Yippee-ki-yi-ay!

 

This cute lil' guy brings a smile every time I use him!
He comes with an assortment of accessories such as his dog, guitar, moon, fence, stars etc...all kinds of goodies to color up with Copics.
This buck-a-roo is the reason I hoard all the music paper designer paper I can find!

It has been ages since I joined a Card Swap with the gang and I really miss it.  It's a great way to build up your greeting card stash, add some neat different styles and get some wonderful ideas!
With this swap, we send in six and get five different ones back.  The hostess keeps one for herself as a gift for being the host and doing all the work of dividing up the cards and then mailing them back out to everyone.  I would love to receive this same lil' guy in a completely different design!

I was really surprised to see all the colors I used, but the stamp has so many little details!
I purchased a new Copic, #E81 "Ivory". I love it!  I thought about giving him a Silver Belly cowboy hat, but decided to give him an ivory guitar instead.

Happy trails!

Christmas Stocking

I've seen a lot of cute cards with this image and have always wanted it for the challenge.
It was especially challenging with having limited markers. I'm looking forward to tackling it again and switching up some of the colors.
Half way through I realized I didn't have a coordinating designer paper picked out and luckily had a deep burgundy scrap sheet that I was able to salvage.  It didn't really quite look right, so I made it appear more vintage by taking a chocolate ink pad and dragging it along the edges. Then I went more heavily on the corners and really like the difference and the way it turned out. I used the Nestiblities again and embossed it too, then propped it up with dimensional tape pads.

It seemed like I was picking up every color I owned and then some. These were the chosen colors and in many areas they were applied heavily in layers to get a different color.  For instance the mantel.  I wanted a deep, rich, brown color but had used the few I had. So I used E19, and E35. Then went back later and added E08.
Same for the cat.  I struggled with what color the cat could be.
It was also really tempting not to mix the warm greys with the cool greys. It would have given me another 6 colors to work with, but I wanted to keep the image warm, so....warm grays it was!



Penny For Your Thoughts

A quick little card that I used a Nestabilities set on that cut and embossed around the image for me.
Every time I use it, I can't believe I only own one of them!

I only used half a dozen Copics on this lil' girl. When I first saw this image it reminded me of my daughter and I had to have it!
This in one of many that is going into a box gift set for someone special.

Adore

 Found some time this evening to unwind and still had the holidays on my mind. I was able to score loads of Christmas paper from some good sales last month that I simply adore!
When creating a card the first thing I do is choose some designer paper to showcase my image. This one happens to measure 6"x6". I can get 4 backgrounds out of a 12"x12" sheet.  I've been cutting and storing the extras in a 6"x6" box and it makes it so much easier to be able to grab from a stash that is already cut and waiting for me.
 From there I lay the image on top the designer paper and start selecting my colors for the image that will play off the background design. This design had me thinking vintage, so I chose all warm colors.
*Note even the greys are warm.

 When coloring the image above some colors were applied in several layers to achieve a darker color that I wanted.  Hopefully I'll be able to treat myself to a few new markers soon and add to my collection!

If you take a good look at the little lady's coat and the boy's blue jeans you'll see they have a textured look. To achieve that you'll need the "Various Ink" by Copic.  It's really fun to find swatches of different material laying around the house and experiment. You'll always find a denim swatch in my Copic accessory pouch!
It's very simple to do.  Just remove the cap and dampen your swatch and lay it across the already colored image area that you'd like to add texture to.  Just a quick pat is all it takes!
If you hit an area you didn't want textured, just grab a marker and touch it up again.

A couple of other techniques used was to outline the image using the W0 color.  It's very, very light.   It's a great way to give the image a faint shadow and add some dimension. Look closely and you'll see I also used a sponge technique to ground the image so it doesn't appear to be floating.

Sunday Stroll

My young daughter found my markers packed away in the closet and started asking questions.  I thought it'd be easier just to show her. She loves them and we had a wonderful time tonight making winter cards!

For this image we patted the stamp with Staze On ink. It's the best by far for nice, solid black, clean images that don't bleed. We used just a few markers.  In order to get the blended look, with limited colors, we colored over the first layer a few times, in small circles, for a darker look.

For the appearance of snow in the background, we took a post it note and tore the one end and placed it where we wanted the highlights.  Then using a light grey ink pad (Stampin Up), we took a small sponge and tapped it numerous times on the ink pad and then immediately tapped it on the edge of out post it note's torn side.
You can have so much fun with this!  Try different colors, like blues and browns for different effects!

Winter Forest

Here's a card I sent out for a "swap". The theme of the swap was Winter Forest and this is what came into mind for me.  Two separate stamp sets, both from Stampin' Up.  I love embossing folders/texture plates, it seems like I always use the snowflake one like this.  It went over well and ended up being a really, really fun swap!

Image was colored with very limited Copics.  In order to acquire most of the shading I used the same color and just went over the shadow areas again, later, when the ink had dried! 

Girls, girls, girls!

Awhile back I joined a "kit club".  Basically, how it worked was, you would make a "kit" for every person in that group.  Each kit would include a stamped image, designer paper, some embellishments and whatever else you wanted to include.  Upon recieving the kit, you would then assemble them and send them out to each member.  In return you would receive "their" cards that they had made.  It was so fun to see how different everyone made their cards using the same supplies you had received.

In this case I had received a few extras images/DS paper (very thoughtful incase of an oops!)

I used all the odds and ends and came up with these "misfits"

So fun to see how you can play with your Copics and change it up a bit!

Which is your favorite?