Baby Christmas Gift Box

Hello everyone! Today I'm sharing this Christmas Baby box that was also part of the La-La Land Annual Retreat. I love how festive looking this project is. The reindeer dies are definitely one of my favorites! These die cuts were all distressed with Walnut Stain distress ink pads.

Distress Markers Used:

Skin - Vintage Photo

Cheeks - Work Lipstick

Hat - Peeled Paint, Black Soot

Outfit - Peeled Paint, Black Soot

Fur - Pumice Stone

Gift Box - Scattered Straw, Fired Brick

Here's a list of dies that were used:

Fancy Doily Border

Postage Stamps

Booktab and Labels

Reindeer 1

Holly Flourish

 Zigzag Trim Border

Color Swatches

I've been struggling with my mojo this week, and so to keep doing something crafty still, I decided to organize my ink stash. Organizing seem to help, be it to calm and de-stress me, or at least give me the sense that I'm still doing something craft related.

I re-organized my ink stash by color, and while at it decided to do swatches. Maybe it will help me use them more. But overall, swatches are a great tool. I use it for my Copics, why not for ink pads right?

So first up, Close to My Heart Inks. I honestly love these ink colors, and especially the card stock coordinates! I love how rich and unique the colors are!

Next up are my Distress Ink pads and markers. It was only through this exercise that I realized I had more pens than ink pads, and I'm lacking quite a bit.

And lastly, my Hero Arts inks. I love love love Hero Arts inks. The colors are so dark and vibrant and it always brings out a pop to whatever project you do! The first column are Shadow Ink colors, and the next 3 columns are the Mid-Tone Shadow Inks . And the very last column are the new Ombre ink pads. I realized I still miss a few ink pads. Maybe this labor day weekend sale somewhere can help me complete the colors.

Lastly, here's the Spectrum Aqua line. After doing this swatch I realized the colors are a bit disappointing. It looks like the ones you buy from Michael's, the Artist Loft brand of watercolors in pans. There's nothing special to the colors really. Or maybe it's just me? After all I'm not an artist. 

Anyways, I hope this helps you guys out there who are planning to buy or just want to have an idea of the colors. It certainly helped me. Especially on the markers, I sort of have an idea which colors blend well and don't, and which ones I have to lay lightly. 

Happy long weekend everyone!

Playing With Retro Marci

My latest obsession is La-La Land Crafts Marci & Luka stamps. I first encountered them at the recent Scrapbook Expo and now I'm hooked. I'm resisting the urge to complete every image, and will wait for a good sale to collect as much as I can.

In the meantime, I decided to purchase 1 digi stamp (Retro Marci) just to try out coloring it. 

I again used Spectrum Noir, ShinHan and Tim Holtz Distress Markers. I will soon try it with my new Spectrum Aqua. And since that's my new aquisition, I will create a separate post just reviewing the new pens.

Here are my sample color projects. Surprisingly I'm not a big fan of how Spectrum Noir alcohol markers turned out. The ShinHan ones were more vibrant, and blended better. The Chameleon pens I'm still trying to get the hang of it, so the skin tones  aren't smooth. However color wise it did not disappoint either. 

This one below used Tim Holtz distress markers. I badly need practice. Add to that since this is a digi stamp, my guess is watercolor and printer toners do not mix well, hence the dark skin tone shade.

More to come. Let me know what you think. 

Enjoy!

Bee Happy!

I'm totally digging watercoloring these days so I've been working on stamps that I can add a lot of color to. This is not totally watercoloring as I do not have a big space to have a cup of water and lay out colors and stuff, but I'll get there soon. For now, I'm using Tim Holtz Distress Markers and a waterbrush to do my coloring.

I used paper from Free To Be Me paper collection as my card base, you can't see clearly from the picture but it's the one with a glossy background to it, the design resembled a hive so I thought it would be appropriate for this theme. The stamp set I used is from Jeanette's Archive, it's called Happy Hive. I pretty much used the whole set. I wanted to create sort of like a theme with all these bees swirling around.

