Gus N Stella and Free Paper Download

This is a digital stamp that I got from Bugaboo Digi Stamps.  I just love these two characters, as their attitude reminds me a lot of my husband and I.  We pick on each other good naturedly, but their is always a grain of truth in our statements.  On Christmas day we were driving to the son's house, and we had a bit of difference about something which I can't even remember.  He just could not grasp what I was saying, because he was too busy formulating his next remark and not really listening to what I had to say.  For my part, I was just NOT going to drop the subject until he LISTENED to me.  LOL.  He said, "Why is it that you start this shyt when we are in the car?"  She said, "Because I know I have a captive audience, and I hope you will listen for once and get the real meaning instead of what you just think I was saying."  The bold, italics, underlined words were said with MUCH sacasm.

So the next day, as I was looking at the Bugaboo Digi Stamps site, I spoted Stella and Gus Marriage.  They were looking a lot like my hubby and I this morning over our coffee.  The caption originally said, "Husbands should come with a set of instructions. and Wives should come this mute buttons"  We would joke, while pointing the TV channel changer at each other and pressing the brightness button, that the brightness button just didn't work because the person in the line of the channel chager was not getting any brighter.  Does anyone really remember these channel changers?  Now all that stuff is just taken care of by the TV.  At any rate, this is where the captions come from.  I really would like to make him much brighter, and he would really like to mute me sometimes when we are in the car and he is my captive audience.  LOL 

So I made him this card to apologize for the uncomfortable ride. ROFL  I whited out the original captions, and used Photoshop to creat the captions that are now on the front, bottom of this card rather than in the captions that were on the original graphic.  I used Photoshop to color the digi stamps.  I created my own patterned cardstock using the colors that I used to color Stella, Gus and the cups.  I printed this all on Gina K Layering Weight Cardstock*. 

I used a Martha Stewart Punch called Double Loop Punch Around the Page to creat the border. The banner flags were hand cut.  I made my card base from Gina K Heavy base weight card stock*.  I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink to destress the white image of Gus and Stella.

I hope you enjoy the card.

*Just a note here about Gina K's cardstock; it is the nices stuff for printing on an ink jet and actually using Copic Markers to color the image.  I like the way it works.  The Heavy Base Weight makes a good sturdy card, that does not crack when folded and creased with a bone folder.

Here is the paper for the card.  Feel free to download the image for your own use.  Just right click and "Save Picture As".

Challenge List:

C.R.A.F.T Challenge
Crafty Creations Challenges

Purr-fect Copic Coloring Tutorial

The name Purr-fect is the name of the stamp from Flowersoft.  We will be using some of the newer Copic Markers in some different techniques to my site.  One of the things that we will be covering in this tutorial is the blending techniques when you don't have colors that closely similar.

This is the finished card front.

Stamp the little girl with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink on two pieces of Express It paper.


The Memento Inks will hold up to the alcohol of the Copic Markers. I'm told other dye base inks work, but I haven't found one that does yet. If you know of one, please share with me?

Using your favorite skin colors, do the face, arms and legs.  I used E000 and E00 for the sample.  I have to be extra careful that you get all the flesh areas.  I have a bad habit of missing one small spot.

Using E89 Pecan and YR27 Tuscan orange, two of the newer colors, color the cat.  Start with the YR27 and color the whole cat.  Use the E89 and color the strips, then use the YR27 to blend the hard lines out of the stripes; it is fur after all. 

Using the V22, color all areas of the dress, and socks leaving the underskirt white.  Then color the ribbon (including the one in her hair), stripes, buttons and sleeve trim and shoes with BV34.  Do the kittens ribbon and the girl’s shoes with BV34 too.  Finish the sole of the shoe with E89.  You may choose to accent your ribbons with clear Stardust pen, this gives it a nearly satin look, and is really attractive.

NEW TECHNIQUE

The darker colors will build up colors each time you go over an area.  We are giving the areas plenty of time to dry in between applications, so the buildup will be dark enough to serve as a shadow.  You will color any areas around the waist, sleeves and skirt with the V22 that already have crease lines in them.  This will shade those areas.  You will also shade areas or the dress around the ribbon belt where it would naturally shade the dress, and any low spots in the skirt.  You may blend the harsh lines in the skirt areas, but it isn't necessary.  

Using the Y23, color all of the hair.  Using E55, shade the areas that are naturally shaded in the picture.  

