Graduation Time is Here!

It's that time of year again!  As parents, teachers, and family friends, we are reminded of the passing of time as our young ones graduate and move on to the next stage of their lives.  This is a card that I made for my neighbors' daughter.  I asked her sister what colors she liked and what her style was.  She told me yellow, black, gray, modern and a little edgy.  So this is what I came up with using the CTMH paper "For Always," CTMH stamp sets "You Did It," "Congrats Graduate," and "Framed Moments," ribbon and brad from my stash.

And because I know all graduates get gifts and will need to write thank-you notes, I also made her a set of cards like these two.  The first card uses the Cricut Art Philosophy stamp set Z1686 that comes with your Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge.  Let your Cricut do the cutting, and then stamp the cute ticket sentiment on top!  (Washi tapes and brads from my stash).

The second card uses a retired stamp set "Thank You," the "For Always" paper, and some black tulle from my stash.

You can order Close To My Heart products directly from my website HERE.  For retired products, your best bet is probably Ebay, but if you don't find something there that you are looking for, LMK and I can always reach out to my fellow CTMH consultants to see if anyone has what you are looking for.

Thanks for looking!  Comments are appreciated!

The Incredible Adventures of Spenser the Cat

Late last night I heard strange noises coming from the other side of the desk in my craft room.  When I peeked around the corner to see what it was, I discovered a large furry monster in the bookshelf.

The monster dug around until he found what he was looking for in the very back of the basket--the plastic rings that are the core for rolls of scotch tape and ATG tape.

He then proceded to pull said items out of their little mesh bag and scatter them all over my craft room.

When he tired of playing, he pulled the dishpan out of the shelf and settled down for a nap.

Mother's Day Cards

Here are two Mother's Day cards that I just finished.  The main stamp is from Northwoods Rubber Stamps, and the sentiment is a retired Close To My Heart stamp.  The first one is colored with Tombow watercolor markers:

Next I made one using Copic markers:

IRL the colors are a little brighter on the one made with Copics, but they both came out nicely.  My best discovery with these cards was Ranger Speciality Stamping Paper--it produced such a clear dark image.  The downside of that paper is that neither type of marker blended particularly well.  Here is a side view where you can see that the butterflies are popped up a bit:

Thanks for looking!  Comments are appreciated!

Vogue Girl

Hi, Friends!  So after almost two and a half years, I have decided to resurrect my blog as an opportunity to share my artwork and craft with you again.  I recently spent a wonderful weekend in Huntersville, NC at Donna Downey's Inspired Artist Workshop.  I met a bunch of wonderful, creative people and got to play with lots of new artsy stuff and get messy at Donna's studio.  Here is one of the techniques she taught us about how to draw/paint faces.

First, find a face that you want to draw.  Mine is an advertisement from French Vogue magazine:

Next, prepare your surface.  I used a manilla folder, and I gessoed over the first image that I traced there--ironically it was another face with fingers in the mouth too.  I just like this one better.  So, yes, you need to prep your surface with gesso or another primer suitable for your medium.  Then use a piece of graphite paper (like carbon paper, but leaves pencil-like marks) between your surface and your image.  Trace the outlines of your image--I used the hard end of a small paintbrush to just get her outline on my surface.  Here is what it looks like now:

Really ugly, right?  Amazing what make-up can do!  lol.  Now, all you have to do is color.  I used acrylic paint for everything.  It's clear that I do not know how to blend color yet, but I kind of like her chunky.  What do you think?

Comments are appreciated!  Have a creative day--get messy!