I used watercolor paper (140lb), stamped the images using Memento black ink. This is the only ink I know where the color doesn't bleed. I used Tim Holtz Walnut Stain to stamp the hive, Black Soot for the bee stripe, Mustard Seed for the rest of the bee body. The flowers are a mix of Peacock Feathers, Spun Sugar, Dusty Concord, Fired Brick, Barn Door, Picked Raspberry and the leaves are Mowed Lawn and Peeled Paint. The sentiment "Bee Happy" I used Ripe Persimmon and Faded Jeans.  I used a Pentel Arts Waterbrush to do the watercoloring.

It's a shame that CTMH does not have Distress Inks. I love these distress inks and markers. And the colors are so vibrant! I am however going to purchase CTMH's watercolor pencils. They just got it back in stock and it's the first thing I will order tomorrow. I can't wait to play with those!

Here's what the stamp set looks like.

B1445 Happy Hive

Distress Markers - Watercolor

I've been trying my hand at the watercolor effect by using Tim Holtz Distress Markers. I signed up for Online Card Class Watercolor and have been experimenting a few of my stamps last weekend. Here's a couple I made.

The stamp set is from Crafter's Companion. It's from Angelica and Friends set, and she is Isobel. I used a mix of Tim Holtz Distress Markers - the dress is Picked Raspberry, the hair I think is Brushed Corduroy. The sky is Stormy Sky, and the accessories in Barn Door and Chipped Sapphire. The sun and sentiment are from a retired CTMH C1364 TLC stamp set. I used Mustard Seed on the sun. The grass is from Lawn Fawn and I used Crushed Olive. Instead of using a real brush, I used Pentel Water Brush, and I really can't tell you how awesome these brushes really are! You just have to try it for yourself! I love you easily in control you can be with the water, and it seems to just always be wet enough but not too wet. I just love it!

My apologies but I just don't remember the name of this stamp set. I've had this for awhile now and it's just sitting in a binder without its original packaging so I cannot remember what it's called. I'm pretty sure though that it's from Stampendous. It's a background cling floral stamp.

I used Mowed Lawn for the leaves, and for the flowers a mix of Worn Lipstick, Picked Raspberry, Tattered Rose, Tea Dye and Ripe Persimmon. I used Scattered Straw for the yellow halo-ish background effect.

I still need a lot of work, but for a beginner this is what I've come up with. I've been very busy lately and hopefully soon can post the reason why, so I haven't been creating a lot lately. I have yet to try watercolor pencils and have yet to christen my Spectrum Noir colored pencils! Oh how I wish I have time!! For now, this is what I've done.

Thinking of You Egg Tote

I wanted to do a last Easter project so I thought of making an Egg shape tote. But halfway through the project I changed my mind and switched to a more generic theme, Thinking of You. I still used egg shape cut to make the tote but decided to change the paper. I used a sheet from the Jubilee paper pack and the wavy border accent came from my scraps of Ariana paper.   At first it didn't seem like the paper matched, maybe I'm having an off creative day today. But as I added a plain yellow ribbon and the stamp sentiment, it all came together somehow. I used a stamp from Jeanette's Archive Friendly Thoughts and used Tim Holtz distress markers and water colored the image. I used Faded Jeans as the background so the blue will tie in with the Ariana paper border. I love Tim Holtz Distress markers! I used a regular water brush (now my favorite tool) to color the whole thing in. The flowers and leaves were colored using Mowed Lawn and Barn Door. I used Mustard Seed for the little dots so the yellow will somehow tie in with the ribbon color. And the last touch was to mark the edges using Tim Holtz Walnut Stain distress ink.

You'll have to forgive my ribbon as my fingers aren't so adept in making them. Maybe it's time to get one of those ribbon making spools thing....

Here is an image of the stamp I used.

A1154 Friendly Thoughts

Here's how the back side looks like.