Blend the shadowed area, by flicking the Y23 into the dark shaded areas.  Don't do this a lot. Just blend enough to soften any hard lines.

I enhanced the images of the hair and ground a lot to show you where the color differences are.  This was before I blended the colors.

Using one more of the new colors G43 Pistachio, color the grass.  Using BV34 and V22 color the flowers in the grass.  Now is a good time to take a break and shop or go to the restroom.  Now use the G43 to shade the areas around the girl and kitten.  

Use the finished picture as the example for the background.

Background Colors are V01 Heath, B000 Pale Porcelain Blue, BG000 Pale Aqua, N1 Natural Gray No. 1.  This is a combo that I use a lot.  I did add one of the new colors to this BG90.  This is light enough, and in evidence in the actual artwork we have created.  Using a long flicking motion, starting at the edge of the image, flick color away from the picture in one fluid motion all the way to the edge of the card stock.  It won’t matter if you get into the dress at all, but be extra careful around her hair and the Kitten, as you will drag that dark color into the background and that is undesirable. I don't take the background any further than the grass area. Remember the colors are darker when wet, and will lighten as they dry.  

I used Tim Holtz Antique Linen Distress Pad on the entire image to give it an antique look.  When I put it on the card I distressed it even more on the edges.

I used this image in a birthday card for my niece.  She loved the card, and I loved doing it.  I hope you enjoy the tutorial.  The photos weren't my best yet, but I'm getting much better.  I did this one a while back for a class at my local scrapbook store.

Hugz, Peace and Blessings.

Namaste,

Lynne

Fall Boxed Card Set

I would normally worked to remove the glare from this picture, however, I wanted to assure that you realized that this is semi-gloss presentation paper.  I got this at Staples and just love it for this type of card.  This was the freebie from Silhouette for Octover, but works great for the Thanksgiving Holiday as well.  This is a box of six (6) identical cards, in a matching box.  These are great for hostess gifts, and can be done in any variation.  I've made mixed greeting cards,  and boxes of holiday cards.

It is simpler to make a whole box of cards in the same style.  I have made some what I call owner's choice cards.  I make six cards that will be good for multiple occassion.  Like flowers that work for birthday, sympathy and get well cards.  Sometimes they work for Mother's Day.  I also will make a box of masculine type cards, and make sure they are generic enough to work for multiple occassions.  Everyone can use more masculine cards. 

I then will create greetings and inside sayings for all occassions that suit the card art.  I use the Silhoutte Cameo to print and cut them.  I add double sided tape and/or pop dots to the word art cut-outs, and give instructions on how to place them on the cards.  They are really a hit, as you never can guess just what cards you may need during the year.  This way, you have just what you need.

The box instructions came from GinaK and can be found HERE.  The cardstock is GinaK heavy base weight cardstock, and I forgot the color name.  Her cardstock is so nice, and a good price.  I love to use it for cards, and boxes, as they fold without looking nasty, as cheap cardstock can sometimes.  It also has a nice heft to it which screams premium without the premium price.  She also has a layering weight that is great for stamping and layering similar to how I did the oval Greeting Card embellishment.

All the cards in this example are exactly the same.  I left the inside plain, so the giver may write their own note, and wishes on the inside.

I hope you enjoy.

Cricut Ornament Card

   
I needed to feel like it was justified for me to have one Cricut let alone two, so here is a project I worked on all weekend.  I finally decided I like the Cricut Classroom.  It took a very long time for me to think it deserved a second chance though.  The beauty of this project is that you could cut all the pieces at one time, and then build the cards while you watched TV.  The longest part of this process was picking the coordinating papers.  The design and stuff were all in the magazine.  I just love these.  I did several different types for variety, but for a gift one design is enough.  The assembly goes really quickly.

I used the instructions out of the Northridge, Cricut Magazine. 

I used the Winter Frolic Cartridge, Ornament 1 and the Cricut Classroom.  I did these all proportional, based on placing the pieces over each other to see how they fit.  I used the Shadow, copied it, and Flipped one 180° degrees.  I lined the up with the ornament tops aligned to form a card, and welded them together.  Make sure that you have the whole piece selected before you fill the page.  I found that about four would go on one page if you flipped one welded assembly 80° on its side.

I added as many layers as I needed for the whole project. 

I used the Ornament 1 just a bit smaller than the shadow, and filled a pages with it.  This is the layer on which I used the shiny paper.  Leave the hook on this one.

