Color Me Creative says Boo!

Hi there

Firstly if you haven’t been receiving my blog feeds then I do apologise, I hadn’t realised that they weren’t coming through until one of my blogging friends mentioned it to me.  I’ve fixed the problem, I hope, so you should be getting the feeds again.

Today we have a new challenge over at Color Me Creative, all about Halloween.


I played around with some stamps by Waltzingmouse. I used the Cicely at Halloween set for the girl and then the bats, stars and sentiment from Midnight Feast.

This image ties in with Waltzingmouse Sketch Challenge’s theme where this sketch is the inspiration.  I can’t believe WZM are on their 69th sketch, I can remember the first one coming out, where does time go?


I used this sketch from Sassy L’il Sketches.  I’ve only just recently come across this challenge blog and as I’m linking up I’ve just seen it’s going to be their last.  Oh, I’m really disappointed.  I was loving what I saw!


The Color Me Creative challenge this time is HALLOWEEN (or) FUN FALL COLORING!!  I’ll be honest I was a little bit nervous about colouring my image, where she’s quite detailed, and would normally have avoided trying at all, but as our challenge is all about Halloween I thought I should give it a go.  I feel quite pleased with myself that I attempted her. Sometimes the thought of trying something new is a bit daunting, but once you actually do it then it’s quite liberating.  That’s what I love about the CMC challenges, it challenges me to try new things.


I was trying to capture her light coming in from the right hand side. I think perhaps the area beneath her fold should be a bit darker and I may have done her left hand sleeve wrong too, not sure.  Her scarf was a bit tricky too, trying to work out where to put the light.  All this will come in time I’m sure.  If you have any suggestions for improvement I’d love to hear them, I like constructive criticism, it really helps me improve.

So your images should be Halloween or Fall Themed!! Have fun but you must use ORANGE tones somewhere in your images!!


Don’t forget to pop by the rest of the DT to see their creativity for inspiration as well!  Some of the DT used GLITTERBABES digi images, who are our sponsor for this challenge!

Charlene Randall (head gal)

Brook Guinn

Anary Baumgarth

Melanie LaBelle

Marie Gamber

Pat St. Martin

Jenn Cochran

Michele Spera

Sandie Dunne

Dana Joy

Steph Lee

Suzanne Foard

Andi Murdock

Shelby Goolsby

Hazel Parr

Renkata Pacheva

I didn't manage to photograph my Copic colours this time and it's a bit dark now so I will leave you with a list..

V05, V06, V09
E00, E11
YR04, YR07, YR09
YG03, YG05, YG06
C5, C7, C9
E27, E29, E49

I'll be back tomorrow with a little project for The Stamp Attic, have a great day! In the meantime I'm going to link this up with Paper Issues, the whole month is dedicated to Halloween.  Got a Halloween project?  Go link it up over there too!

InLinkz.com

PDCC 103–Playing with pattern

Hi there

It’s Thursday so time for this week’s Play Date Cafe Challenge.  I love Thursdays, yes because it’s PDCC time but also they are now my new proper day off, my ‘White Space’ day.  I spend a lot of time doing DT work and my little part time job too, so recently decided with my life coach that I need to take some proper time out, to read, to drink coffee, to be totally utterly lazy and I LOVE it.  I truly do look forward to my Thursdays now, it feels like I take a complete break from everything and I can focus on what I want to do.  I feel so recharged after it too.  I didn’t think I could make the time to take it, but actually it just took a bit of planning and re-organising.


Anyway, you’re here for a card, so this is what I’ve come up with, a mini 3 x 3 card (as you know my faves!)  I wanted to have a go at a bit of pattern building.  I always love what I see around in the blogging world, but have often thought it looks easier than it is and never really tried.  I recently got the PTI Modern Basics set so thought I would get inky and see what I could come up with.  Using different colours and stamps I stamped the base.  I then added a mini panel with ribbon wrapped around it, attaching a mini stamped tag and button.  A little button and some twine finished off the label.  I then stamped the little flower which I pop dotted.  I love that you can create your own backgrounds in different colours and I’m really pleased that I finally took some time to play.

This week the suggested colour story is rust, storm and deep sea.  Mine’s a bit more orange than rust because I was inspired by the sofa.


Our sponsors this week are…

For full details of our prize and some fab inspiration pop over to our main blog. You won’t be disappointed!

