Shopping List

Happy Monday! I am home from my fantastic weekend in Toronto....boy was it full and fun!
Thank you to all the ladies who made my weekend so enjoyable.

Back to home life realities and one of them is grocery shopping....today's project is a cute little item I made for my kitchen for grocery lists. It is being featured today on the Melissa Frances Blog!
This is made from Melissa Frances goodies in their Kitschy Kitchen Collection. I love this collection, it has the retro, cheeky, vintage and beautiful all wrapped up in one.
I used one of Melissa Frances' backdrops as my heavy chipboard base and covered it with patterned paper and built it up from there.

A few details that I want to point out. I did do some stamping and copic work on this project. The cute silhouette images of pots and pans and spoons is from the background stamp of Hero Arts called "Kitchen Silhouette". I embossed this image in white directly to my patterned paper.
I also used my copic airbrush system to add some color to the die cut apples (cut from Melissa Frances crepe paper) and also to color the crepe flower I created in the corner.

Here is a close up of my crepe rolled flower. I used the rolled rose die from My Favorite Things to cut out my crepe flower and then rolled it up and a few shots with my airbrush gun. I colored a pearl with my copic marker to match as well.

Wishing you a creative and colorful day!

Monochomatic Copic Tutorial

 Last month the MFT design team posted a team challenge for monochromatic cards. I was really busy at the time and didn't get to play along....but I SOOOO wanted to try this! Better late than never.
Today's card and tutorial will show you some cool techniques as well as copic coloring. I decided to go with "neutrals" in color for this challenge.

First of all the image and the papers:
My Favorite Things image...."Love you with all my heart"
"Notched Tag Die and Stamp Set"
Melissa Frances paper...."Treasured Attic Collection"

 Here is a close shot of the copic marker coloring. The COOOOOL thing about this? Notice that she is not outlined in black or brown but rather white.....Here is how!

 I stamped her on X-press it card stock with versamark ink and embossed using CLEAR detail embossing powder.

 Here is my colors and layers for my skin tones....my light source being in the top left corner.

 Here are my skin tones blended. I have learned that I don't need to blend everything TO DEATH....rather that there are times in natural light where shadows do cause crisp lines.
The crisp lines that are created from her skirt and sleeve blocking the sunlight would create hard lines therefore I did not blend these out.

 Here are the colors I used for her dress and shoes.

 After blending and softening. Don't forget to leave those hard cast shadow lines. Notice under her arm and the shadow that is cast under the heart on the dress.

 Here is the colors for the heart.

 Blended....note the continuation of the cast shadow that I started under her arm continues under her hand on the heart.

 Colors for her hair, I didn't blend these out as I was going for a streaky look.

 The shadow around her....I am imagining she is up again a wall or backdrop.

 Blended out shadow and then used my blender solution to soften the edges.

 Now to clean up my image....I wanted to remove any copic ink that may have stuck to my image lines. I spritzed a clean cloth with blender solution and gave my image a quick wipe.

There was one part of the image that I did want in brown and that was the details on her face. I dotted over top of the embossing powder with my pigment ink multiliner pen.

Hope you enjoyed that wee bit of inspiration....I sure had fun coloring an image in a "different" way today...give it a try!

I have a fun Melissa Frances project to show you Monday. See you then!

Thanks a loot!

Hey ya mateys! It has been a bit since I have posted.....life has been streaming along lately! We have had birthdays and are in the midst of some serious house renos....you know how that goes.

One fun thing we did this past holiday weekend was go and see the newest PIRATES movie in 3D! First off we went to this awesome new theatre....it has reclining seats, we could reserve our seat and has a brand new sound system. It was a fantastic theatre experience! This brings me to the inspiration for today's card!

This is one of the new a la modes that is available at My Favorite Things called "I Treasure Our Friendship".
I colored her up using my copics...I wanted to make her "Penelope Cruz" like, so I gave her a deeper skin tone using my E11,13 and 15.
She is paired up with some Upcycle patterned paper by Cosmo Cricket as well as some tiny type letters that I joined with the sentiment.

Just a quick post today. I have a lot created that I can't show you just yet....but it is coming!

In the meantime....a little copic certification news:

I am off to TORONTO this weekend....to a very full certification class and some great copic card classes at Forever Scrapbooks! 

If you live in the West of Canada (like me) then you may want to take the opportunity to sign up for the KELOWNA standard certification class that is happening JUNE 4th! That class is open to the public and if you want to get into an intermediate class that I will be running in the fall here in the west then you need to take this standard class first. You can find an application form HERE.


All the other classes are listed on copic's website HERE. There is a lot going on so don't miss out!

Have a great day!

