Birthday Girls

Hello :)

3 posts in one night, and 1 more to go :)  There has been two birthday girls at work recently the following are pictures of their cards.

The first car for miss Linh was the first picture I ever stared with Copics, using Summer Flower Tilda from the Summer Memories Collection.  The beautiful paper is from my DCWV paper stack, and the sentiment stamp comes from Lili of the Valley.

My second card to show you was for Miss Amanda is made with Chantelle at the Races from Make it Crafty, and surprise DCWV paper :)  Have you worked out yet I like this paper stack..?? ;o)

I also entered this piece in the Make it Crafty Colouring challenge for Smooth Gradients...eeek!!!  So nervous to be entering something like that but thought hey why not..?!

Thanks for stopping by.

xx

Miss Sammy

Hello again,

For Miss Sammy's birthday this year I really want to give her a card made with a picture coloured with my Copics, however I had a slight problem... I was still suffering really badly with my back so sitting and colouring for any decent period of time was really difficult.  So this piece was done over a few sittings to try and finish it.

I love the Saturated Canary images and Honey is one that I have had my eye on for awhile, and now that I have Copic markers I can use the digital image and make it any size I want :o)

Honey has been coloured with the following Copics

Skin: E000, 00, 21 and 11

Hair: E11, 13, 15 and 18

Clothing: Blue - B93, 95, 97 and 99.  Aqua - BG000, 01, 05 and 09.  Dark smokey Purple - BV20, 23, 25 and 29.  Pink - RV91, 93, 95 and 99.

Rabbit - T3, 4, 5 and 7 and RV91, 93, 95 and 99.

The picture above shows her shoes with the original soles, the same colours as her hair, but I thought they were too bright so I coloured over them with a toner grey.

I think the soles of her shoes look much better after I coloured them with the grey, what do you think?

The next photo shows the gorgeous DCWV paper I used.  I love this paper stack, beautiful, purples, greens, turquoises, greens and yellows.  It also shows my awesome personalised Whimsy Stamp :o)

Thanks for looking.

xx

My not so little man turned 5!!

Evening all,

In July, my not so little middle nephew William turned 5.  I took a day off of work to head to my sisters house in the Barossa Valley with plans to help her make a smashing birthday cake for our boy.  Unfortunately things didn't quite work out so well....

So on the Friday we got up and made some coloured cake pops ready to freeze and put in the middle of the cake to make it 'spotty dotty'.

The pops before they were baked, gorgeous bright colours :o)

So once they were baked we got ready to head to Nuri to do some shopping.  As I was getting dressed after my shower I dropped something, as I bent over to pick it up my back went, and it went big time!!  I couldn't stand straight, I couldn't walk properly, it was in spasm...I was in a bad way.    Later that night as my sister is rolling out red fondant I ended up at the local hospital to get some pain relief as I was beside myself in pain.  By the time my brother in law and I got home my sister was well on her way to finishing this absolute masterpiece!!

There was one very happy 5 year old!!  William loves the cars movies, and was so impressed with his Mummy!!  Here is the inside of the cake with its spots, they worked perfectly, because we froze them they didn't even dry out having been baked twice.

OK, so onto the card which is what this is supposed to be about lol.

This is a card pattern that I have made before, but I really did love the idea and thought this would also be perfect for William.  The only thing different really is the addition of the Aged Gold Frantage.

Thanks for stopping by :)

xx

A Copic Afternoon

My collection of Copic markers is still rather limited, but thanks to the Manga Arts Store in Australia, it is growing steadily. However my lovely Ma has quite a few already, and she loves to share :o)  Lucky me!!

Yesterday afternoon, my sister and my three nephews came to visit for the day it was nice seeing the boys and just chatting and catching up.  Towards the end of the afternoon I decided to practice my colouring.  I already had an Alice and Queen of Hearts from Saturated Canary printed so away I went.  I know Alice is supposed to be in Blue, but I had just received my RV91, 93, 95 and 99 from Manga and was dying to try them out, so we have the slight unconventional Alice and Queen of Hearts.

I was so incredibly happy with how they turned out, it took a good four or so hours and a really sore hand (I'm not used to colouring for that long, when I am painting I usually do a big image like that over a couple of days!!) to achieve the finished product.... Now I have to work out what I am going to do with these ladies :o)

I think this post brings me completely up to date, well until I start the two projects I need to work on for this week lol.

Thanks for looking.

xx

It's started....

As you can see from my blog, my colouring to this point has been done with distress inks.  When originally looking into colouring in images for my cards, i started with the distress inks as I already had them on hand.  I have stuck with them for awhile now, resisting going anywhere near Copic markers as my poor bank account couldn't have handled it (believe me it is crying really loudly at the moment lol!!).

Then my Ma bought some Copic markers, and I started to have a play to see what they were like to work with.  I loved that they are a completely different medium, and completely new technique for me to learn, and obviously they give a completely different effect to the distress inks. So i bit the bullet and bought some.... and now a few weeks later my bank card is crying ;o)  I have been watching tons of colouring videos, Alyce from Kit and Clowder, thank you!!  You are my colouring guru, through your videos I have learnt so much!!

