Coloring with Alcohol Ink Markers

Hello friends. This has been a year that has been completely unplanned in every way. While did not have a job until this summer, somehow the year still filled with craziness, some wonderful times of fellowship with friends and some sad and trying times as well.... That isn't what this post is about, but I thought I'd share why I've been a little more quiet on the blog front this year. What times I have taken to craft, I've tried to just focus on the crafting and the art of it all rather than worry about having blog posts to share. I have shared some photos on Facebook and eventually I'll get through all of my pictures and post some favorites of what I've been working on.

Tonight, I thought I would share a birthday card that I made for my mother-in-law. My dear cousin, Christy (from Christy Gets Crafty blog) has passed on many beautiful stamps over the years, and lately, as I have been slowly building up my supply of Spectrum Noir alcohol ink markers, I've tried to make more of an effort to practice coloring. Alcohol inks are great for getting detailed, more professional looking images colored. Unlike a lot of other types of ink markers its hard to get fine details, like shading to come through, but with alcohol inks, you can blend varying levels of color with one another to really enhance the details of the image.

On this card, I used shades of Golden Brown, Gray Blue, Turquoise Blue, and the Three lightest flesh tones. I'm still learning how to find the right angles to shade images, but I was quite happy with how this card turned out. I kept it pretty simple with other embellishments on the card, choosing to let the image shine. 

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend. Hubby and I will be getting away for a couple days for some rest and I will not be taking my laptop with me. We are going to take some time to re-charge as we head in to a busy fall and winter season!

Hello Friends!

Wow, well it's been a few weeks. I've been a very bad blogger this year and especially this summer. There has been quite a bit going on. In June we went to Florida (Hubby had a business trip that I tagged along for) and then Michigan for my brother-in-law's wedding, then Georgia in July to say goodbye to my mom's best friend who died suddenly from cancer and who was like an Aunt to me and then to Erie last weekend for my brother's wedding. Oh, and I got a job that I started two weeks ago!It's been rough getting used to working on reduced medications, I've had some really bad days this summer with all of the things going on and I would greatly appreciate prayers. 

I haven't been doing much crafting, but I have done a little. I did several scrapbook layouts for our own albums. I shared several pictures of these on Facebook, but, since the layouts have pictures of friends and their children, I really don't want to share them in an open forum. I did however create a few notepad holders with a place for a pen/pencil.

I am really pleased with how much of my stash I have been able to use this year, between my mom's scrapbooks, my scrapbooks, and the various other projects I've done. I've used over 1/2 (probably closer to 2/3) of my stash of patterned papers. I found a couple of ladies on youtube who were always talking about how they just made themselves cut in to their papers and play with layouts and projects to combat their desire to just hold on to all the pretty paper and not do anything with it. Their videos gave me quite a bit encouragement to take that approach. Now, I just grab some coordinating papers and start cutting things down to size and layering until I find a design that works and it's really been working for me. Now I can look at the pretty papers in albums with memorabilia and pictures that are dear to me. :)

To make these holders, I simply measured the size of the the notepad and then marked off the paper where I wanted to score lines to be able to fold up the papers properly. I used my Martha Stewart score board to score the edges. I used an 8 1/2 x 11 paper for the base, and so I placed the paper on the score board so that the long edge was up against the top of the board. I then scored the paper at 3 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 4 1/2 inches, and then 8 inches. I then got out my paper trimmer and cut off the excess 3 inches of paper that I would not need. I then flipped the paper and measured the length of the paper pad and then cut off the excess width of the paper at 6 inches I believe (The measuresments will be different, depending on what size the notepads are. I always just get out my ruler and take the measurements of the notepads I am using and then add about 1/4 of an inch to each measurement because I've found that it looks nicer.) I then cut lines across the center between the 4 and 4 1/2 inch score lines and then after folding up the other score lines and adhering the card stock base together, popped out the two sections where I cut the lines to have something to slide a pen in with the notepad. 

(Those are really horrid directions, if anyone is interested, I could do a step-by-step with pictures of each step. You don't actually need a score board for this. It could be done by marking off with a ruler and then simply folding the paper at the lines and then use scissors to cut off the excess paper.)

For the first notepad holder, I used basic blue cardstock from Michaels, and layered it with a My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad. I believe that the flowers are old ones from Prima, and the gold pearl is from Queen & Co. The sentiment is made of Thickers and the pen is from a giant pack of Fiskars gel pens that my MIL bought me a couple of Christmases ago. The punched designs are from a EKSuccess border punch that I got at TJMaxx for like 4 dollars last summer. I really like how EKSuccess makes their punches. They are very durable, and the flatten out so that you can store multiple punches on top of one another.

For the second paper pad, I used primarily things from my stash. The pink woodgrain washi tape is from Darice and I also used thickets, as well as some old ribbon and patterned paper. The card stock is from a basic color card stock pack from Michaels. I used the same process to create all of these notepad holders. The washi tape is actually to make a mistake I made in cutting out the section to hold the pen. It doesn't look exactly what I intended, but I think that it still looks nice.

