Laura's Birthday Desk Set!

I can finally post this gift set since my sister now has her birthday present!! I made her a desk set with all kinds of goodies! She loves strawberry themes so of course I used my Flourishes Strawberry set! Here is a photo of some of the items, after I took this I made more goodies (see them below!)



I bought this cardboard L from Hobby Lobby and covered with the black and white paper (by theresa collins) Added a little strawberry to the corner and colored with copics, I used my nestabilities dies, and memento ink for the stamp and around edges.


I also made a pen cup out of a short soup can, used all the same materials. I bought some round barrel ink pens and covered them with the matching paper and glue on some jewels to the tops for decoration! I also lined the inside of the cup b/c you could see inside so easily.



This was her actual birthday card, of course to match the theme! For all of the red paper throughout the set, I used the bazzil glitter paper from Paper Garden Projects! I used an EK success edger punch for the wavy edge on the red paper. I also stitched the top and bottom and added little blue seed beeds.


The tray I also bought from Hobby Lobby in the unfinished wood section. I covered it in the pretty paper, I stuck some jewels on the ends and I also added jewels on the bottom to make little "feet" for the tray. That really added a delicate touch to the tray b/c now when you set the tray down it sounds like a little "clink" instead of a wooden "clunk".... =) Little touches!!




Then I made a card set with a neat little card holder template I found at Papertray Ink in their templates section! I made 1 card to match the strawberry theme and the other cards I made to all coordinate with each other! 6 cards in all! The parts that shimmer are from Shimmerz!!









I also made a sweet 3"x3" box to match the set! I used my Just rite stamp to do the monogram piece. I put red stickles around the edges of that and stuck tiny red jewels around the red scalloped circle. I also cut out paper ribbons and embossed them with a cuttlebug embossing folder and folded them and stuck them on with a diamond brad on all 4 sides. On the inside of the box I lined with fuzzy blue thread and stamped a sweet little mouse sleeping on a cottonball. I outlined that piece with red stickles too! I decided to add little jeweled feet to this box which gave it the perfect height to allow the pretty red scalloped border on the lid. I put one in the middle for extra support!




Then finally I made a pretty little notebook! I saw one similar on a blog somewhere and can't remember where (if you know, tell me!) Anyway, it was a mini composition notebook. I covered with paper, punched holes for the ribbon, added a pen to the side that can slide out! I added an envelope like pocket on the inside cover. I added little tabs for the fun of it! This was really easy and fun!




Sorry for such a long post, but I wanted to share all the details! If you want even more details, don't be shy! Just ask!

Wood Stamp Storage

I found these 2 drawer sets on the clearance shelf at Office Max for $5 EACH!! Deal!! They hold my wood stamps perfectly!! Before I found these I wasn't sure how I was going to store my wooden stamps. But I knew I had to think of something, b/c everything has to be neat and orderly! And everything must be in it's place! Tidy tidy!! =) I didn't panic, I knew I would find something if I was patient! I love it when things work out like that!! Except now if I buy another wood stamp I'll be in pickle! Oh dear!!

Country Dirt Roads

Sometimes David and I get in his old diesel truck and just go riding around. There is something so comforting about riding down quiet dirt roads, watching nature, smelling the dirt, hearing the humming of the diesel engine. Just us. No radio. You never know what you might see! Here are 2 nice shots I snapped as we road.

Gift Box for Granny!

My sister came to visit this weekend from DC with her new boyfriend, JK! We all liked him very much! This was the first time my sister has seen all of my "crafting" area and stuff! So I thought she should experience it a little! Since Granny's birthday is coming up on the 22nd we decided to make a simple little gift box for her! I used this easy 3"x3" box template here. Her favorite color is yellow! We stamped a cute little fawn for the inside when she opens it. I used my Just rite stamp for the center of the top of the box. We added some orange stickles around the edge and colored some white flowers with an orange copic marker to match! Of course we couldn't wait for her birthday and had to give it to her right away while Laura was in town! She really liked it! She'll be 85 this month and we are so blessed to have her!

Chocolate covered Bacon?!?!? Yep!!

So anybody that knows David, knows how much he loves chocolate! I bought some strawberries to make his favorite chocolate covered strawberries, but I got to thinking.. I bet it would be good if I had a salty treat to dip in the chocolate!! I scanned through my pantry then the fridge, and it dawned on me... David Loves Bacon!! So I tried it! And he LOVES it!! It is surprisingly great, no, divine!! It will make your toes curl with great joy! You've got to try this at home!! Buy your semi-sweet baking chocolate and melt in a pot OVER another pot of water, stir til melted, then dip your treats! Place on wax paper and put in fridge! My guests this weekend will look at me like I'm crazy, but after they taste it, they'll find I'm not crazy at all, but pretty dang creative!!