Next I made another Ornament 1 just a little smaller than the previous Ornament 1.  I cut the hook off of one of the ornaments to prevent an overlap.  Now I wish I had kept the metallic hook though so that is why I say cut this off here.

I used the Happy Holiday Greeting from Winter Frolic along with the shadow, which I did in white, for the first card and just the Greeting for the second one. I like having the white behind that as it makes it pop.  I used distress ink in Tea Stain from Tim Holtz.  I used this on some of the ornament pieces, but didn't see much difference so stopped doing that.  It really depends on what colors and designs you use whether you want to bother with this step or not.

I cut them all in different matching cardstock & paper patterns, but made the middle a shiny piece. 

I used the Language of Friendship, Stampin' Up stampset to make the bird and branches, and used the matching punch to cut is out.  I used scraps of the paper from which the ornaments were cut for the stamping and punch, which made minimal waste on this project.

 I used prima flowers and gems to finish the decoration.

 

These would make a cute gift if placed in a decorative box..There are plenty of tutorials on this all over the web.  I really like to SplitCoast Stampers sight for that.

 

I hope you enjoy.

 

Namaste

Crane Birthday Card

I made this card using bits and pieces of paper I had left from other projects.  It is a good card for both men and women.  If I had more of the images I would have made a bunch of them.  However, I have some other images from this paper collection that will work just as well.

The crane image came from Komodo, Inc called Winter Waves.

Happy Birthday stamp is from My Favorite Things
Love stamp from Chronicle Press, Art of Chinese Chops Set

I cut a 5 1/2  inch by  8 1/2 inch piece of Stampin' UP Nearly Navy card stock, and folded it to make a 5 1/2 by 4 1/4 inch card.

I used a scrap of textured light beige card stock, and I can't remember the mfr.  I cut this to 5 1/4 by 4 inches.

I cut the Crane image to 5 by 3 3/4 inches and adhered it to the textured card.

I wrapped a navy May Arts 1/4 inch wide ribbon around the bottom of the card.  I adhered the artwork with the ribbon onto the folded card.

I stamped my images on a light beige card stock that matched the artwork.  This is a Gina K design layer weight 70#, but for the life of me I can't remember the color name.

I cut the chop out, just on the outside of the red rim, and adhered this with dimensional adhesive foam.  I placed it below the ribbon in an attractive location.

I stamped the greeting, and punched it out with a Stampin' Up Oval punch.  I used dimensional foam to place it just above the ribbon in an attractive location.

Once the stamped images were in place, I centered the ribbon between the two stamped images, and adjusted the bow in an attractive position relative to the Crane image and raised stamps, and used a glue dot to fix the bow in place.

I stamped another birthday greeting on the beige card stock, punched it out with the oval, and adhered it to the inside of the card.

I hope you enjoyed, thanks for looking.

Namaste

Using the New Copic Marker Colors Tutorial

Using the New Copic Marker Colors Tutorial

Stamps

·       Magnolia’s-Tilda w/ Lovely Lace Shoes
·       Stickables-Je t’aime

Spellbinders

·       Ribbon Tags Trio

Tim Holtz Alterations

·       Embossing Diffuser

Cuttlebug

·       Swiss Dot Embossing Folder

Embellishments

·       Petaloo-Color me Crazy flower of choice
·       Maya Road Crystal Trinket Pins
·       Pebbles Crystal Candy Dots
·       Studio Calico Wood Veneer Butterfly Assortment

Memento Ink

·       Tuxedo Black

Miscellaneous

·       White Ink Ballpoint-I used Inkssentials
·       Pink Spritz-I don’t remember what I used
·       Pink Organza Ribbon of choice

See Instruction details for the Copic Colors used in this tutorial.

Instructions:

Stamp Tilda on a good quality alcohol marker paper such as Cryogen.  You must use a dye based in with alcohol markers of all kinds.  StazOn will be removed by the alcohol, and smeared all over the image.

I generally begin coloring the face.  I place a layer of the lightest skin color down all over the face.  This image begins with E000 Pale Fruit Pink.  This would be the 1st layer for all skin.

The next color is E11 Barely Beige.  This will be the layer where you put the shadow down.  In this instance the light is coming from your left; therefore, the shadows are deeper on the right side.  See picture 1

The next color is E00 Skin White, and this is flicked in from the center to the darker color.  Don’t worry about blending this at this time.  The reason for making this round is to give the face a rounded shape.

