Up, Up, and Away with Cloud Nine!

Here is a card I CASEd from p. 17 of the CTMH Holiday Gift Guide.  I used the Lifting Spirits stamp set (C1570) with some of my scraps from the Cloud Nine kit and our Chocolate wood-grain washi tape and baker's twine.  Isn't it darling???!!!  The "Happy Birthday" sentiment is from Banner Wishes (B1438), but I curved it to fit on the banner in the Lifting Spirits set instead.  It's SO nice that CTMH makes stamps that we can mix and match, and our acrylic stamps are easy to bend and shape into curves or waves.  You can order all of these products from my secure website HERE.  Thanks for stopping by!  Comments are appreciated too!

Today, Tomorrow, or Yesterday?

This is a page from my Art Journal.  I created it for the ArtJournaling with MichaelStrongStamps Facebook group HERE.  The 2014 date stamps at the top are the Michael Strong stamps that I used on this page.  This is definitely NOT my favorite art journal page that I have ever done, lol.  I'm not normally crazy about pastels, but after initially hating my background, I decided the colors sort of went with the sentiment in mood.  It says, "You pile up enough tomorrows, you'll find you've collected a lot of empty yesterdays."  It's a line from The Music Man, a play that I was in during high school.  (I was a dancer; didn't have a speaking part--so I had all the perks of being in the play without much of the responsibility)!  Both my mom and I had always loved the movie The Music Man, and being in the school musical was a blast.  I feel like I know the script by heart, so as soon as I read this quote, I could see exactly the scene in which it was said.  Ahhh--Marian the librarian and Professor Harold Hill--those were the days....  Now, where was I?  Oh, yes--

I started this page with small squares/rectangles of paper that I adhered with matte medium.  (If you belong to the FB group, this is similar to the video that Herma posted of Vicky Papaioannou's art journal page).  I painted over that layer with pale pink acrylic paint to tone down the colors.  Then I outlined and blended the edges of the paper squares with a big brush marker.  At this point it just looked like a country quilt to me, and I had no idea what I was going to do with it.  I looked through my "bits and pieces for collage" bin and found the girl.  She coordinated nicely with the colors, so I cut her out.  But I still had no idea of which direction I needed to go, so I went to the computer to browse my quote folder.  I was thinking along the lines of something about quilts and family, but when this Music Man quote popped up, I thought it might do.  I knew I had a bunch of calendar stamps and the ideas started flowing.  Back I went to the page which still looked way too quilty, so I pulled out some stencils and some more paint.  I kept the stencil colors pastel because I knew I wanted to stamp the calendar stuff in black.  I used Ranger archival black ink so that it wouldn't smear if/when I used matte medium or another liquid on top of it.  The calendar stamps are all from Close To My Heart.  I think I have every calendar stamp they ever made, and I have never used any of them until now!  I added the butterflies because they made me think of time fluttering away like the empty yesterdays in the quote.  The bricks are made with Viva Stone Effect Paste, and I dabbed white paint on them when the paste dried to make them pop.  I wanted the brick wall to be a bit ambiguous--do you think the girl is going to step out from behind the wall or stay in her comfort zone?

Celebrate the New Year!

Happy New Year!  Don't you just love the bright colors of these papers?  I made this card with leftover scraps from the Close To My Heart "Cloud Nine" kit that is available ONLY this month to celebrate National Papercrafting Month.  You can get this kit HERE for only $15 with your order of $35 of CTMH products.  The kit comes with all the papers you need to make 10 cards PLUS a D-size stamp set, glitter trim, washi tape, die-cuts, and triangle studs for embellishment.  You won't want to miss this one!

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!