A friend Nicole was having a birthday last weekend, and the theme was Alice in Wonderland, so I went on to the Saturated Canary page to buy some images, I bought Alice and the Queen of Hearts, and I also came across Jules.  Jules ended up being the image I decided to use because of the cat, we affectionately refer to Nicole as our crazy cat lady so it was very fitting :)

Please don't look too closely at the colouring as this is the first card I have made with a Copic image, i really enjoyed it!  Backgrounds papers are from Kaisercraft, and that gorgeous vintage lace has made a reappearance.

The hair gives me the most problems, HEAPS more practice to do on that part!!  Love that shabby blue frantage too :)

Thanks for looking

xx

The updates continue...

The updates continue tonight.  This next card I have to show you was for a mate of mine who's birthday was in late June.  

I've said it before and I will say it again, boys cards are difficult!!  Luckily though I still had my Ma's Kaszazz gears stamps that i had borrowed, and I had the idea to make my own background paper to go with the image.  These were stamped on white card with coffee archival ink, my favourite ink colour to use on my images for painting.  Once the gears were stamped I was going to go over the paper with my antique linen distress stain... to my horror it had gone green in the bottle!!  Yes green!  I had the same thing happen with my weathered wood :(  It was one of those moments that really threw me, I had this idea in my head for what I wanted... and it certainly wasn't going to work now, what to do??  I thought about blending antique linen over but it was not the effect I wanted, so I went back to my bottles of distress stain to see what other colours I had... Scattered Straw!!  By this time I was at the well the worst I can do is ruin it stage and have to start again! Thankfully it worked really well and gave a really nice warmth to the paper, and I am going to replicate it again to use for my nephews birthday card sometime before Wednesday this week lol.

First up a look at the image.  This is the Anime Game Kid I bought through Whimsy Stamps, an awesome stamp that gives a really clear print.

I had fun inking on this image and I was really happy with the end result.

The sentiment is also a Kaszazz stamp, and one of my favourites.

Thanks for looking

xx

a Vintage Baby Shower

For my final update today I have a vintage style Baby Shower card to share.  This project was a commission piece, and I was given a copy of the invitation and the thank you card as inspiration to work with.  I think it worked out really well as I had a VERY happy customer!!

Using Baby Tilda from the Prince and Princesses collection, and Kaisercraft papers from their Magnolia Grove collection.  Little Tilda was painted using Distress Inks.

The following is a picture of the gorgeous lace I found at my local Spotlight store, so pretty!!!

Thanks for looking

xx

a different Birthday Card

This year for my Ma's partners card I decided to do something a bit different, I have come across this you tube tutorial and thought I can give this a go!!  Just double click on the video if you want to watch it full screen :)

Such an easy card to make, but very effective!!!

So this is my version with a really cute stamp from Kraftin Kimmie called BIrthday Friends coloured with distress inks.

The big square on the back opens up so that I can write a message, you can just see the Tim Holtz paper clip I have used to keep it closed on the bottom right hand side.

Thanks for looking

xx

Welcome to the world Sebastian

This project I have to share was for another one of my colleagues on the arrival of baby Sebastian.  I was so excited to be able to use my gorgeous new Lili of the Valley stamp for the first time.  I tried to make the front of the card look like a cute baby's room wall.  I still look at it and I am not quite happy with the colour green I used, but in the wee hours of the morning while I was finishing it off it looked good ;)

The gorgeous die cut shape is from the Spellbinders Majestic Elements set, and was absolutely perfect!!

I coloured the image using distress inks, and tried to keep it reasonably 'soft' with only a few bold touches which is really hard for me!!

Love, love that Magnolia Blue Ducky paper :)

and finally, a picture of the inside of the card..

Congratulations Shaun, Rosie and Eloise on the birth of your son/little brother :)

Thanks for looking

xx

A special note

Once again it has been a while between posts, but that certainly doesn't mean there hasn't been cards made ;o)  

So firstly I am going to start with a really lovely card that I thoroughly enjoyed making for a very special young lady, who just happens to also be named Amelia :)

So it would probably be about 6 weeks ago one of the lads at work came in on the Monday morning and told me how he and his daughter Miss Amelia had been talking about papercraft over the weekend when she had said she was bored.  So I gave him the link to my blog for her to have a look.  A few days later he came in with a letter that she had made a written for me, it as just beautiful.  It absolutely made my day.  Miss Amelia had said that she really like the lady bug Saturated Canary stamp I had and so I decided to make her a special card to send a letter back in :)

This also has to be one of my favourite stamps.  She is painted with distress inks, and some gorgeous crackle paint in her wings to give them texture.

Purple is apparently Miss Amelia's favourite colour according to her dad, and as it is also mine I had PLENTY of things to use to make this card.

I was so happy with the results.  I put it together with a little bag of scrapping goodies and took it into work for her.  I got a lovely present in return that I hope to fill soon with all my inspiration and practice pieces ready to be used on cards :)

Thanks for looking

xx