The last one is my very favorite. I absolutely love the stamp set (Studio G stamp set that was only $.75 at Michaels, score!). I stamped out the images and sentiment on basic card stock from Michaels with Bahama Breeze blue memento ink and some Studio G blue rhinestones and fussy cut the images. I used a 1 1/2 inch circle punch from Fiskars to punch out the sentiment. The patterned paper is from Crate Paper's "The Pier" 6x6 paper pad. I absolutely love that paper and can't wait to create something else with it. Right now though I like some of the papers so much that I don't actually want to cut in to it! :) In my experimenting with different ways to make these holders, I discovered that two cut outs on the side works much better than just the one, but I got the pen to stay with a little velcro. From now on though, I will be using the method I used from the above holders.

 

PS - Sorry for the novel. LOL. I need to get back into a schedule of posting instead of one ginormous post every few weeks!

Clever, clever Christian Book Distributers.....

A few weeks ago I wasn't feeling well and was up in the middle of the night, laying in our spare room so I wouldn't keep my hubby up, when I got an email from the cbd.com with a flyer for a massive sale. Well, I decided to click on over just to see what they had and when I did, I discovered that they had started selling ebooks.... and had several that were FREE! Well, I couldn't resist and downloaded like 10 free books... all book 1 in different series by various authors.

CBD, I don't know who thought up that strategy, but kudos to you. You officially got me hooked on like 4 of the series and I haven't even finished reading all of the ones I downloaded. Now I am going to have to go hunt up the rest of the books in the series to see what happens to them.

What do the Gators and my brother-in-law have in common?

Hah, you'll never guess, so I'll just tell you, my brother-in-law LOVES the color orange. As in would probably dress in orange from top to bottom each and every day if he thought he could get away with it. His love of orange is very great and so he really wanted it incorporated into his recent wedding with the blue and green colors that his bride wanted. They went very well together and the wedding was lovely, but let me tell you - it was NOT easy to find a patterned paper that incorporated all three of those colors for their wedding card. 

I could have gone the traditional route of white and black for the card, but I really wanted to make it personalized to their colors. I went through every paper pad I had and what do you know, I had a single sheet of 6x6 paper from an old Basic Gray PB&J paper pad given to me by my cousin that fit the bill. 

I also decided to use a cute stamp from an Inkadinkado valentines set, with two birdies kissing in a bird cage instead of using one of my more traditional wedding stamp sets. The sentiment was from a Hampton Arts clear stamp set I believe.  I used Bahama Breeze blue ink from Memento and used a paper trimmer and a rounded corner punch to cut out and layer the image and a small circle punch and scallop punch to cut out and layer the sentiment.

The plain card stock was just Michael's store brand, Recollections. The ribbon was from a variety pack from Hobby Lobby and the rhinestones were from a Studio G pack I got at Walmart (or possibly the dollar aisle at Michaels - they sell them in both places and I often purchase them from either place, depending on who has them in stock).

And I am Done!

If you happen to be a friend of mine on Facebook, you probably know that I finally finished the scrapbooking project for my mom and few weeks ago. I gave them to her earlier this month and am so happy to be done with the project, especially now that I will be starting a new job in a week. I still want to do a process post, sharing how I organized everything and how I decided to separate the layouts into albums, but for now I thought I'd share a few more photos with you. Most of these layouts are pictures of my church family growing up.

In Georgia

Good Morning All from the state of Georgia. I am here with my parents visiting my mom's life long best friend. She's known me my entire life and is like family. She is very, very sick and if you could hold her, her family and my parents up in prayers during this difficult time, I am sure that they would greatly appreciate it.

I'm sitting in the breakfast area of our hotel right now while my parents sleep and I thought I'd share some of the scrapbook pictures of the various weddings my family has been to over the years. For the most part, I used supplies that either matched or coordinated with the colors of each wedding. In the first set of wedding pictures, I was a miniature bride (my brother was the miniature groom).... Let me tell you, that barrette/ fake veil I was wearing was not cool. I almost got in trouble because I wouldn't stop tearing it out of my hair, lol. :)

Enjoy!

A Quick Card

Today, I thought that I would share a card that I made for a graduation last month.

I used a similar layout to graduation cars I have made in the past, but used some soft blue patterned papers from DCWV, as well as a paper doily, some aqua colored rhinestones and some card stock embossed butterflies. I used Bahama Breeze blue Memento dew drop ink for the sentiment and cut out the sentiment with the Label One Spellbinders die set with my Cuttlebug. 

I usually don't buy small packs of embellishments like butterflies, but Joann's was having a clearance sale and the package was only like 70 cents. I have already used up the package between the scrapbooking project I was working on for my mom and various cards that I needed last month! The paper I have had for a little over a year and I got the pad from my cousin. The doily is from a pack I got at a local dollar store about 3 years ago. I actually just used up my last doily on the scrapbooking project so I will have to stop at Dollar Tree and see if they have any in stock to re-supply my stash.

But back to the card. I really love how this card turned out. It is so soft and feminine, which I think matched the recipient perfectly. :)