Watercolor

 I’m a watercolor artist wannabe. Truthfully, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day for me to practice enough to get good at it. I did practice a little this week, trying the “no line” watercolor thing. I wasn’t happy with the final result, so I have not made it into a card, but anyway here it is. 

Coloring!

 I have nearly given up on my alcohol markers. It seems to me I always do a better job with the prismacolor pencils and gamsol. Weeks ago, I submitted these cards for Craft Roulette. I was so unhappy after submitting the first one that I made a bonus card. The first one was colored with alcohol markers, the second one with Prismacolor pencil. This past week, “Monday” came up on the parameters and I knew I had to use the grumpy cat from Whimsy Stamps again. This time, I actually googled for ideas and tried to color and some stripes and things on the cat to make him look more realistic. 

Colored with Prismacolor pencils & gamsol

Most recent, Prismacolor & gamsol

Club 52!

 Tonight I am submitting my 52nd card to Craft Roulette! This admits me into Club 52, for which I get nothing except bragging rights. Therefore, I get to make my own congratulations card as other club 52-ers have done before me. I had a lot of fun making this one, even though I smudged it!! Grrr, smudging makes me mad. 

Stamping luck!

 I’m showing this card because it has a four leaf clover. I have been feeling lucky in my stamp room lately. First, I was chosen to be the Splitcoast Stampers Featured Stampers on splitcoaststampers.com. This is a weekly challenge that they host where they choose a featured stamper and people make cards based on the featured gallery. I have loved splitcoast for so many years and consider this  a huge honor, as stampers were looking at my gallery and using the cards for inspiration! Secondly, I won a Craft Roulette prize! The wheel landed on my name and I randomly won $100 to the Maymay made it store. I’m so excited and honored for both.

I love a challenge from Craft Roulette!

 The parameters for episode number 226 seemed a little tougher, they were:  project: see-through, colors: jungle, element: teach or teacher, random: tangle. See through kind of threw me off, as well as teacher. All I could think of for a teacher was either letters or numbers. (There are a lot of cute card examples that use random numbers)  I remembered this word collage stamp that I’ve always loved from Stampin Up, which has uplifting words that a teacher might use! I decided to make a frame around it for the see-through portion. The tangle is a tangle of leaves. I used my matching leave and die set from Reverse Confetti. I was so happy to use this little sword stamp again, I have probably had it for 20 years and I’ve always loved it. Here are some pictures of the process.

I have first I embossed the central image in white, but then I found out I really liked the leaves in gold. In the end I did another one in gold. I really liked the color combination. It was Stampin Up pretty peacock ink with Gina K Cocoa Ink. 

First time making a mini slimline

 As usual, craft roulette stretches me! I had never made a mini slimline before. When mini card came up as the project, people in the “chatterbox” mentioned this format. I had to look up the dimensions. I really like how it came out, but it was a struggle figuring out a layout. I am including some photos of my trial and error layouts.

Since one of the parameters was packaging, I really wanted to make a little envelope out of a paper bag as seen above in the right photo. But in the end, I didn’t like it. After all of the trials and decisions I was happy with my card, but it definitely took a while!

A Cat and a Window in one card!

 I almost never make window cards and I always admire them when other people make them. As usual, it takes Craft Roulette to get me to step out of the box. This was my card for episode 222. The parameters were project: Dutch door, colors: gnomes, element: movie, random: building blocks. You can see I used bricks for the building blocks as well as the cushions the cat is sitting on. I cut away the top part of the card to fulfill the Dutch door requirement, and I used the Aristocats as my movie. The image was colored with Prismacolor pencils and gamsol. This stamp from Picket Fence Studios was perfect for it!