together to vote and I kind of like that. I hope everyone that is able is voting today. I keep reading that "this is the most important election of our generation". I think they are all important and every vote counts and that it is important to vote in every election, not just the big ones. I really don't understand why so many take this for granted, especially my female friends. So many women fought so hard to give us this right that I just can't take it for granted. Do you know what I think is even cooler than Kip and I going together to vote? That we can go to the polls, cast two separate votes and even vote for different candidates (which does happen) and both of our votes are counted.

I have a voice and I will be exercising my right to vote. 

Purple Sweet Pea Card

I have been trying to play with some different colors than the ones that I tend to reach for all the time and purples are a color combo that I tend to shy away from a lot for some reason. I like purples, so I am not sure why I don't reach for them a little more often. I love my Sweet Pea images when I am playing with different color combos for several reasons. One is that there is almost always enough things in the frame of each image that I can see how different color families look when paired together. Another reason is that there is always plenty of area for me to practice shading with those combos too. Sometimes I will sit down and stamp the same image four or five times and see how different that I can make them look, just by changing all the color combos. When I do that I make sure that each of the colors are different, I will use different skin tones, hair colors and different backgrounds, I try to make them as different as possible Maybe one day I will post photos of one of those coloring sessions. 

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I have been in an "experimental" mood lately. Pretty much with everything too; cooking, reading new books, and ways of being creative. I have been trying to combine things that I have never used before on paper. Really I am just playing around, but it is fun! I have been seeing art journals and such around the internet and I thought that would be a great place to keep my "practice" papers. That way they will be all together and thanks to my stash of Post-It notes, I can jot down colors, techniques, supplies used so that I have a go-to reference of things that I liked and didn't like.

I don't know if you are like me or not, but sometimes I get very intimidated by a new blank book, be it a journal or sketch pad or anything else. One of the things that I like about a brand new book is the potential that they hold......that anything can go in there--a great story. a piece of poetry or art--and the contents are decided by the user and there is no limit at all as to what could be. But therein lies the intimidation. I'm always afraid of ruining the book by making a mistake and I always felt like the book was ruined if it contained a mistake. It has taken me over forty years to get to the point that it doesn't matter if I make a mistake. I think that bears repeating: IT DOESN'T MATTER IF I MAKE A MISTAKE. And if I am just experimenting in my book, then it isn't necessarily a mistake at all. Very freeing let me tell you!

Most of you know that my friend's two daughters craft with me a lot. I was Jenna's preschool teacher and have been crafting with Samantha since she was literally old enough to old a crayon. Often they would get a little frustrated when their creations didn't look like mine. And I have always told them "Your art should look like your art and no one else's". I have said those words so many times and now I have my little crafting buddy who isn't afraid to make a mistake, so she paints, draws and whatever with abandon. I did a fabulous job teaching them that concept but I didn't listen to myself very well at all.

Until now. 

Sympathy Card

I almost never make sympathy cards, in fact this is probably only the second or third one that I have made in all the time that I have been making cards. I don't know why, but I am never quite happy with them and always end up sending store bought sympathy cards. I made this one for a friend of mine that recently lost his younger sister. Danny (my friend) was probably one of my oldest friends, literally! Our parents went to church together before either of of was born and so from the time we were in the nursery together in our Mother's arms we have known each other. In my family there are two girls then a boy; their family was the opposite, two boys then a girl. Danny and I grew up in the same Sunday School classes, the same youth group and even the same schools. Danny's Mom passed away when we were still in elementary school, she used to make me beautiful clothes for my Barbie Dolls and had the sweetest smile. So after a seven year battle with breast cancer, Danny has lost his baby sister. This is the card that I made for him. I didn't think about using this as an image for a sympathy card when I bought  it, but I do think it is perfect. The image is from Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copics. I kept the card simple since it is going through the mail and is for a guy.

I do have lots of funny memories of Danny and his family too. I remember once when we were all pretty young Danny showing me how easy it was to pick up his sister--by basically putting a choke hold on her and lifting her off the ground. I still remember her legs kicking to get down. My brother wasn't so compliant when I tried that on him! Danny could probably tell lots of stories about mischief on me as well, like I said, we grew up together. I moved away from my hometown almost 20 years ago for an adventure and don't see my old friends as often as I would like, but wanted to make sure to let him know I was thinking about him during this difficult time.