I had so much chocolate left over and couldn't let it go to waste so I looked around for something else to drowned in chocolate!... An apple.. perfect!!

Gerber Daisy's colored with Copics

I love this image from Flourishes. This is from the Gerber Daisy set! I'm a huge fan of their stamps and have many of them! After my copics I added a little bit more contrast with my pencils!

Fairy Fauna w/ Copics

Here is another image. Hope it's not too blurry for you. My gold colors bled a little bit on the top flower... sorry! After blending with copics I added more contrast with colored pencils! Here are the color combos for this image.

Fresh Baked Cookies with Copics!

I colored another image with my copics. I'm in my last week of my copic class and Colleen has been a great teacher! I think my technique has significantly improved!
I colored this image and then overlayed with colored pencils and the blender. I'm anxious to try the Odorless Mineral Spirits technique as well. You can see the colors I used here. I polka dotted her blouse with a white gel pen! =)

Beauty card!

I made this card using vellum. I embossed a brass stencil into the clear vellum then colored the back of it with colored pencils. I cut it out and placed it onto a piece of blue vellum on top of some pretty paper. I cut out the word beauty with my slice and used some metallic blue scribbles and dotted around the edges of the blue vellum. I tied the tiny bows using my bow easy!

Studio Pics!

It's always an evolving project... my organizing and such! But here is what things are looking like right now! David built me some small shelves to go into some small spaces where there was wall space! All of my art supplies make great accents for the deers and turkey that are hanging on the wall!!

This was the leftover drawer that I took out of my copic storage cubbies. I had to use it for something! I keep random ribbon is these glass jars. David is now building me a shelf for all of my ribbon rolls! Can't wait!



You can see the turkey wing hangind down in the top corner! This little shelves have really come in handy! I like to be able to see all of my tools out in the open instead of being tucked away in a storage box. It's much more convenient too!



I keep more ink pads on these little shelves below the deer! I did a quick color reference for my little versamark chalk inks. Fun!



You can also see those black ink pads on the second shelf. Those are Ranger distress inks. They don't have a side label so I stamped a little leaf in each color for a quick reference so you can see your colors when stacked! They should really consider adjusting their packaging for this reason!! ;-)



You can also see next to the little chalk ink diagram a little paper covered tin can. That was a tuna can that I covered in paper and nailed to the side of that shelf. It holds my little finger daubers and sponges! Pretty darn convenient if you ask me!



To hold all of my tiny ribbon rolls, I used this kitchen appliance. It was made to hold onions, or small fruits in a nice way on your countertop! Well, I didn't use it so much so I "converted" it to a ribbon holder!! I love finding useful ways of using useless things!! Do you have any great inventions like this? I would love to see/hear about them! The stack of index cards you see is how I catalog all of my stamps. The ones in the baskets below have not been done yet!!!! I would recommend starting this kind of project as soon as you begin collecting stamps!! B/c now it has gotten away from me and is a dreaded project!



Here is where I store all of my clear stamp sets!! By the way, these are in no particular order. Hmmmmm.... still need MORE!! Coming soon I'll show how I store my red rubber cling stamps! Stay tuned!!

My Memento Ink library!

I made this sheet as a color guide to view all of my memento ink colors! It just makes a nice quick reference for choosing colors. Plus, I love this little fawn stamp by sassafrass lass!

Copic class assignment!

Here is my assignment for my copic class this week!! We had to use our copics along with another color medium! I've been working on my contrast technique and BOY has it made a difference!! I'm even happier now!! On this stamp (by rachel ann miller) I used a ton of copics! You can see the combos on the image! (click to enlarge) But THEN...... I used colored pencil overlays!!! OH MAN DO I LOVE THIS!!! It added even MORE contrast! First, please excuse the ink smudge on her dress. Now, I used prismacolor pencils along with the prismacolor pencil clear blender. Just WOW!! You can see the prisma colors I used above on the image.

Sometimes when using the white pencil it would color over my memento ink, but after I was done coloring I went over a couple of spots with my copic SP multiliner. I wish I would have taken a picture before I added the colored pencils, sorry. Also, using the colorless blender PENCIL made a huge difference and erasing any pencil strokes and blending the colors into one another. Nice!

This is my MOST favorite technique I can ever imagine! Hhmm... wonder how my watercolor pencils would do with my aquarel brush?

I have the 24 pack of prismacolor pencils. I bet I've had this set for 10 years and never used them! haha! I bet I will make up for that now!