Jiffy Girls!

Oh, how I love the jiffy girls! I know all these girls by being on different design teams together....I gotta tell you, they are some of the sweetest girls you can ever know (inside and outside blogland)!

This group invited me to be a guest designer with them this month!!!! Each designer takes turns picking out paper and images and sending them to all the other jiffy girls.

For my card I took the image and paper pieced the big heart with the patterned paper I was sent. I colored the sweet lil' girl with my copics and found a little sticker sentiment to match!
Twill, twine and buttons...you can never go wrong with those....a little bit of kraft paper to give the eye a bit of a color break and then I rounded the top corner to match the feel of my image.

How fun it is to see what each person makes with the same product! I hope you will join me in visiting the other sweet jiffy girls and leave them a little love too!

The Jiffy Girls are:

Lori Craig

Carole Burrage
Julie Campbell
Michele Boyer

Alli Miles

Thanks for visiting!

Happy Birthday Lori!

 How fun to celebrate a birthday of one of the sweetest girls I know! My only wish is that she lived closer!
We are ambushing Lori Craig today with birthday wishes!!!!
Lori is one of those women that I feel I have known forever. She is wise way beyond her years and is a very great friend.
She has INCREDIBLE blue eyes that twinkle when you talk to her, I am so blessed to be able to see her in my copic travels and at trade shows.
Hope you have a fabulous birthday Lori.......LOVE ya babe!

 Here is my little bee hive card for Lori. The chipboard bee hive is from Maya road that I covered with aptly named "Sweetness" patterned paper from Pink Paisley.
I couldn't resist stamping this "Just Bee Yourself" image from My Favorite Things. I added some sentiments as well. The white embossed BEE-UTIFUL sentiment is in the stamp set. The sentiment on top with the frame are from the set "Polka dot greeting".

Here is a little close shot. Colored up with nothing but my copics!!!! Just for Lori :)

Wishing you a sweet day my friend!

VIP blog hop and shop!

I wheelie like you!!!!!

 Welcome to My Favorite Things' mid month event! The VIP blog hop and shop! This month's set is called "Enjoy the Ride". What a fun set for this time of year.
Along with the patterned paper that is featured in this month's kit I used the open doily scalloped die to add to the circular theme. 

 Here is a peek at the inside of my card. I decided to place the sentiment inside the image.
Now onto the coloring. I took a few photos while I was making this card to show you what I did.

 These are the copic markers I used to color her skin. I took a photo before I blended them.

 Here is the skin blended, my light source was coming from the upper left in the sky.

 Here are the greens for her pants. An odd combo, I know, but it worked well for the patterned paper colors.

 Here is the blended version.

 I paper pieced the top. It is important to remember when paper piecing and coloring within the same image that you add shading to your patterned paper as well. Otherwise you will have a mismatched image.

 Now to get rid of the white background. Using my lightest values of blue....this also makes the whites of her shoes pop too.

Here is a look at what the new VIP kit includes!

Looking for more inspiration? Barbara's Blog is next on the hop! Go and see what beautiful creation she has come up with! Enjoy the hop!

A la Modes Teaser

It is teaser time for the A la Modes line this month for My Favorite Things!

This a la mode is called "I need some face time" and will be released May 17th 7pm PST. I was so excited to receive her in the mail as we are a mac family here. I bought my hubby an ipad at Christmas so I can see doing some of these cards for him. I was inspired by the very clean simple lines of mac so went with their emblem as my only real detail on the card. I popped up the top layer of white so I could lay my patterned paper under the apple and rounded the corners (just like our ipad).
Colored her up with my copics and stamped the "hi" sentiment found in this set on the screen.

Here is a shot of the inside....using the cut out of the apple that I created for the front and a scrap of patterned paper and the DARLING sentiment for the inside!

In the past, we've released our à la modes images in cling rubber, however, this month, we're releasing both of our à la modes in clear photopolymer, just like the rest of our stamps.  This means that we can bring them to you a slightly lower price point than usual - $9.00 each!  How fabulous is that?!  Since our clear stamps are made in the USA, they are of the highest quality, so you'll have the same great image quality that you're accustomed to with any of our other clear stamps!  Sweet deal right?


Check out what the rest of the MFT designers created. The full list is on Kim's blog!

A Single Rose

 Today I have a sweet image and sentiments to share with you from My Favorite Things. I colored this Jolinne image "Once Upon a Time" while demoing at a scrapbooking event. I took it home and then paired it up with some patterned papers. Usually I do this process the other way around. I pick my patterned paper first then color. Thankfully the bulk of the image is a neutral (gray) so finding papers wasn't too hard.
I didn't have to look to far on my desk as my Lily Bee picket fence papers were still laying on top!
The sentiment came from this month's triple scoop set called Clearly Sentimental about Friendship.

