Confession and Collage Card

OK, I have to confess that I have a new addiction which has been taking up way to much of my time. It is called Pinterest. Yikes...if you have not discovered this yet, you may want to stay away...it it HIGHLY addictive.

I have found so many things I now want to try. The first is home made cleaning products, lol, which sound like they not only clean better than store products, but will smell better too.

Then there are gazzilions of paper craft projects that people "pin". I have "repinned" or liked so many that I want to CASE. Now all I have to do is get off the computer, tee he he

I did break myself from the site for a bit the other day and decided to try a new product I got in from Hero Arts.

This set, called Collage Background, includes a background stamp and matching embossing folder. I was skeptical at first but it comes out perfect and very easy to line up.

Although I used my favorite shimmer paper, I used Brilliance ink to stamp the image. It is hard to tell here unless you click on the photo, but the image has a beautiful shimmer to it.

The back ground stamps is for a 5 1/2 x 4 1/4" card. I like to make mine a bit bigger, usually 5 1/2" squared. To make it work with some layers and pattern paper, I cut a bit off the top of the background.

After adding the jewels to some of the music notes, I felt like the jewels were over powering them. To make them "stick out" more, I went over those few with a blue copic marker.

 The butterfly on the inside is actually from another Hero Art set called Antique Flowers and Butterflies. This set has dies to cut the images with, making it so much more versatile. Being another new set that came in, I wanted to see how well it worked. As you can see, it worked great with the butterfly matching the front image quite well.

Yayyyyy...I finally got a new siggie. I could not figure out why the old one would not work and it drove me nuts. Found this one on the Whimsey Stamps site and fell in love with it. You get both a siggie for your blog and a water mark for only $5.00! They have several to choose from which you may want to check out here.

HUGS 

Wedding Doves Rhea Egg Art

I really need to get in touch with the person who designed my blog so that I can start a new "Egg Transformer" one. Until then, I hope you all don't mind me sharing my egg art with you.

Last Friday when I went to my mothers, we each made one of these eggs. The eggs came in a kit with everything you need to make it. The rhea egg came precut, which I think is just the best! I have yet to learn how to cut an egg like this one!

Another wonderful thing about buying kits is that you don't have to do the searching for matching hardware. And though they come with directions, you can basically make it anyway you want. For this one, I used everything in the kit but the outcome is vastly different from the photo on the directions.

The kit came with all the Swavoski crystals one could possibly use on this. Sadly, when I was finished the first time, I sprayed it with a sealer and the crystals were covered with a white film. All the beautiful shine was gone. I pried them all off, but the egg was a mess! I was so glad when my mother had an extra precut egg to match the kit.

Having to remove everything from the first egg caused some of the white paint to come off the hardware. The only solution for that was to spray paint them all again.

There was absolutely no way to remove the doves from the first egg. I am again sooooo glad my mother overbuys, lol. She had three other doves for me to choose from. What I like about these is that they are porcelain. When searching for figurines to add to eggs, I was suprised to find a vast majority of them are plastic, and LOOK plastic. Such a shame to spend all that time on a REAL egg and then put a plastic figurine in it!

Since all the Swarvoski crystals that came with the kit were gone, I chose to use pearls instead of breaking into the Swarvoki stash. I like the pearls better actually.

I decided to have the flouishes hang over the edge of the opening to add a little eye appeal to the plain edge of the heart.

You can see the pretty sparkle I added to the butterflies using the same glitter glue as the inside of the egg.  Even with eggs, I just have to add lots of bling, bling, lol

I chose to use 2 sizes of pearls on the lattice. Larger ones (3mm) on the outside to kind of frame it and smaller ones (2mm) inside.  I also used my copic markers to color the top pearl to match the others.

One thing I added to this egg is the procelain flowers. These were not in the kit, but added such a pretty touch and brought out the pink of the pearls. I also adhered the 2 extra flourishes to the base. People who put the kits together are often very generous with the hardware and embellishments which aids in creating a one of a kind egg from them.

Well....today I had 2 decisions to make. One was pretty easy. Should I clean or bloghop, lol? Though my house could use some, I don't miss cleaning (WINK)  I do miss my blogging friends, though.

The other desicion I need to still make is whether I should do some iris folding or paper tole today. I am thinking that which ever I choose I may add some paper stitching to it. I'll see what inspires me as I visit my blogging friends.

HUGS, Sandy O

The Card That Scard Me

THANK YOU to everyone who gave me some tips on working with detailed dies! I definitely with try them next time.

OH boy, did I put off finishing this card! I spent a lot of time on Facebook wasting my time doing so, lol

Why? Well I guess you have to read my last post to understand most of why. The other reason is because I have not used my Copics in months. I have been cheating by using "pre-colored" images, or at least it feels like cheating. (Is there supposed to be a dash in the word pre-colored? LOL)

I would not make another project until I finished this one because I knew I would never get back to it, therefore it sat on my desk taunting me!

I guess I missed blogging too, because I talk a lot in this post, tee he he...

First I want to show you the pretty paper I chose. Miraculously the pattern paper was in the very first pad I looked at! Here you can see how the paper was pre-glittered. I really wish I did not have to re-size the pictures so small, it is so hard to see the details. You can click on the pictures to get a nice look at them though.

For the base layer, the only paper I could find to match the color of the pattern was Stampin' Up paper. I don't use SU paper often because it is what I call flat looking. There is no shimmer to match the other paper I like to use. My remedy was to spritz it with some of the Tattered Angel Glimmer Mist in Gold. This works so well to add just the right amount of shine, when I don't spray to much.

Adding the embellishments and making the inside gave me a bit of confidence.

The problem I have with my favorite ribbon, organdy, is when I make the tales like this. (Are they called "tails? I really need your help with names and dashes, lol) See how the glue dot shows through the ribbon? Does anyone know how to prevent this? What do you all use to adhere ribbon this way?

Now was time to color the image. I used some of my favorite paper, White Gold. This is very shimmery and a bit difficult to color (hmmmmm...silly paper to use as I jump into coloring again!)

The great thing about the messed up images that I showed you in the previous post came in quite handy. The white gold paper causes the colors of the Copics to look different than they really are. I was able to get the colors to look the way I wanted by practicing on these extra images. So I guess it was a good thing I messed them up!

This paper is difficult because the paper does not absorb the ink well at all, making blending very difficult.

I did not have the colors I needed so I used the tip to tip technique (I think that is what it is called) to make the lighter color a bit darker. It worked quite well and blending the 2 colors this way worked perfectly. Adding the darker color for shading was a bit more difficult. The lighter color just pushed the darker color to the edges.

What I finally figured out is that instead for coloring from light to dark as I normally do, blending worked much better going from dark to light.

The cool thing that happened was that the grass looked like grass without having to work at it, unless someone critiques it close up.

The background of the image really matches the color of the pattern paper, though it is hard to see here. No blending required for this :o) Usually I outline the image but here I did the opposite by just leaving the edges around the image alone. What do you think about doing it this way? I seem to be going back and forth between liking it and not quite sure.
I'm so glad to get back to blogging! I hope this post was not to long for you, lol

HUGS, Sandy O