These are a couple of cards I made today for SCS's color challenge: Banana, Grey, and Rust.. Weird, eh? This is what I came up with:


 LOTS of Copic colouring on the Mushroom house! Ain't it cute??

And now for the news!
For the past 2.5, almost 3 years I have taught classes at my LSS Precious Memories, but recently decided to take my show on the road! For the next two months I am teaching Copic colouring at Clipper Street in Langley in hopes of reaching some Clipper customers I may not have met yet, and help people to delve into the addictive world of Copic!! *evil laugh* If you've taken my classes that I designed at PM the classes will be similar at Clipper, but if you haven't taken a beginner class or need a refresher, COME ON OUT!! The classes are 2.5 hours, you'll colour a whole sheet of images to use later, make a card, and hey, you get 3 markers to take home!!

This is a sample of what you will do! I try to cover my favourite and most-used techniques in the class, and will help you "get" the whole Copic thang.... So SIGN UP HERE (they have on-line registration) and I hope to see a couple of your faces there!

This week's challenge was to use ribbon in a unique way... Ruffles aren't SO unique, but it's something I don't do every day, so that's the special ribbon "technique" I chose to do on this card:


Now I know this card is dreadfully simple, but it's the colours that are making me LOVE it. I used a couple different papers that are BRAND NEW from Pink Paislee. The first paper is actually called a "postcard" and is from this sheet that includes a whole bunch of different sentiments, images and frames for you to use on a project. I stamped the sentiment (hero arts) in the centre of the circle and it looks like it came that way! So awesome. The bottom of the card is from this sheet of heart-clouds that are so cute, not to mention versatile.. Lastly, the pleated ribbon from May Arts adds some dimension and a secondary focal point that takes the card from "nice" to "WOW.." or at least "VERY nice.." hahaha...

Check out the DT (especially all of the NEW girls) for more ribbony inspiration. If you want to play along, link your card to this Jacksonbelle post. Take care!!

As I stared at this year's Santa picture my thoughts went to LAST year's Santa picture and lingered on the fact that I have not scrapped it yet!! So with the slight burn of guilt in my heart I decided to get this layout down right away so I could at least feel good about that! And I do!


I used this week's sketch from Pencil Lines provided by Donna Downey. At first I cut out all of the snowflakes to actually be used on the layout, but I had the brilliant idea to use them as masks and airbrush with an E25 Copic Marker.. It is a better choice because now the focus is on the picture and the snowflakes are subtle, and yet still a lovely feature! *happy dance* Phoenix's smile is questionable because he has a lot of teeth issues going on and the poor thing is embarrassed to smile. It makes me so sad that he's self-conscious, but he knows that after the "Rapid Palette Expander" that's in right now to widen his mouth will soon make way for braces, that will eventually bring him perfect teeth! He's young for braces, but one tooth is completely sideways and is causing damage to not only his psyche, but to his lower teeth. :(

This next card I made as I was cleaning up my craft/crap area and I had this image coloured and just sitting there!! I HAD to make a card for it....

I'm really enjoying colouring lately.. I have started to pay attention to the shading AROUND the main image, and it's amazing how good it makes the image look. So much pop and pizazz...


So I have a bunch of Christmas photos to edit and a couple challenges to play so I will be back soon! Have a great day!

Supplies:

2009 Layout: Paper: Kraft, Elzybells; Chipboard shapes and die-cut numbers, Basic Grey; Snowflake shapes cut with the Slice; Lace, unknown, journaling tag, Basic Grey Origins.

Card: Paper: Bazzill, PTI; Stamp: Stampavie; Ink: Ranger lamp black; Ribbon; Amuse; Brads, Nestabilities, Copic markers, rub-ons (Cosmo Cricket).

This is a Christmas of new traditions for our little family. We are departing from the usual Christmas dinner with my family and opting for a less stressful, less "DRAMA" -filled holiday that includes activities we have all opted to do, including:

• Ice skating on Christmas Eve (we did that today and it was GREAT!)
  
• Dinner with Ian's family on Christmas Eve
• Uncle Ryan sleeping over and opening presents with us
• Going to the movies (we're thinking Avatar) after presents and breakfast
• A small Christmas dinner that includes the following:
• Turkey BREAST (I brined it... yummy!)
  
• Mashed Potatoes (with cream cheese)
• Broccolini with a smoked gouda cheese sauce
• Kraft dinner (Phoenix's choice!!!)
• Apple Crisp and Ice Cream for dessert
•  Go to Uncle Marks after dinner for some good hangin' out

And that's it for this year! I am so excited to not have the stress of my family weigh heavily on my heart. It's time I make my holidays the best they can be, and I truly think this will be the best Christmas yet!


Thankyou dear blog readers for a wonderful year. I have really enjoyed this past year of creating and blogging about the many changes in my life this past year. On New Years I am preparing a post of my top 10 favourite cards from 2009.. If there are any particular cards that were your favourite I would love to hear from you! I would love to send one contributor an RAK (I don't send enough happy mail...) for your trouble..

So Merry Christmas to you all. I wish you all a happy, peaceful, and FUN Christmas day!

Tobi

Ian and I are BROKE this year (as many of us are) so I have made a lot of handmade gifts for people, not that they were totally without cost, but they were within our budget.. I try to use my areas of talent and interest when making home-made gifts and in the past I have made a holiday CD, a scrapbook, a painting, aromatherapy items, handmade soap and bath-bombs etc etc... This year I combined my interest in aromatherapy with my interest in papercrafts to make some unique gifts...