The blender pencil I bought only 2 weeks ago. not knowing what to do with it, I just wanted it! =) This was the first time I've used it. If you try it, you will see how nice it blends your pencil strokes and colors together! I was using white on some of the lightest parts of the image, but on some parts just blended the next lightest color into my lightest copic color with the pencil blender, didn't need the white then (since those copic parts were already light enough).

I definitely want to increase my colored pencil collection now!! =)
I can't wait to go color another image!!!!

Are the colors just brilliant and vibrant? YES!!!

Copic Color Wheel Tags!

Okay, so I've become obsessed with Copic markers! I have my hand color chart, but I needed a way to hold a color up to my paper to match them up! So I started with a Marvy Uchida tag punch (the Large Blue one). Punched out a ton of tags (plus extra for future copics!!) On the tag I used the chisel tip and drew 3 lines and a colored in spot. The first line is 1 layer of color, 2nd line is 2 layers of color, and the 3rd is 3 layers of color. Then below that I just colored in a blotch to see full saturation. I wrote in the color # and the name, punched a hole and started filling up my large book binder ring! PS. I saw an example of this fantastic idea over at Purple Onion!

Fall Leaves Card

For just a day or two last week I thought I could smell acorns in the air! So, I got in the mood for FALL!! A few leaves have started falling here in south Georgia and I'm so excited! So I made this pretty little card!



The stamp is my Victoria Case for SCACD, I colored with copics from a tutorial from Suzanne Dean.

A brand old cabinet for crafty stuff!

Another piece to paint! I spotted this cabinet in some of David's old stuff. It will be perfect for some craft supplies I thought! So I picked out some pretty paper and paint to match and painted away! For the handles, I used wire and beads. I looped the wire out so your finger could fit to grab hold. I also used some hot glue to secure the end beads on top of the screws. This doesn't hold everything but it's a great help and pretty too!!

Hummingbird Rescue!

I was upstairs in my studio working when a tiny hummingbird hit the window. I saw him take a nose dive into the grass several feet away, so I grabbed my camera and ran outside. Of course, I'd like to think I rescued him but I just held him while he gathered his senses. Then he took off up into the trees nearby. I think he'll be alright!

Flourishes - Strawberry card

This is the first card challenge I have ever participated in!! **grin** It was for Flourishes Tuesday Challenge FTTC29 - The theme was Red, Olive, & Black! I decided to use Flourishes own Strawberry Stamp and sentiment on A2 card size.

1. I stamped the pretty strawberry's onto GinaK 120# Pure Luxury Cardstock
2. On the strawberry's I used Copic colors RV21, RV23, RV25, R24, and a touch of YR07
3. On the leaves I used G21, YG63, YG67
4. On the flower center I used Y17 and yellow Stickles
5. I then outlined the stamp image in E41 (not sure if I like that now or not).
6. On the Flourishes sentiment I cut the tag with my slice and added silver Stickles around the edges.
7. I used my Paper Piercer and punched 2 holes for the brads.
8. I colored the already light green petals with YG63 and YG67 to make them a little more olive colored and stuck the tag on.
8. I cut the black cardstock with some wavy scissors.
9. Stuck everything on with my K&Co tape runner.

Check out the Flourishes Blog if you would like to see the other entries or check out their beautiful stamps!

Copic Marker Storage

I really needed some way to organize my Copic markers in my work space so that I could have easy access to them. So I ordered this Magpie cubbyhole container. It comes with 9 cubbyholes and a drawer in the bottom space, but I needed 12 cubby holes for my color groups. So I bought a piece of craftwood from Hobby Lobby and David cut it for me and made it fit perfectly inside the space where the drawer was! I painted it white to match and just set the drawer on the top for extra storage space. I have my handy Copic hand color chart for quick reference right on top! I just wanted a plain chart without any extra info on it so I made my color chart myself in Excel. If you'd like a copy just email me! I now have 238 markers!! Groovy!!

 

 

 

 

Updated: My current (as of Feb 2010) Copic stash is now 279!

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Owen's Painted Chair

We have a new family member! His name is Owen! He is such a chunk, just look at those cheeks!! As a gift I painted him this little rocking chair! I tried to pick out some nice boy colors and tried a little decopodge. I used acrylic paints and the letters were cut using my cricut. He'll grow into it nicely!

Birthday Card

I had a good reason to make a pretty card last week! It was my Mom's birthday! I took her to eat at Carey Hilliards, bought her some movies tickets and made her this pretty card! I'm just learning my copic markers and wanted to show all the colors I used to color the birthday cake girl. As I get better at this I'll start doing some tutorials!
I hope Mom had a good birthday!! Love you!!

Zinnia's Card

This is one of the first cards I've made!! I modeled it from a tutorial at Melz Stamps. i bought the stamp and all the supplies from Kathy at Paper Garden Projects! How Fun!