Passionately Kissable Chocolate Siamese Brings Me Back

OK. First of all I have been stamping and creating but I kinda forgot I had a blog the last little while because I've been really busy at work and I've been sick for the last two weeks too. Blogging is a bit of work and it gets late and I get tired and I just go to bed. But I made a new friend at SCS mitchygitchygoomy and she came and looked at my blog and I was so embarassed that there was nothing new here since January that I decided this morning that I'd better get on that. So I am back today. Plus if I ever want to apply for a DT job then I'll have to have a blog I update regularly and hopefully my intended bosses would skip this post and not read it at all.




This card was done for the colour challenge this week at SCS.

I don't always get to do the challenges the same day as they are posted and often the colour challenges get missed because I have a loooooong day a work on Wednesdays.

So this was done after the fact.

I was inpired by Karen (k dunbrook) and her lovely gallery at SCS whic can be found here: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/ga...?si=k+dunbrook. I found Karen through the forums and a commenting game over there that is so much fun.

Karen's lovely use of colour inspired this card. The siamese cat was just on top of my stamp pile so I chose her to be on my card. I often do what I call kamikazee stamping and just use whatever is on top. Part of what made her catch my eye, I think, is that one of the gals on another forum was trying to find the perfect cat stamp and couldn't. This one was just a second hand stamp I bought from Heather's Stamping Haven in Ottawa, Ontario. I don't know the name of the stamp or the company because there isn't a mark on the block at all to identify it.

Chocolate chip was perfect for a Siamese cat too because one of the colours they come in is chocolate point and so I just couldn't resist this stamp on so many levels.

I stamped the cat in chocolate chip and then used pink passion and kiwi kiss ink out of my reinkers and did a watercolour BG effect with lots of water and salt. I masked off the cat and then sponged the lower part of the BG with kiwi kiss and chocolate chip and then sponged around the outside of then entire panel with pink passion. I stamped the flower cluster (from Stampendous - sorry but I have worn the name off of the block but I think it's something like agapanthus) afer I attatched the main panel to the card base of white so that the pink would be on both pieces and lined up correctly. I edged the main panel by dragging it thrugh my chocolate chip pad and then outlined around the panel with my chocolate chip marker. I sponged in kiwi kiss, pink passion and chocolate chip around the card base and added my fuax piercing with my choc chip marker and then stamped the sentiment from Pocket Silhouettes around the edges. Lastly I added the Bella's Baubles in a line along the left side of the main panel.

I really like this colour combo! A friend of mine who has seen the original card says that I managed to make it look oriental to go with the siamese cat. It was fun to do as well which is the main point right????

Tenugui Inspired Cards

This is my take on the inspiration challenge for today over at SCS. The challenge was to be inspired by a tenugui towel.





Here is the first towel that was my inspirtation:



http://wuhaonyc.com/catalog/product_...roducts_id=326



I loved the two tone nature of the towel with the rabbit backlit against the moon and the grasses backlit against the black sky. I also liked that both parts of the image were in each contrasting colour.

For my card I masked off a circle I cut with my nestabilities and then stamped the zebra from Artful Stamper and the grasses from Inspired by Nature with Memories black ink through the hole in the mask. I removed the mask and over stamped using my stampamajig with versamark and embossed the entire inmage with clear EP. Then I put the hole mask back on and sponged the moon in cameo coral and real red, removed the mask, placed on the cut out over the moon and sponged the back ground in memories black. I mounted the main panel onto cameo coral cs and then onto a black card base. I adhered the bellas baubles onto the moon edges and hand wrote thanks around the inside edge of the moon.









This was a really fun challenge but a bit hard given that I am still kamakazee stamping (my stuff is mostly packed so I'm using whatever is on top and handy). I'm happy with the results and very glad that these stamps were at the top of the basket of stuff I have.

This challenge really got my creative juices flowing and made me want to do a second card. And this is it.

