A Nautical Card For A Seafarer

Sheri, our fearless leader at My Sheri Crafts challenged us to make shaped cards. I love to play with my Cricut and since I'm looking forward to spending summer at the beach, I decided to herald summer early with this nautical card. The cut file is from SVG Cuts and I used the Regatta Paper Pack from Close To My Heart. I added some bling for the seahorse's eye and the compass pointer. The "N" is cut at 1 1/2" using the Art Philosophy Cartridge.

Here's to summer and I hope you'll get to join us at My Sheri Crafts for our design challenge and some inspiration!

My Julie Nutting Paper Dolls

Hi everyone! Julie Nutting is having a design team call until Wednesday, April the 20th, and I decided to try my luck. My projects are little pieces of my heart placed on paper. :-)

My first entry is a tag featuring one of her wooden dolls, Chloe. I took inspiration from her outfit and paired it with paper from Graphic 45's Songbird collection. I colored Chloe and her accessories with Copic markers and added Stickles to make her sparkle even more. I added a gold foil flower die cut from Recollections, Flower Soft for the flower centers and Martha Stewart gold fiber. Chloe makes me think of how my great-grandma from Hong Kong would have been, so she's special to me. :-)

My husband and I are celebrating our 10th year anniversary this year. I used Julie Nutting's Belle Vie paper collection for this layout. I added grey and black cardstock to frame the beautiful damask print paper. The black cardstock was smudged with white pigment ink for a faux chalkboard look. I used blue ink and stencilled some large damask designs on the paper to add a subtle hint of color. To create more interest, I applied Texture Paste on a smaller damask stencil. Tommy, colored with Copic markers, a peacock feather, some phrases fussy cut from the paper cut itself, and stamped damask letters forming my page title were used to embellish my masculine page. Here's my husband, Billy, as I remembered him from ten years ago.

I love light pink, black and white together, and that became my color palette for my third project. It did not look like this when I began. I altered an old license plate to make my wall hanging. I covered it with the blush polka dot paper from Belle Vie. I applied gesso on it, and sprayed some ink sprays on it after it dried. The third step was applying texture with Texture Paste using a damask stencil. I burnished some areas of the license plate with Inka Gold Paste. Audrey is the star of this design. I colored her with Copic markers. Her dress was embossed with a dot embossing folder from Cuttlebug. For the finishing touches, I added a Prima Flower, Say It In Crystals Flourishes, vintage lace and stickers from Belle Vie.

Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you'll be dropping by to see more paperdoll creations in my future projects.

Lost Ocean Colored With Prismacolor Premiers and Faber-Castell Polychromos

Here are a couple of pages from the Lost Ocean Coloring Book by Johanna Basford. :-) I still prefer Polychromos even though it appears muted. The ease of blending more than makes up for it.

Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils vs Faber-Castell Polychromos, a Comparison and Review

I've had the 72-piece set of Prismacolors for years (eight to be exact), and I had most recently acquired the full set of Polychromos. I was wondering what the hype was all about, so I went ahead and got some. To test the two different type of colored pencils, I colored a couple of pages from Johanna Basford's Lost Ocean, using Prismacolor Premiers on the left, and Polychromos on the right. I also included on the pic the pencils that I used. The pics were taken prior to using Gamsol, or a blending stump.

Here's a closer look at the fish scales colored with Prismacolors. A lot of white areas were showing through.

The Polychromos took to the paper better. I'm skipping the tortillons and Gamsol on this one.

I noticed when filling out the chart that Prismacolor had brighter hues, while the Polychromos were more subdued. Here's a link if you want to have your own color chart.

I will be using my Polychromos more, since I love the ease of blending, but I will also be supplementing it with Prismacolors, which still has the best variety when it comes to skin tones. :-)

A Mother's Day Celebration

Design team sister Sandy is challenging us with a Mother's Day theme at My Sheri Crafts! The requirement is for the project to have flowers in it.

The coloring book craze is such a trend right now and I have been very much into it! My hubby was out shopping with my little guy and he saw a book that he thought I would like and he was right. It's called Inspirational Coloring for Mom by Christian Art Publishing. I would like to share one of the pages from the book that I colored with Copic markers.

I also colored these other pages with Copic markers, gel pens and chalk. I figured out that when framed, they would make nice inspirational presents to a couple of moms that I know. :-)

Come join us for our Mother's Day challenge at My Sheri Crafts!