Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Copic Creations Challenge - One Year Anniversary

Copic Creations Challenge is hosting their one year Blogoversary. They have challenged everyone to use their favorite technique that they have featured over the past year and incorporate that as your challenge piece. I had a really hard time choosing. 

All the ones I participated in were really fun. I use the Greens technique probably more than any other. So I chose that. I also included quite a bit of black coloring in here as well.  The image is from Dustin Pike and is a Freebie on his blog. The sentiment is from House Mouse, and has been cut up.


















The Dragon was colored with YG11, 13 and 17, and V12, 15, 17. The reds were R14, 27, 59. It gave and interesting effect. The blacks are C5, C7, C9. I added a little outline in the bats wings with black Spica. I also added a little bit of clear Spica on the horns and the skull.
















 The image was printed on a laser printer, and once colored, I cut it out and popped it up on the purple circle. 

I inked the edges with versafine, and then clear embossed it. This was mainly to make it a bit shiny.  The sentiment is also inked with Versafine and Clear Embossed.

Thank you for stopping by.

-Alaine

Sunday, March 28, 2010

CASE of neat card and Cheapo Flowers

Ok, so I saw this beautiful card on a web I check out occasionally, and I was dying to try it out with one of the Outlines stamps that I have. I thought it was perfect for this method. The Original card is here.

I used the Outlines stamp Fancy Blossom, and Inked it with Versamark. I stamped it on white Hammermill Cardstock, I chose this because it is so smooth, and when embossing it really gets the detail.

Once I had it stamped up, I embossed with Zing White EP. After it cooled, I used VersaMagic Chalk Ink in Pink Petunia, and a dauber. I started at the center and made swirls of Pink so that it got lighter as it moved toward the edges.  I trimmed the image to size and found a matching Pink Cardstock (Bazzill) in my stash.
The White Cardstock behind the image, is dry embossed with the Swiss Dots in the Cuttlebug.  I wanted to add ribbon, but I didn't have any pink that matched, and inking it didn't get it the right color. I thought that the Gold sheer ribbon added a little bit of something without overwhelming. 
 
The flowers are one of my favorite parts. The flowers I have seen in places are pretty expensive, and almost all of them are a little bit off white, and I want WHITE. So I bought a stem of flowers at Michaels on sale, and got about 9 flowers for a buck. I took the flower off the stem, and took apart all the layers to remove the little plastic pieces that are in between the leaves. I then added a bit of adhesive between each layer and put it back together. Because I had taken out the plastic pieces, the center wasn't as pushed together as the flowers usually are. So I took a bit of the bling pearls and added some to the center to make it look finished.  I had the flowers back together and then  I sponged a bit of the Pink Petunia on the flower edges to make it match the card. As the final bit, I added the bling swirls over the top.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a great week!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Snoopy and another Timeless Tuesday Challenge

Betty Wright, is the challenge host over at Flourishes Timeless Tuesday Challenge (there is a link in my sidebar). They are challenging everyone to ”fake it” by using faux techniques on the cards and projects.
I really struggled with this one. I tried several different techniques and didn't like any of them. I did a faux metal item where I embossed lots of times and then tried to impress a stamp in the metallic mush. It embossed but looked like crud.  I tried the Cracked glass technique, only I have no UTEE, so I tried it with the Versamark and Clear Embossing powder. It looked really cool up until the point that I actually tried to crack it. Eh.
So I fell back onto making faux metal. I cut out a frame from two Nesties, and embossed it a couple of times with silver EP. I think it looks like aluminum foil. I also took the silver slippery paper and embossed it in the Cuttlebug with a Diamond-plate folder.

For the Snoopy (a cute stamp from Stampabilities) I used the following Copic markers. 
RED - R22, 24, 27, 29, 59
YELLOW - Y11, 13, 15
GREY - C1, 3, 5
BLACK - C5, 7, 9 and 100
GLASS - B0000, B000
GROUND - W00, W1
BROWNS - E25, 27, 29
As a side note on the helmet after I colored it with the C5, 7, 9, I went back over it with W6 to give it a little bit of a different color.
The Red was fun to color and I tried to make it look like it had a custom paint job on it that faded from front to back.
I also sponged using Brilliance Blue ink for the sky.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope you come back.

- Alaine

Monday, March 22, 2010

Pink and Blue Easter Bunny

I had fun coloring this Easter Bunny. I especially loved making his tail. This is an Outlines stamp called Bunny Tail.  I stamped it three times. The first I colored. The second I cut out the bunny and colored, and the third I cut out the bunny tail and colored then touched it up.
I pulled out my copics and colored the bunny rabbit with BG0000 and BG000 on the very edge of the bunny. In the middle I used RV0000 and tried to blend the BG and RV together. The collar is RV21 with YG13 spots. 