And if you don’t have a White Space day I highly recommend it, yes it might mean working that bit harder on other days to squeeze it in, but it’s sooooo worth it!!  You’re sooooo worth it!!

InLinkz.com

Paper Smooches & Stamp Attic

Hi there

I hope you all enjoyed the 'Operation Julie's Smile' on Sunday!  I popped around to everyone's blogs to comment, there was some serious inspiration to see!

Today I does love me some yummy Paper Smooches stamps so here’s a happy little mini card…

My fantastic friend Savvy aka Savannah O’Gwynn just made it onto their DT so I absolutely had to play along.  Way to go Savvy!!!!!  You wait and see what inspiration she brings, you will love it!

I used my Copics to colour my tomato.  I used to find my reds a bit difficult where they would also bleed over the lines, but I learnt a few tips and tricks from my online course that have helped.  I’ve started looking around at objects to help me figure out the placement of lighting, I’m not sure I quite pulled off the ‘roundness’ here but I still like him, he’s too happy not to!  Practice, practice, practice!  If you want to learn to colour but prefer non-virtual and live near San Jose, CA you could sign up for one of Suzanne's classes.  She has a couple of spaces free on October 22nd and 23rd.  Click here for more information.


This is the inspiration pic…

Today I’m also sharing a card over at The Stamp Attic.


For full details of supplies for this card pop on over to The Stamp Attic blog, supplies for my tomato card are listed below.

Before I go I'd like to say a very big thank you to my friend Laurel Beard who runs Lawnscaping Challenges.  She won a new Scor-Pal and sent me her old one as a gift!  Isn't she lovely!!!!  Thank you Laurel, I will have some fun playing with that, I've wanted one for ages, you're a sweetie. 

Have a great day!

InLinkz.com

Operation Julie’s Smile – Blog Hop!

I am so glad that you joined us on this amazing blog hop for Operation Julie’s Smile. If you came here from Laura Davis’ blog, then you are in the right spot. If not, you may want to start from the beginning at the Sweet Stamp Shop’s blog and take your time. You have ALL WEEKEND to hop with us and win prizes!

So what is this blog hop all about?!  Well..The creative blogging community is coming together this weekend to help one of our friends, Julie Ranae. You may know her as the Design Team Coordinator for many wonderful companies from bakers twine, die cuts, rubber stamps and more. What many people don’t know about Julie Ranae is that she has had some pretty major dental surgeries in her lifetime due to medication she had to take as a child. It was in her plans to think about having all of her teeth replaced at some point in the next 5 years, a decision that was pretty easy to plan out. But then it happened…she chipped her front teeth on a weekend a month ago. The dentist told her there was no way to save them & that it was his recommendation that she give in and have all her teeth removed as soon as possible, but for that day they needed to get her front teeth done so her gums could begin to heal. He said he would 'work out payments with her to have ALL this work done’...but when she called to make her appt for the first step of impressions, they told her the amount of money that was needed and that the 'payments' applied only to the two teeth that were extracted that day. Her husband Paul was with her & that too, was his understanding as well. So this is how she has found herself in this situation…Needing at least $4000 to get started and another $3000 to finish the process…a total of $7000.
Nicole Rixon, owner of Sweet Stamp Shop put together this benefit after finding out about this situation and before Julie Ranae knew it, it took flight!

Because she is an event organizer by trade, she has taken on the job of organizing all of the blogs in this hop as her way of ‘working overtime’ for what she needs, the same as if she were able to work overtime at an outside job to pay for the work to be done.

It is the goal of all of these generous friends & sponsors to help make this situation more do-able for our friend so that she can share a brand new smile with all of us soon.

If there is anything you can do to help with a financial donation, there is a donation button further down this post (or in my sidebar) ready for you to click. Any amount is appreciated and ALL DONATIONS will be eligible for prizes from our sponsor pool of over $2500.

This blog hop is HUGE, but so are the prizes!!  Because of the size of this blog hop there could be a break somewhere in the chain so please bear with us.  A complete list of blogs on the hop is posted on the Sweet Stamp Shop Blog. You have a complete weekend to get around to all the blogs to be eligible for prizes by leaving comments. What a great way to spend the weekend by being inspired by some amazing designers and getting the chance to win lots of goodies too.  We have over $2500 in prizes donated by the very generous companies. A complete list of sponsors is listed on the Sweet Stamp Shop Blog.