Now that you have all the layers in place you will take the E000 Pale Fruit Pink, and flick that into the E00 Skin White, being careful not to get it into the E11 Barely Beige as that would lighten the shadows too much.  Blend that so it has a smooth transition from one color to the next.  The go to the E00 Skin White, and blend that well with the E11 Barely Beige, into both areas.  Make sure that you don’t totally obliterate the transitions.  You can go between the three colors until you are satisfied.  Just remember that each time you add color will cause the color to darken a little.  Also remember that the colors will look harsher than they will once they dry.

Next we will do the blush on her cheeks using R20 Blush.  All Tilda images have the three dots on the cheeks.  This has kind of become the default “Rosey” area of the cheeks.  Just use the R20 Blush to make a circle that just goes a little way outside the dots.  You can use the E000 Pale Fruit Pink to tone the edges down, but be sure not to obliterate the transition.

NOTE:  These examples are the wet colors, and the edges look harsher than they will when the dry.  I did this so there was no question about where the colors are originally placed.

Using the YR27 Tuscan Orange, Place color in the part and the natural low areas that would have shadows.

With the Y23 Yellowish Beige and the YR27 Tuscan Orange tap the Y23 Yellowish Beige onto the YR27 Tuscan Orange pick up some of the darker color and blend it into the darker area.  Remember you want to make sure that you have that darker color on the lighter in the lighter areas.  This is called “Color Pick-up” and it is a technique that will allow you to easily blend colors that may be a little too far away from each other for normal blending.  In this demonstration I wasn’t to careful about staying in the lines as this will be cut out. 

I just work with color pick-up and the lighter shades untill I am satisfied with the transitions.  It really worked well with these two colors.

I used the BG90 Gray Sky to color the soles of her shoes, nothing fancy here.  Just color it in.

  I used R56 Current & R20 Blush to do the shirt.  I used the darker color on the shaded areas, and used the color pick-up method and blended the colors together.  These two colors worked rather well, but did give it a more stonewashed effect.  Which did make me unhappy in the least.

We are going to use a different technique here that takes advantage of the fact that each layer of a color makes the color darker.  You will lay down the BG90 Gray Sky on the pants, the proceed to color the shoes with G43 Pistachio.  You will go back over the pants then in the areas that would have natural shadows.  You will deepen them several times in the deeply shaded areas.  You will do the same with the shoes, alternating between the colors to let the other color have time to dry.  This is more time consuming, but makes a wonderful effect.

The leaves were colored with the copic markers.  One of the great things about the copics is that they can be refilled and the cost is minimal.  It makes it really easy to color coordinate you embellishments with you favorite images.  Just ask Lisa about this at Scrapper’s Place in Findlay, Ohio, or your local Copic Dealer.

The butterflies were also colored with the copics. 

Finish the card as shown above.

I used the Swiss dot Embossing Folder with the oval Diffuser, and place the fussy cut Tilda in the plain area on foam dots. 

I always like to take a dark color marker and go around the cut stark white edges and color them.  It gives the piece are really nice finished look.  I also use the white gel pen near her freckles, but to completely cover the black ink. 

I also put highlights in her eyes just off center at the top of the eye.  These are typical Tilda finishes, and they look nice also.

I hope you enjoy.

Lynne Neumann for Scrapper’s Place in Findlay, Ohio

Tea Party

Trying something different here.  I have to create an invitation to a tea party that is going to be held as a celebration of Samhain/All Souls Day.  This is a celebration of the lives of family and friends that have passed from this world.  It is also a time to dress up, generally in what you would like to draw into the next 12 months, but sometimes we just dress for fun.  My friend wore this green satin witch hat last year, and my daughter put together this vignette to take some pictures for her photography class.  I just love this picture, and think I will use this in the invitation and menu card.  I love those blooming tea flowers, and the best part is they taste as lovely as they look.  The cup is from a china set that was my grandmothers, and I love to use this for formal teas.  I do, however, need to find some more cups, as this tea keeps growing each year.

Just trying to get back into the swing of things after the really rush time I had with a move to a new house, my mother's passing, and my daughters health issues.  We are still in positive territory, but my art has taken a backseat to my RL issues.  The studio is up, and ready for me to get back to it, except I got a lot of work projects, and money takes precedence over play time.  However, I am taking some time to get back to the communication with my blog friends.