The towels made me want to draw something myself.

This is the towel that inspired my card:

http://wuhaonyc.com/catalog/product_...roducts_id=315

Her name is Okame and she is supposed to be full of fun and to make people laugh so thought I would follow that lead and make a cheery card. I think I did this the hard way though.

I hand drew her face on whisper white cardstock and then used regal rose to blush her cheeks just slightly. I'm not sure that shows up very well in the picture. Then I stamped the ribbon in her hair using an Inkadinkado clear set called Asian By Design and hand coloured some of the flowers in red and some of the background in gold. Here's the part that may have been more work than necessary. I coloured the entire white sheet black with sharpie. I thought about cutting her face out and mounting it on black paper but I wanted her to be a part of her hair and not just a face sitting on top of the hair so I went ahead and coloured in the whole thing. I hand wrote the sentiment in white signo gel pen and added red Bella's baubles to the red flowers and string of pearls baubles in her hair. I mounted the coloured panel onto real red and then onto a whipser white card base.

Ireally liked this challenge alot. The towels are beautiful and definitely inspiring, there is another towel there of a dragon that makes me want to draw a dragon. And I may have to just do that.

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.

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:

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/1169153?si=lsc200

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!

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!

Barnyard Black-Eyed Susans #1

This is the second block print image that I made. I 'd done a few drawings on the fun foam and was liking some of them and not others. I'd done another barn and it was nice but I didn't like what I'd drawn in the foreground and after I took it back to class I realised from what Bonnie was doing that I could just cut them apart and get parts of the image to use as I chose on my collages.

But this image I wanted to do as an entire image so I worked at thinking a bit about the composition as I drew it and what was going to be in front of what and all that. You don't have any opportunity to erase when you're essentially carving the image out of the fun foam as you draw. I guess I could make a drawing ahead of time and then "carve" it from the foam but there is something sort of spur of the moment and loose that I like about doing it the way that I am right now. That may get old soon but right nowI Ilike it so I'm going to keep working that way - at least for now. The image is a little dirty and there is a paint blob on the bottom but that's because I haven't worked in pencil for awhile and forgot how easily they can smear on the side of your had as you work. I made a mental note to use a paper under my hand to protect my work next time.

There was a technique on Split Coast Stampers that I hadn't gotten a chance to try and I forget what it was called right now but essentially there you were stamping with white ink onto black paper (ah there you go - it was called "Black Magic") and then colouring with pencils on top of the white and then some of the girls were outlining with white gel pen to make the images POP! I stamped mine in black and because it's a negative image thing the outline turns out white already and that makes it POP for me. I guess if I wanted to have a black outline and a white ground I'd have to use white paint on black paper. You can do whatever colour background paper and whatever colour paint you like. And you can also do this with inks although I haven't tried that yet because I'm enjoying playing with my paints and pencils right now.

The inspiration for this piece is a photo I took of some wild black-eyed susans in the ditch here last summer. I caught a small bee in flight just about to land on one of them. I've made another stamp inspired by the same image using only the flowers and nothing else and have used them on a collage I'm working on now in class. I'd like to find the picture again and work on the little bee image a bit because it just delights me. But that may be hard to do because when I was moving last spring I very carefully kept all my photos and scrapbooking papers aside so they wouldn't get wet or spoiled in the move and put them into my Pathfinder to move. That night I was in a car accident and rolled the truck and all of my pictures (which were actually organised) and all the paper got tossed around the road and ditch after the windows smashed out of the truck and the truck did a very effective roof slide with a twirl. I wasn't hurt but it's really hard to lay my hands on most of my pictures still because I haven't had time yet to go through them all and see what I still have and what's missing. If I can find it digitally I'll post the photo later. I just looked now and it isn't on the computer so it must have been on one of the disks that went through the crash.

This one I called Barnyard Black-Eyed Susans #1 (6x9 paint and pencil on cardstock).