Sweet Pea Card

Good Morning! I am so happy that we got some much needed rain last night, but not so happy about the broken tree limbs and tomato plants. The rain did cool off the scorching heat, and I think it is supposed to be a little cooler for the next few days. That's a very good thing, especially since I will be cleaning up the yard this afternoon!

I have been able to spend a lot of time lately playing with my Copics and decided to make some cards out of all those images. This image is from  Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copics. I used paper from The Paper Studio, ribbon from my stash, and the jeweled butterfly is from K & Co. The image is from Rachel Anderson and is called Queen of Hearts. She is one of my favorite artists from Sweet Pea Stamps, I just love everything she has done.

Well, I am off to work now, have a great day!

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!

In a Purple Mood

I have really been in a purple mood lately. Its not a color I work with a lot, but I have been using all those Vs and BVs in my Copic collection. Light purple, deep purple, dusty purple, I have been using them all! My card today uses a Sweet Pea image, and you guessed it, colored with my purple Copics! The butterfly came from the floral section at Hobby Lobby, the papers are from JoAnn's and the ribbon I have had for a long time.

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Ours was pretty low key, I ended up cooking dinner for just the two of us. My in-laws are passing around a cold so they weren't up to really doing anything and I was happy to not be in the range of their contagious coughs and sneezes. My spring allergies have kicked in full swing so I didn't want to add anything else to my sneezing and runny eyes. 

Have a great day!

And in Color

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. I know a lot of kids were out of school last week for Spring Break, so hopefully your Monday wasn't too bad. We had a great weekend here and now that I have my crafting space organized, I am getting in a lot more actual craft time! I posted another card with this image last week but it was in black and white. I thought I would do another one, but this time coloring my image. I used the same papers and similar embellishments to the other card but this time I colored in the figure in the image. 

The image is a Ching Chou Kuik image from Sweet Pea Stamps and was colored with Copic Markers. Papers and flower are from The Paper Studio and the glittery center of the flower is from a pack of Dress Them Ups.

The Ghost

This image is from Sweet Pea Stamps artist Rebecca Sinz and is called The Ghost. I love this image, I think she looks haunted in some way, something about her eyes is just mesmerizing. This is one of my favorite images from this artist too. Everything was colored with Copics, I used hardware from a Paper Studio pack and Tim Holtz gear die cuts. The paper is from DCWV's Tattered Time pack. I love that paper and it has been one of those packs that I have been hoarding and didn't want to cut up. I know you know what I am talking about too, I am getting better with that because I finally realized that there is always beautiful new paper coming out and that I need to use what I have purchased.

Have a great day!

Black and White

Hello! I was playing around with some of my new stamps that arrived last week and decided I wanted to do this image in black and white, and just a little bit of color. I thought this image from Ching-Chou Kuik, called Poppy, from the Mist would be the perfect image to try a black and white color palette. Everything except her eyes and the flowers were colored with the colors from the C series of grays. It was a little challenging to limit myself to only grays for everything, but I was pretty happy with the results.

Image is from Sweet Pea Stamps, colored with Copic markers, paper from The Paper Studio, Fiskars border punch, ribbon and flowers from my stash.

Thanks for dropping by today!

Sweet Pea Card

Catchy post title, huh? I don't know why coming up with a title for my blog posts stumps me a lot of time. Today I just went with the obvious. This is an image from Sweet Pea Stamps so that's the name of this post! I think this is one of the earliest Sweet Pea images that I ever bought and I really like it a lot. I am stalking the mail man because I have new images from them that should be arriving in my mailbox very soon! Not only do I have images coming from Sweet Pea stamps, I also have some markers on the way from Oozak. I love happy mail!

I am going to give a little shout out to my Dad. Today is his last day of work, and he has been counting down the days. Since the beginning of the year, he has been giving a daily update on Facebook, reminding everyone how many more shifts he had left to work. After working today, he will go in tomorrow and fill out some final paperwork and then he is done. He is a man of a million hobbies (I am truly my father's daughter) so he is very much looking forward to all his free time. I know he has already ordered all the stuff he needs to start a second beehive and he is getting his seeds started for his garden. He is like me, or more accurately, I am like him, we are never bored. I could entertain myself for an infinite amount of time, I can always find something to do. Dad is the same way, between his garden, his flowers, the grandkids, his bees, his winemaking, reading, watching movies, photography, going out to eat with my mom, playing online games, and traveling when he can, I don't think he is going to miss working at all. So a big CONGRATS to my Dad!!