The Grass is YG11, 13, 17. and the stems as well. I lightly colored the stems up with YG11. The Flowers are Y11, 13, 15, and RV21, 23. The centers are the YG13, 17.  The butterfly I used the same BG000 and RV21. I tried to  do some feathering techniques but it doesn't show up as well with such a small space. 

The sky is B32. I cut out the main colored image with an oval Nestie, and then I started layering the Bunny and tail. I used Pop Dots to give it some dimension.


For the tail, I worked on it first separately, and used both pink and white Flower Soft on it to make it fuzzy and then popped it up on the bunny. I think it is my favorite part of the bunny rabbit.  I then mounted the total image on an oval scalloped Nestie and mounted it on the paper.  I added some white ribbon and the little flowers I had left over from another project.

Thank you for stopping by and have a great week!!!
-Alaine

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Well, it got cold again, which made it a great day to stay in and be crafty... well except for the trip to the LSS to get some paper to match my stamp below.  The base of the card is Bazzill and the blue is as well. The design paper which I found is really cute from Karen Foster. 

The stamp is from Stampabilities. I pulled out my Copics, and  I colored the horse first. I used E31, 33, 35, 37 on him, and the mane and hooves are C5, 7 and 9. I also used the C5, 7 and 9 on his hair, but I added a little bit of E29 I think to give it a little bit of a different tone.  The guns also use C series but I started with C3, and used C5 and C7. 



The skin is E000 and E00. There is a little R20 on his cheeks. 

I LOVE using the B9X series for blue jeans. This coloring was no different. Mainly starting with B93, 95 and a little bit of 97 in the shadows. I used the R2x series for the hat, boots, scarf and horsey paraphernalia. 

TIP of the Post - Occasionally when you color with Copics you go outside the edges. (I know there are some people who don't, but that just isn't me.)  Usually it can be easily fixed with the Blender pen. There is one exception, IMO. RED. For me, red is absolutely impossible to remove. When I try It just turns into a pink mess.  Depending on how light the pink mess is, I sometimes use another color to mask it... e.g, a dark sky. My solution this time was to cut out the image, and then pop it up.

I used Nesties to cut out the rectangles and then inked the edges with Jumbo Java VersaMagic. I also inked up the edge of the card, and the edge of the design paper. The Sentiment is from Flourishes and fits really nicely on the Fancy Tag Nesties.
Thanks for stopping by. I am going to go find something else to start coloring. There is another birthday at work this week. :-)

Alaine

Monday, March 15, 2010

If Nothing Ever Changed...

There would be no butterflies. At least that is what my latest card says. I created this card very quickly using a small Technique Tuesday stamp set and a little bit of embossing - both dry and heat embossed.  

I used two papers - both shimmery. The pink paper . . I do not know where I got it from, but the white shimmery is Bazzill.  I took the pink cardstock and embossed it with the cuttlebug. 

I used Zing Silver EP on the butterfly and Black Versafine clear embossed on the sentiment. I also used silver EP on the edge of the pink cardstock. The Nestie for the sentiment is one of the Fancy Tags. I cut and embossed it both in white and pink, and then cut the pink raised section out. 

I had a white sheer ribbon with a silver edging that went very nicely with the card.

In the inside, I used the same pink and white as on the outside of the card, and used the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing on the pink like I did on the front. The white cardstock I stamped two little butterflies on and used the silver EP for the embossing.

Thank you for stopping by. I am hoping to post some more coloring in the next few days. Hope you come back soon.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Flourishes Celebration Day 3

Day 3 of Flourishes Celebration is to CASE one of the designers cards from the Flourishes team. After much dwelling in the blogs of the Design Team - I chose to CASE one of Stacy's cards (Twinshappy). I chose this pink card that she posted back in September. Stacy's card.



I first looked in my ribbon stash and chose a striped ribbon and matched the paper to. Once I had the paper chosen I turned to the Year of Flowers set and chose the daffodil. I stamped it and cut it out with a Nestie.  I colored it with Y11, 13, 15 and then I added a small bit of Y08... well I tried to. This is the second image I colored.  The first one the Copic marker leaked and dropped a huge drip of Y08 in the middle of the image. Needless to say - - It looked very funny. To the center I added a little bit of YR16. The green is G21, 24, 28.  

I added the sentiment on the white strip that I had punched the edge on. The flowers are a small punch I have with yellow brads. 


Thank you for looking. Hope to see you back in the near future.


Monday, March 8, 2010

Flourishes Celebration Challenge #1

Flourishes has a new challenge today that is a Sketch challenge.  The base cardstock is scored on the edges to get the raised edge, and then I distressed it with a nail file and inked it with Memento Paris Dusk and Tuxedo Black ink. The Design Paper is the front and back of Little Yellow Bicycle paper. 

The Image was stamped on white with Memento Tuxedo Black and the greens were colored with Copics - G14, 16, 17 and then a little YG13 over the top. The purple is BV000, BV01 and BV02.  The Blue wrap is B93, 95, 97. Once done, the blue was still a little too blue, so I went over it with C3 and a little C5 to tone it down a bit.  I colored three pieces of shamrocks from another stamp and cut them out and popped them up to cover a bit of the white space.

