Another Manly Card

Hello everyone! Happy Monday...okay...NOT! I do NOT like Mondays AT ALL and if my dream could come to reality and I could work a 4 day week I would NOT work Mondays. I just dread them. But I do have a Monday treat for ya today....a masculine card!


I've said it before...you KNOW you gotta make them...and as much as us girly girls would rather wallow in pink and yellow sometimes we gotta force ourselves to branch out. This card is going into my Mom's stash (she needs A LOT of cards for upcoming May b'days) and will eventually find a home with one of my uncles. He is a total sweetie and loves getting my cards as much any girly girl I know. Because of that, I always want to throw in just an extra bit of love when I make one that I know is going to him.

For this card I started with a Magenta Peel Off that I likely bought at Pickle. I say 'likely' because I have a LOT of them purchased at various places but I also know that many I have bought were from Pickle so I'm hoping that is where this one came from. These were three separate trees which I laid out on some smooth watercolor paper overlapping them. Then I carefully cut away the portions of trees that were 'underneath' another tree so they looked like one image. Then I roughly coloured on some Tombow markers (any watercolor based marker will do) and with a slightly wet paintbrush I blended the colors together. Once dry, I added just a bit of Sakura Gelly Roll pen in Forest Green Sparkle close to the branches and blended that out again with a wet brush. Careful with that Forest Green...a little goes a LONG way. This gave the trees some extra depth near the branches and an overall sparkle.

I did add some shading with marker around the trees but wasn't overly happy with the way it looked so went at the background with a sponge and a variety of pigment and/or chalk inks. Finally I got to the rustic manly look I was after. To finish it off I added a bit of pencil for grass. The paper is one that I have had FOREVER and I have another card to post later this week where I'll fess up a bit more on my past (and current) paper obsession.

That's it! Happy Monday to you all!

It's been a while

I think it has been an entire week since my last post...where has the time gone! Hubs was out of town this week...Houston, lucky bum...while I am here waist high in snow. That means all chores landed on me...he really does a lot around the house so I feel it when he's not here. On top of that we have decided to start on the master bathroom reno. We don't usually (okay, ever) call it the 'master' bathroom since until we added a second bathroom last year it was know as 'the bathroom' since it was the only one! LOL! So, while Mark was away I was surfing the net for bathroom inspiration, picking up tile samples and thumbing thru magazines. Can you say 'ZEN'...that is my goal! We ordered all the 'stuff' friday, the cabinet guy comes on Tuesday and the work should begin in about 4 weeks. We'll see how it all shakes out!


In the midst of all this, Pauline, Paula, Dana and Mary came over yesterday for a chick day. I was starting to think I was losing my mojo but a day with Paula was just what I needed to get the creative juices flowing again. I got three images coloured, and to my own personal shock, this morning I got them all mounted.

Anhoo...when they were flipping thru my latest cards they all said...what's this, i haven't seen this one! I guess I forgot to post it in the busy activities of the week. So here it is, another peel off card. Painted with tombows and accented with gel pens. The little shell's are something I picked up at Stamp Art in London. This card will go into Mom's stash, she loved the last peel off card so I'm sure she'll like this one too.

If your having a Super Bowl party today, enjoy! For me, I'm going to hunker down on the couch and watch the CSI Marathon on Spike TV!

Manly Card #2

Here is the second (and final for now) of the manly cards. My MOM totally gushed over this one when she got her hands on it.

No stamping on this one, I used Peel Off stickers. I think these might have been Magenta ones but I'm not sure. A while back I took a class at Pickle that was instructed by their Sakura rep. The techniques were centered around the use of Gelly Roll, Glaze and Souffle pens. On this card I stuck the Peel Off onto a smooth watercolor paper. Added a small amount of the Gelly Roll pen and then using a Koi watercolor brush, pulled out the ink. There is a LOT of pigment in these pens so a little goes a long way. The whole think has a nice subtle glitter and the Peel Off's have a shinny and matte appearance that plain old embossing powder won't give you. Finished it off with some Penny Black designer paper and large eyelets that were set with my crop-a-dile!

Enjoy!

Penny Black Beaded Ornaments

Hi everyone!

Today I've got a real simple but visually impressive card to share. Sometimes you just need to do something quick with no time consuming colouring involved.

I used Penny Black's Hanging ornaments which is a simple little image but spruced it up by coloring the ornaments solid with my tombow markers, then adding some ranger glossy accents and sprinkled on Suze Weinberg's Beadazzles in Waltz and Disco Ball on top. With a toothpick, I carefully moved everything inside the outline of the ball to not cover the silver embossing. I mounted with silver mirrored paper and inside I added a couple strips of Peel Off's just to spruce it up.

It's not coloured, but it is VERY pretty and I think I be making several more of these for my Christmas stash!