Mini Book and Samantha's Cards

This post is mainly Samantha's cards that she has made over the past couple of weeks. Recently she has started carrying a mini composition book with her in her pocket. She uses it to draw in as well as a place to write songs and other things that she wants to jot down. She really liked the compotion book I made for myself so I decided to decorate a mini one for her. I know that she carries hers in either her pants pocket or a jacket pocket most of the time so I knew that if I put anything with any diminsion on it that it would probably get torn off so I left it pretty flat. I just used some Cosmo Cricket paper because yellow is her favorite color. She also loved the pattern on this too. I had that flower shape left over from something else and I just stamped her initial in the center. Very quick and simple, but she loved it.

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Samantha's Cards

In school this week they have been learning to write a proper letter. As a class project they are writing to soldiers that are away from home. They were told if they wanted to draw or color a picture that it would be great and sent along with their letter. Even though Smantha loves to draw and has a lot of art supplies at her house, she wanted to do something with this stamp. She has been watching me make cards to send to my friend in Afghanastan and she remembered this image from The Greeting Farm and that is what she wanted to use. The sentiment comes from a set from Clear Dollar Stamps.

She loves crafting at my house for a couple of reasons. One is the stamp selection. she knows she can always find a stamp that is perfect for what she has in mind. The other reason and probably the most important to her is that I have Copic markers which she loves almost as much as I do. Copics are her favorite way to color anything, sometimes she likes to use pencils, but she has learned how to blend and everything better with the Copics. Here is a card she made with a Sweet Pea Stamps image:

Riley is her favorite line of stamps and is almost always the first thing she looks for when she is making a card. So here is Riely enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and cupcake. She let me know that on her card that is not a coffee mug, that it must be hot chocolate or possible hot tea. She is not a fan of coffee.

All of Samantha's cards were colored with Copics and a Sakura glitter pen on the Sweet Pea image on the wings. She used papers from her stash and the ribbon from our shared stuff. She has colored everything herself and normally she picks out her own color combos. Sometimes she will go through cards that I have made and ask what colors I used, but everything else she does by herself. Not bad for a nine year old!

Thanks for looking!

Happy Monday!

Good Morning! We had a very busy weekend, busy, but a lot of fun. We had Kip's birthday dinner/party at the bowling alley on Friday night, Saturday was doing all those fun cleaning things that have to be done and then yesterday we went to see Samantha play the piano, got groceries then home for dinner and then to watch The Walking Dead. The grocery store was insane, I didn't think about it being the weekend before Thanksgiving before we went.

My card today uses an image from Sweet Pea Stamps, was colored with Copic Markers and paper, lace and embellishments are from Hobby Lobby. I used Twinkling H2O paints for the background.

Have a great day!

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!

"Wings" Challenge

Happy Monday! Hopefully my crazy schedule is slowing down a little and I can post a little more regularly. I've missed playing along with some of my favorite challenges the past couple of weeks. The challenge on the In a Sweet Pea Dream this week is to feature something with wings. I used Meredith Dillman's "Broken Angel". I think she is just gorgeous, I love this image. Everything is colored with Copics and I added some sparkle to the wings with a Sakura glitter pen and used some liquid pearl paint to the image too. Thanks for dropping by today!

Another Sweet Pea Card

Good morning! Ahh Wednesday, the week is almost over and we are heading into a three day weekend! It has just been so crazy all month that I hope to do nothing much this weekend other than finishing up a project. I have a ton of books, most all I have read once and will probably never read again so I am going through my bookshelves with the plan of reducing the number of piles of books beside the shelves. The goal is to get all the books actually on the shelves. What about you, anything exciting planned?

My card today used a Sweet Pea image by Ching-Chou Kuik. Image is colored with Copics, papers are from my paper stash and the ribbon is from Jo-Ann's.