I used part of a Nestie to cut the top and bottom of the strip out. I needed it longer than the Nestie though, so I cut it at the top and the bottom separately. I then sponged the edges with the Paris Dusk and Tuxedo Black as well. The ribbon is a white ribbon that I colored with B97 and C5. I then added bling on the ribbon and on the ribbon holding the clover.

Thanks for stopping by - have a great week!!!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Inspired by the Mushrooms at the end of Alice in Wonderland

Ok... so while I was watching the movie today, the end had these really pretty 3D mushrooms growing while the credits were running. So I came home and wanted to color one of the Cornish Heritage Farms Mushroom Lane mushrooms. 

I actually picked the colors and colored them first, and then realized that I had bought this plaid paper today (Vintage Blue Sugar Plum) from We R Memory Keepers that matched almost perfectly. That is about as lucky as I ever get with colors.

The mushroom cap was R81, R83, R85 and a bit of R89.  The Green is G82, 85 and some G28 thrown in to darken it. The stem of the mushroom is E71, 74, 77.The grass is G20 with a bit of G21 to add some shadow. The path is E31, 33, 35.  The sky was airbrushed with B32 and 34 with some spots of BV01.

Thanks for stopping by again. I hope you come back again. 

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Another Sample - and me playing with Photoshop


This card is another one made for Outlines. I used two of their stamps this time, or at least portions of them. I used the Tree of Life from the Split Layering Collage - Judaic, and the words from the Split Layering Collage - l'Chaim since it means "to life".  I colored them both with Copic Markers. The blues are B21, 24 and the Green is G21, 24 on the grass. The browns are E21 series, and the leaves are G24 and 28.  The crystals on the Tree of Life are clear. I attached them using Crystal Effects and then colored them with the R24 Copic. 

I cut several different colors in various sizes that matched the colors I was coloring with. Then I randomly arranged them on the page and glued them down. Mom should be proud that it isn't quite symmetrical. :-) - - well at least the outside. The inside I cut four rectangles of color out. One of each color and glued them in, then I cut a white rectangle out and posted it on top of the squares.

Thanks for taking a peek at my card. I am hoping to have several more tomorrow. Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Copic Creations Challenge and a Pretty Pink Butterfly

The new Copic Creations Challenge is to color with GREEN. For the prize this round, they are offering stamps from Our Craft Lounge as an incentive to join in the fun.  I have a couple of sets from Our Craft Lounge, and in honor of them offering the prize I decided to use one of them (it is not required).   This set has some really cute stamps to it, but I was feeling a bit sassy last night when I colored it.

I used several colors on this - the E000, E00 and R20 for the skin colors and Y21, YR23 and E35 for the hair. The purples were V12, 15, 17. The browns were E31, 33, 35 and a little 37. The panties are R24, 27, 29, B16, 19,  C05, 07, 09 and RV21, 23, 25.

Since Green was the focus of this challenge, I thought I would talk a little more about how I colored the green. I started out with a complete layer of YG11 everywhere that the green was going to be. I then went over it with YG13 in the areas I thought that there might be a shadow - so in the folds of the dress, the attachment of the sleeves, and the inside of the dress that is showing. I then merged those with the YG11. I went into a few little areas, like under the breasts and right at the edge of the inside part of the dress, the right edge of the dress with a little bit of the YG17. I then took that and lightly spread it with the YG13. Then I went over all of it again with the YG11.  It was a little harder to color, because I was also coloring around the flowers. So not only doing the shading, but making it look right with the flowers. Once the green was done on the dress (and the shoes), I colored the flowers with the V12, 15, 17 and tried to mimic the shading on the adjacent green.

I cut it down to size, and then punched quarter holes on the 4 corners. Once I mounted it on the mint green paper - I used Jolee's Hotfix 3 mm Jewels in the purple color on the corners. I mounted this on dark purple cardstock as the base card. 



The second card that I actually finished Sunday night was a simple butterfly card. I do not know where I got the stamp, so I cannot give credit on that one. I colored it with R81, 83, 85, 89 YG23, Y23. This one had so many things going on, that I did not do any shading on it, as I thought it would make it too confusing. Once I had all of it colored, I colored over it with the Clear Spica. This is probably one of my favorite things to do. Although I have all of the spica colors, I tend to pull out the clear one, as it doesn't mess with your shading from the wonderful copic colors. 

I cut out the image with the scalloped circle Nestie. I mounted this on pink cardstock and cut a circle with the CM Cutting tool. I then cut the green using the largest Nestie and then mounted all of that on the dark pink cut with the CM tool.  I repeated the colors of layering on the sentiment below which was double stamped. First with pink Brilliance, and then with Purple Brilliance slightly offset.  All of this was mounted on Design Paper and then on the white base cardstock.

I hope you enjoyed the cards I made today.  See you next time!