Sweet Anya Birthday

Here's another Saturday Sketch card! So sad, my motivation for cardmaking is usually needing one pronto for an upcoming birthday. I used Sweet Anya that I recently got from the sale at Die Cuts R Us. Again, followed the sketch pretty closely, except for the ribbon. I had already stuck the papers down when I realized hmmm, now I can't fold any ribbon over the corners. So I used some Quickutz photo turn die cuts with some little gems as the anchors. Hopefully they don't fall off in the mail.

The patterned paper and buttons are from the Basic Grey Two Scoops collection. I got the matching Bazzill cardstock from Embellish It. I colored with prismacolor pencils again, the usual for the skin and brown hair, Muted Turquoise for the pants, Jasmine for the shirt, Pink Rose for the ruffly tank, and Raspberry for the trim.

Good night!

More Prismacolor Hair

Can you believe it?! I actually colored another one! This is an Amelia I bought a while ago, again from that sale at Die Cuts R Us where I stocked up on TGF stamps. I didn't even ink her up until yesterday...I'm such a collector...and I can't resist a good sale. I'm going to try and upload it to the Club Anya WTW Prismacolor gallery later. Anyhow, I actually tried to pick my papers beforehand this time so I could pick corresponding colored pencils. It was an old Basic Grey collection pack, called Oh Baby Girl which I used previously on a baby board book, plus now I had some matching Bazzill cardstock from Embellish It. Except I didn't quite decide on the specific papers until after I colored and then ended up using the most basic patterns in the pack. And now I've forgotten what color pencils I used for the outfit, I think the accessories were Violet. The hair was Dark Umber and Dark Brown. I used Club Anya Jen's suggestion for the skin color, Light Peach for the face, Peach for the outer face, and Blush Pink for the cheeks. I used baby oil to blend, which I think sometimes doesn't dry completely clear, or else my blending stump was a little dirty, but there's a little streak in the middle of the face, which might not be too obvious in the photo. Initially I colored the necklace Violet, but everything seemed a little too purple so I colored over it with my Gelly Roll Stardust pen, which I also used on the star buckle.

I couldn't find a coordinating stamp pad in my collection for a sentiment, so I typed one up. The font is CK Cute, I might have gotten it from a free font Friday from the Creating Keepsakes website, I can't remember. I actually scanned a little piece of the cardstock and patterned paper so I could sample the color for the text and green circle, then put it together in Photoshop Elements, and printed it out. I pretty much left it at that, maybe it could use some kind of embellishment in the corners, or with the sentiment, I don't know, I didn't want to stick something on, then decide it looked funny afterward.

Eva, you're so great with making all the seasonally appropriate Halloween stuff. Which reminds me that I still have to buy some Halloween candy and a pumpkin from the grocery store...hope there are still some left.

Prismacolor hair

I was so excited to see a Prismacolor pencil tutorial on the Club Anya blog done by Jen here. I decided to get colored pencils way back when, even though they're not as popular as Copics, because the cheap side of me won out when I was able to use a 40% off coupon at Michaels for a set of pencils. Since then, I never mastered colored pencils, so I didn't think it would be wise for me to invest in Copics.

Anyhow, for my first coloring attempt, I used the same Ebony image from Jen's tutorial (I believe I got my stamp from a Die Cuts R Us sale a while ago). I pretty much copied everything she said in the tutorial, using all the same colored pencils for the hair and clothes. It's baby steps for me, I figure I'd better start with following the tutorial before trying to branch out on my own. The tricky part for me is figuring out where the highlights in the hair belong so I wanted to use the same image to be able to follow her example, except it didn't turn out as nice as hers. Somehow my Ebony also looks like she has some gray hair. I couldn't quite find the same blue pencil she mentioned so I just picked one that looked relatively denim like. And I also used baby oil instead of odorless mineral spirits.

I wasn't really planning on making this image into anything, I actually colored her on some scrap cream cardstock that had something else stamped on the other side. But after all that coloring work, I didn't want to toss it aside. So I just stuck it to a card front. I printed out some digital paper from Designer Digitals, Mindy Terasawa's Crazy Beautiful kit (the black polka dot paper for the scalloped rectangle and a floral pattern). Then finally used my Tim Holtz mini stapler. It took me forever to figure out how to load the staples. Then I colored Ebony again, this time with brown hair. (I did try two different characters with different hairstyles which I might post later, I think I have to tinker with the hair, those darn highlights! Plus I better start looking at matching patterned paper rather than just randomly coloring). Again, used some digital patterned paper from Designer Digitals Mindy Terasawa's Noir et Blanc kit and some Papertrey ink hibiscus cardstock. I die cut the circle from a Quickutz set that I bought a really long time ago and used the matching rub-ons. I added little jewels to the flower in the center, which conveniently happened to fit exactly within the flower petals.

Well, that's about it for me. I think I need to go clean off my craft desk and reorganize. I'm so messy, I have half finished stuff scattered all over the place.

Saturday Sketch Thank You Card

Happy New Year! Although I feel like I'm still recovering from Christmas. I find these sketches at Club Anya pretty helpful, now that I need to start on some thank you cards for my son's birthday. Unfortunately I never got around to making his birthday card :( We also didn't do a big birthday party this year. I think 2 years of Pump It Up, this bounce house type place, has been more than enough. I'm so bad with party planning too. But it's difficult with his birthday falling during Christmas break, like I don't want to do it too early in December, but then if we wait until January, it will overlap with my daughter's birthday. Pretty soon his birthday and Christmas present will be combined...Well, on to the card. It's a rather brown card. Maybe I should have used brown cardstock instead of kraft now that I see a photo of it...seems like I always say that too.

Anyhow, I finally used Happy Day Oliver, colored with Prismacolor pencils. I cut off the other 2 dinosaurs that were standing next to Oliver. It was a bit painful to cut around him, not sure I want to do that again. An X-acto knife was kind of handy in some spots though. I picked this Oliver to match the digital dinosaur paper from Mindy Terasawa's Stomp Kit that I just printed onto white WalMart cardstock. The Thank You is from PTI. I inked the edges of everything with distress ink. I actually got the foam applicator and everything, but I have to practice more. I thought the laser printer ink might not hold the ink well, but it did OK. Then I cut the sentiment out with an oval nestability and tied it on with brown baker's twine.

I did my watermarked photo this time with my new Lightroom, oops, I meant my son's Lightroom. Did you know there are student editions of Adobe software and as long as your kid is registered as a full time student, starting from kindergarten, you can qualify? Does that seem totally unbelievable that my kindergartener needs Lightroom? But hey, it's expensive raising kids, if he can get a discount for the next 15 or so years, why not? I had to buy a Lightroom book/manual though and it took a while to get through it. And after reading the book, I'm thinking gee, do I even need Lightroom since I'm not even a professional photographer. But I think it does look a little better on my screen after tweaking it with Lightroom. Hopefully it's not going to be too painful to try to edit and print photos out more often.