I know so many other wonderful designers and friends are joining in on this hop, so grab yourself a cuppa and a piece of cake and take the time to be all out inspired!


Over at CAS-ual Fridays the idea is to either take inspiration from the quote or use it as the sentiment if you get stuck.  That sentiment is SO true!

So here’s my card..


As my regular followers will know I’ve been doing on line Copic colouring lessons over at Color Me Creative which I’m really enjoying.  I love that now I can use my stamps in so many ways. I used to just paper piece but now I can do both paper piecing and colouring.  I was great at collecting the Copics but using them was another thing!!  I was scared of how amazing all of those other Copic colouring queens are out in the blogging world!!  If you want to get those Copics out I highly recommend you joining in on the challenges and classes, they are so much fun and you really do build your confidence with them then.

My little scooter has been coloured with my Copics and then I’ve paper pieced the little clouds and the seat.  I just LOVE these open images from the Sweet Stamp Shop, they work so well for both techniques and they’re really cute too!  I’m not sure if you can see all of the detail but I used black enamel accents on the centre of the wheels, tied some Baker’s Twine around the handlebars, added some crystals to the rear thingy (sorry I’m so not technical when it comes to this kind of thing but you get it, it’s that thing at the back of the bike!) Behind that I added some fumes using some ‘fluffy’ paint, it’s a little tube of white paint and you heat it with your heat gun to make it bubble up, I’ve had it for years but it’s still so fun to use (see links below)!  Finally I printed the sentiment off on my computer and added it to some stripy paper to finish.

I used the fab Christmas 6 x 6 MME papers for the design, thanks to Suzanne Dean for my little gift!!  I love the fun colours and like the way you don’t have to use all of them for Christmas, there are a lot of papers in the pad that are just gorgeous colours!

I wanted my card to be personal for Julie..  Yes, she heads up The Play Date Cafe Challenge Blog and Design Team that I’m on and she’s also my friend and mentor and I wish her so many blessings at this juncture in her life and going forward.  It’s incredible the way people have rallied around in this blogging community to help her…

So the little sentiment ‘Just Scooting By…’ seemed to work really well with what I wanted to say about her blog hop.  Julie, this card will be winging its way across the waters to you x

If you’d like to donate to Julie’s fund then please click the button below, you will also find the donate button at the top right of my sidebar.

I hope you enjoyed your stop here on the hop! The next stop is my fabulous teamie Jaclyn Miller’s blog. Make sure you leave a comment here before you go so that you can have a chance at the amazing prizes up for grabs and if you can, please make a donation so we can help bring back a new smile for our friend!

The blog hop is running from Friday October 7th at 8.00am EST through Sunday October 9th at 11.59pm EST.  

Happy hopping!

InLinkz.com

Mwah!

Hi there

‘Tis me again!  It’s Thursday so time for another Play Date Cafe challenge.  Today we are sponsored by Stampotique and I chose this fun little character and a ‘Mwah’ sentiment and ‘x’.  I actually do say ‘Mwah’ to my friends as a joke so thought it would be fun to send to others but also to make something for myself.  I always tend to make things for others but not for me, do you ever do that?  I remember what our fab friend and ex-teamie Sarah Anderson once said to me about art journalling..that sometimes it’s nice just to stamp in a journal for the sake of it so that you can see all of the lovely stamps that you’ve bought rather than just giving them away.  You buy them because you like them so why not enjoy them too!



Look at these wickedly delicious colours for you this week!  I decided to make a tag, I may add it to a card base to make into a card or I may just keep it for me for a journal, I haven’t decided yet.  Decisions, decisions…

You just have to check out the other girls' projects for this week, they are my absolute favourite so far, really fun!!

For all the details of what’s up for grabs pop on over to the main Play Date Cafe blog.
Supplies are listed below.  I borrowed the pinking sheared circle dies from Pauline Pillington but didn’t take down the name and I can’t seem to find them, but I think they may be Nellie’s nesties.

If you haven’t had chance to sponsor Julie’s blog hop yet you can click on my button in the sidebar.  The prizes are around $2500 the last time I checked which is brilliant.

Ciao for now!

InLinkz.com