Copics used: Skin-E00, E01, E11, Top- B21, B23, B24, B26, Tail-G20, G21, G85, Hair- E31, E33, E35, E37, E39

Fluttering Butterflies

Hello! Ahh, it is the middle of the week. Now that spring is getting closer and closer, I am loving my time on the weekends. It's been nice enough most days to enjoy my coffee or tea on the patio with a good book, I just love that. My card today used Fluttering Butterflies, which is a Ching Chou Kuik image for Sweet Pea Stamps. I decided to go with a more black and white look here, even deciding to leave my background white to make the image and the vibrancy of the orange stand out even more. Everything was colored with Copics and the papers are from DCWV. resturaunt

I have an odd question; does anyone make their own crackers? We used to go to a resturant that served freshly made crackers while you were waiting for your food. My Dad and I were telling Kip about it a while back and I have been craving them ever since. I found a great recipe for a whole wheat cracker, but am looking for a white cracker that has been tested by someone. In my quest to eliminate most all processed foods from our diet, I have been having fun experimenting with different foods like that, foods that I normally purchase without a second thought, just because I have always bought them.

Have a great day!

Spring Sweet Pea Card

Hello! I am so happy to be seeing signs of spring around me in Middle Tennessee. I love not having to wear a coat. I pulled out some of my warmer weather clothes this weekend and was inspired by all the brighter, prettier colors that I saw. The challenge on the In a Sweet Pea Dream blog is to make something that reminds you of spring. One of my favorite spring/summer color combos is pink and orange, add my favorite color yellow to that and you have this paper! I had some problems getting a good picture of this for some reason. Those pink accents and the piece of pink framing the card and image are the same color. I don't know why it looks like I used three different pinks. I tried to adjust the colors and edit the photo, but everything I did made it look worse. I tried retaking the photo too in different light, but they still look different, so pretend with me that it all matches! The image is a Ching Chou Kuik image from Sweet Pea Stamps called Black Haired Lady and was colored with Copic markers. Papers are DCWV (I think), ribbon is American Crafts and the little accent pieces were cut out using Nestabilities.

Have a great day!

Dream of Iris

Hello! If you are here for the Oldie But Goody Blog Hop, please scroll down to the next post.

I am seriously in love with Graphic 45 papers right now. I am supposed to be on a paper buying hiatus right now, but a week or so ago I was in my LSS and as soon as I walked in the door the new papers just started calling my name. It was hard, but I did manage to walk outof the store with just a few sheets. But I mean look, it's just beautiful and since I used it right away it didn't get added to the paper pile so I think that it doesn't count against my no paper resolution. Oh, how I can justify a craft purchase! I have been playing around with some colors I don't use a lot of and thought I would use a peach/orange combo. the image is Ching Chou Kuik's Dream of Iris from Sweet Pea Stamps. I love the way this card turned out too.

Copic colors used:  Skin - R0000, R000, R01, R02,   Hair - E50, E51. E5, E55, E57,   Leaves - G21, G24, G28,   Flowers - R01, R05, R08,   Accents in the Hair - R05 and Orange Spica Pen.

Dance of the Butterflies

I am finally getting back onto a normal schedule from the holidays. I am usually off work on Fridays and this is my first one that I have had in a while that I have not been packing or unpacking, trying to get caught up on laundry before heading somewhere or from getting back or trying to finish all the Christmas gifts in a mad rush. Today, I am just going to play in my craft room for a while I think! The Copics are calling my name. My card today uses Ching-Chou Kuik's image called "Dance of the Butterflies" from Sweet Pea Stamps I think this is a little different from what I normally do. I love these papers with the big bold images on them, but I am always saving them for something else. My friend Allyson gave me this American Crafts paper a while back and it has been sitting on my desk since then and I have just been admiring it, not using it. Something about the shapes in the image's arms and body made me think of this paper though, so I decided to finally put it to use. I hope you like it, I was very happy with the way it turned out. I like to color the backgrounds on these most of the time, but I left this one white because I thought it would look great with the white background of the paper. Something else I did a little different was pick the paper first and then color to match the paper. I normally color and then go to my enormous paper stash and find something to match. This time all the colors were pulled from my paper. 

Speaking of my paper stash, that is one of the things I am working on for this year. I was going to say I wasn't going to buy paper for a while, but that never lasts. As soon as I walk into my LSS, I find paper that I just have to have! But I am going to work on getting my paper stash under control. I have gone through some of it and replenished Samantha's paper keeper. What about you, any craft related goals for the New Year?