The first few items are pockets and bags (the pockets are a template cut out with my Silhouette) filled with scented bath salts. It's my own blend of Lavender (which I HATE, but everyone else seems to love it..) Orange, Neroli (in the citrus family), Rosewood and Cypress. It's a very fresh, clean smell, and it's perfect for a bath or a foot soak..

It's a countdown to Christmas around here and I don't know about you, but I'm WAY behind!! So what's a good solution? MAKE MORE CARDS! Hey! Makes sense to me!

This week's Jacksonbelle challenge was to make a holiday card. Easy peasy!! I also used today's colours from SCS's color challenge to help me out with some ideas! 

I loved this stamp when I first got it. It was one of my first stamp sets and still one of my fav's. I don't think I'll ever give it up... Anyway.. I used Copic markers to colour it and I did some really dramatic shading for "DRAMA". For the "Curry" colours I used a custom Y20, Y21, YR23, YR25.. For some of the deepest shades of curry I added a hint of brown (E25) and blended it out with the curry colours..

I played along with the Limited Supplies Challenge at SCS last night and I actually made 14 of these mini-cards. I have just given them out to all of the secretaries, vice-principals and the principal of my school with a couple left over for other gifts and what-not over the coming week.






















These cards are going back to my roots: versamark, embossing powder, and stamps! Simple! On some of the cards I used a silver foil pen to add a fancy silver outline! I think they turned out pretty nice!

I bought this stamp because of my son. He loves anything with kitties. He calls our cat "his brother" despite our cat not having a particularly friendly disposition. I will say, though, that every night our kitty climbs up the ladder to my son's loft bed and cuddles with him right by his face. They wake up every morning intertwined and it's truely a touching sight!

I combined a couple of challenges, the Moxie Fab challenge, and this week's CPS sketch. The sketch has a few more layers than I usually like to do, but I wanted to colour this image and GET THE CARD DONE! So why not use a great sketch? Here's the card:

The red twill is actually recycled gift packaging. My mom gave me a bunch of holiday face cloths and they were bundled together with the twill. SCORE! The bottom paper is last years (or even 2 years ago) Cloud 9 Christmas, and the other two layers (brown and golden) are Basic Grey, also a few years old... The kitty is coloured with Copic markers and I used a little Liquid Applique on the Santa Hat! The stamp is from Penny Black!

Merry Christmas!!

This has, by FAR, been the busiest year for Christmas card making in the 4 years I've been doing it. I have had my big company order come and go, I've had a 12 days of Christmas event and blog hop with Jacksonbelle, I've made and sold 30+ cards to my community choir, AND have had to keep the stock plentiful and fresh at the flower shop I consign at. It's been difficult keeping up and luckily I have had the chance to sit down and make some cards this past week. Here are some designs I've been playing around with:


"Christmas" and the Damask design were cut out with the Silhouette. I doused the damask in glitter and it really sparkles in real life:



I made a bunch of these cards with various papers on the bottom. LOVE this image!! (Hero Arts)

I'll share a few more tomorrow. I still have a LOT of work to do before Christmas, that's for sure!

It's my dear son's birthday on Wednesday, but we're having the party tomorrow and he absolutely LOVES a Kim Hughes stamp of mine, so I HAD to use it on his birthday card. It's going to be a pretty lean birthday and Christmas this year, so I hope this card and the couple things that we bought for him will bring him joy. 

Here's the card I made with this week's sketch, and Dawn's color challenge:

 So I used a piece of unlikely birthday paper, and that's the blue piece which is actually from the MME Christmas collection! The rusty coloured paper is also from MME but it's from the Bloom and Grow collection. Here's a close-up of the "Cuteasaurous" on which I used a technique called "Nasty Rag." 


The technique is simple. Colour the area of the image you want to "nastify" and ONLY that section. Grab a rag with a lot of texture (I used a very old bath towel) and spray some colourless blender solution on it. Dab your image with the rag and you will get the "Nasty Rag" effect. Cool eh? 

Here's the sketch:


Please play along and link your creation at the Jacksonbelle blog! 


Remember that Inkadinkado stamps and sets are 75% off at the store. That's crazy!! Check it out!. 

1. Stamp flower image (Papertrey Ink) on blue cardstock
2. Stamp sentiment (Papertrey Ink) on pink cardstock
3. Glue cardstocks to card-base
4. Add pearls and ribbon
5. Bask in your own glory

 

I imagine everyone is extremely busy this time of year, but if you're wondering where I've been, well.. I call this "Christmas Concert Season" because in the last 8 days I've had 8 concerts/dress rehearsals (That's right, every single day! Sometimes two!!), and from year-to-year it's at least this busy. Things are winding down with my school concert tomorrow night and after that.....Sweet freedom.

I have also had a Christmas Card order to fill, and the company pays me really well, so I like to do a good job. Here are the cards:

Their company colours are, you guessed it, yellow and black, so I was *thrilled* to find this Making Memories paper that is not only festive and yellow, but it's FLOCKED! Love it! For the main image I re-created their logo in photoshop, printed it out, cut it out with Nestabilities, airbrused it with a Y26 Copic Marker, stamped snowflakes with a glue pad and covered those with glitter.. PHEW! Like I said, I like to go BEYOND the call of duty for this company. I used Papertrey Ink ribbon and an Amuse stamp for the snowflakes. I am really happy with how it turned out!!!

 I thought about a couple things when designing this card. 1) I wanted to use my Silhouette because I just bought a BUNCH of new shapes over the weekend 2) I wanted to use up some scrap paper I had laying around and 3) I didn't want to colour anything!! So this is what I made:


I used some May Arts Grosgrain Ribbon, My Mind's Eye paper, SU! cardstock, and some kraft paper. The snowflakes are an old amuse stamp..