I like how the elephant is extending his trunk so I thought he could hold a rose to tie in the sentiment. I cut a rolled rose out of felt with my MFT die and then placed a stick pin through the center. I colored the metal green with my copic marker to mimic a stem.

 Here is a close up of the coloring with my copic markers. After coloring the elephant with a series of cool gray markers I went in after and added some age spots.

Here is a peek at the inside...finished off with leftover scraps of the patterned paper and another sentiment that comes with this "Once Upon a Time" set.

Finally enjoying some sunshine here today!

Love U!

I am still playing with this month's new releases from My Favorite Things....I love to mix and match sets so today I combined "Fresh from the Oven" with the "Notched Tag" stamp set.
I colored her up with my copics and airbrushed the background using a crafter's workshop template. Mmmm the yummy smells she must be creating!
I used a few dies from MFT as well. I used the Jumbo scallop die to cut into a piece of denim. My image is framed with the Open Scallop Doily die.
The colors for my image were inspired from the Lily Bee patterned paper.

On the home front, I spent the day at my son's track and field meet...here is a shot of him in the triple jump...."Put your hands in the air Eeeesma" (Direct quote from Emperor's New Groove)....
Enjoy your day!

My Hubby is 40!

 My hubby is 40 this weekend! He is blessed with his family, health and stunning good looks :) This is a very stampy, scrappy card that I created for him.

No Ribbons
No Flowers
Oh my!!!!

I used a few sets from My Favorite Things. The background harlequin stamp is from the Caged Bird set. I used the set "Own your story" as well as a few of the sentiments from the "Just my type" set.
Fun little details were created as well (since I couldn't use ribbon or flowers). The Notebook Edge die for the side of my card. I used one of my Tim Holtz stick pins to hold my stamped sentiment. The "40" is from my stash of blackboard by Cosmo Cricket. The kraft ticket is from my Maya road stash and then the black glitz arrow to draw attention to the 40. The little story of my life sticker from Cosmo Cricket's tiny type collection.

I used a few adirondack pigment inks....Black,Juniper, Peach Belinni and Sunset Orange.

Here is the inside of the card....Ahhhhh 40.....time to "BE BRAVE"!

Above the Fog

Have you all had a chance to see the newest MFT release? There were so many fun sets this month that I didn't get a chance to post a card with this set yet. It is from the Inspired by line called "Up, up and away"!
I decided to stamp directly on this Pink Paisley patterned paper and then add a little bit of color highlights with my copic markers (RV32,RV34).  I also added color with my copics to the clear flower.

Below are a couple of glimpses of spring.....today we are in the fog but....above that fog is the sunshine! I am hoping to see that again soon, so is my husband's garden:)

Our tree next to the deck that is budding out.

A little hummingbird sitting on our deck. A rare moment when he wasn't flying drinking up the sugar water out of our feeder. I love watching the hummers!

Enjoy your day!

MFT Blog Hop and Shop!

Welcome to release day at My Favorite Things! This is the official hop, so if you have joined me from Kerry's Blog then you are hopping along just great! If you are a regular visitor to my blog you may want to start at the beginning of the hop....which is Kim's blog!

You saw a trio of cards using this set the other day and today I am playing with this set again....I Loooove it! I added a bit of color to the keys with my copic markers. This set is so fun to use as it has a die that matches it:

Look at all those fun sentiments!
You are just about finished the hop but there is one last stop....it is our fabulous guest designer this month Amber Hight! Hop on over and give her some comment love....thanks for stopping!

MFT Teaser Time!

Today's teaser is for a fun yet vintage set called "Just my type" from My Favorite Things. There is a die that matches this set too!!!! Yeah! It made making this trio really quick and simple. There are lots of sentiments in this set so you can create cards for many occasions.
I used October Afternoon's patterned paper and various adirondack inks that matched my papers. I love the sentiment of the top card....I will have to save this cheeky one for a fun occasion....:)

Here are the details about the upcoming release on May 3 at 10 PM EST:

• The MFT release is on May 3 at 10 PM EST. You can attend the release party from 8-10 PM EST here in the forum for fun, games, and prizes! All the new sets and dies will be available on May 3 at 10 PM EST.
• The guest designer contest is ON! Check out the forum for details on how YOU can win over $100 in stamp sets and play along with the DT for a month.
• If you'd like to see all the teasers for today, please click on over to Kim's blog NOW! Be sure to leave comments as you go for a chance to win one of 2 $10 vouchers being given away daily, just for leaving a comment. :) Check Kim's blog every day for the winners.