Sunday, December 28, 2008

Pigs and Irises




The challenge over at Splitcoast today was an inspiration challenge. The inspiration material was from the Mackenzie-Childs online store (at http://www.mackenzie-childs.com/ and we were to use any product from the store as inspiration for our cards. This is the first card that I made and it was inspired by a piggybank.


I was inspired by the pig itself and immediately thought of this Whipper Snapper Designs stamp. I loved the pattern on the pig which was pink flowers with green vines. The B&W stripes were inspired but the B&W checks on the bank's ears and feet.


This card involved alot of masking again and colouring directly on the stamps with marker, spritzing with water and then stamping. The pig was stamped in black ink and then coloured. All of the sentiments are hand written.

The second card I did was inspired by the bearded iris pattern bread plate as well as the honeymoon pattern (checker board pattern). All of the piece was done with watercolours and the only stamp used was the Penny Black iris stamp which I coloured directly on with markers and spritzed with water before stamping it.

The two cards have different feelings and I'm happy to have been able to be inspired enough by the challenge to have made two different cards.

Friday, December 26, 2008


Today's challege over at Splitcoast was a limited supplies challenge and the limitation was no December holiday stamps, no red and no green were allowed to be used. We were just supposed to make a card to make a card.
The first card I made was the card with the blue and rust coloured bird. I made if for a friend of mine that is very ill and in ICU. She has a terrible form of malaria and the last I heard she was in a coma. We were all asked to offer our prayers for her. I decided that I wanted to make a card for her. Now I realised that she wouldn't be able to see it but her family will be able to see it and they can certainly read it to her if they want to. I just wanted them to have a tangible bit to know that I was thinking of them and of her.
Now the second card was just pure whimsy and craziness. Mother Mark had posted this card:
that showed a bunch of chickens and ducks and the chickens were teaching the ducks how to do the chicken dance. It made me remember going to weddings back home in Saskatchewan in the 80's and we always did the chicken dance (and the butterfly dance too of course). It was also played on the radio on the Saturday Night Dance Party on 980 CKRM which is now no longer that call number anymore. I also happened to remember this stamp from Art Impressions that I got at Marchant Paper in Kingston, Ontario and I've been wanting to use it for awhile. I just wanted to make something funky and different as far as an image went and I found the ribbon in my stash and chose it because it was on top and was the first thing that grabbed me and also because it kind of reminded me of a feather boa.
I like the way both cards turned out and already have an idea for what I'm doing for tomorrow's challenge. I love it when the post the challenges early like Stef did tonight!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

If The Shoe Fits Hang It On The Tree

I was in a couple of car accidents in the last year and as a result have been going to physio and for massage therapy. My massage therapist knows about my creativity and asked me if I could make a shoe ornament for each of her dauthers, Izzy and Abby.

Not having enough to do, I agreed to make them and promised that if I had to drive them to her house on Christmas Eve she would have the goodies in her hot little hands even if we had a humdinger of a snowstorm that day. Thank goodness it had snowed over night but by the time I got them done and got on the road the plows and sanders had been out and the roads were AOK!
I started making the ornaments on Christmas Eve morning actually. Which was sort of nuts but was it ever FUN! Just me and some tiny plastic shoe, some glitter and some feathers and I'm a happy girl even if time is tight!
Abby's ahoe is the pink one and Izzy's is purple. Mom requested lots of glitter so that's exactly what she
got. And I added some maribou in becasue - hey what girl doesn't like feathers right????
The shoe bases are some ornaments I bought at fabricland and are just some sort of hard frosted plastic that I coated with glue and added one colour of glitter to at a time. The outer uppers are pink or purple and the inners are green-gold and gold and then there are green or teal decorations on the shoes with an onyx coloured glitter for the sole and the heel. I added the feathers at the very end.
I think they kick butt and let me tell you it was hard to give them up (did I mention I LIKE shoes???) but who can argue with such a wonderful tradition as giving your daughters each and ornament every year so that when they leave home they will have a treeful of ornaments to take with them? I asked mom what would she do then and she said she'd have a colour coordinated tree that year - but I bet she'll miss all those ornaments.

I dropped them off at their new home but haven't heard how the girls liked them yet. I'm sure I'll hear next week when I go for my next treatment.
I took pics of them from all angles because I thought there were so lovely and wanted to remember how they looked. Oh and did I mention that I really LIKE shoes????











Merry Christmas!!!

I haven't been able to stamp in awhile because I have been busy getting things ready for my craft sales and going to those and then there is the problem that all of my stuff was trapped in purgatory - a large disorganised mess in the spare bedroom. I decided that I was going to clean it all up and put it away somwhere that I could actually get at things until my studio in the basement gets finished and low and behold all of a sudden I want to stamp again!


I've done a bunch of other things over the last few weeks and have pictures of them all and I'll post them later on as I get the time but for now I wanted to post these two cards I did for the WTC challenge over at Splitcoast this morning.


The challenge was creative letters and we were supposed to find ways to use letter creatively along with images for our cards.


The first card "Moose You Much" was done because I decided to just make my card with the first image that I put my hands on and it happened to be this Inky Antics moose stamps. The pun on miss you came to mind and I dug out my MSE set with the U - can't think of the name of it right now and the packaging is currently MIA. I stamped the moose, masked him, stamped the U and masked it, then masked off the perimeter of the card with post-it notes and then stamped the rocks and grass with a stamp from Rubber Necker and then I cut a free hand cloud mask from another post-it and sponged in the sky with brocade blue and pacific point ink from SU. Lastly I added the shadows and the dashed brackets to finish the card which is actually all on one layer.


This second card happened because the moose image just delighted me so much and I wanted to use him again. I masked and stamped the layered images much the same as the other card, starting with "Merry" from Stampendous and then the snail which I got from Ellen Huttson and finsihed with the moose image. I stamped the moose face 3 more times so that I could do some layering and also stamped the little snail a second time as well. After everything was masked off I sponged in the background with riding hood red from SU inside the maksed off borders and then I coloured all the images and layered everything onto the card. At the end I did some doodling touches with my pens and added stickles to make it all shimmer a bit.
The snail probably doesn't make any sense but I am going to send this card to my Auntie Heather in Calgary. She has always been notoriously late at sending cards and stuff and this year I never managed to send any cards. I thought that she would appreciate this card so I'll send it to her and if it's late she won't judge me.
Have a Merry Christmas!
 

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