Tea for Two!

I had a little splurge on copic sketch pens last week and got all the "0000" ultra pale shades and wanted to take them for a test drive...  The perfect image for which I felt was this delightful fairy in a teacup by the very talented Mo Manning - all her images are just wonderful to colour.

Coloured with copics with a hint of perfect perals on the wings. I cut up some cubes of background papers and made a grid and did some faux stitching with a black fineliner.

I'm entering this into the current challenge on Mo's challenge site whcih is "inspired by a song" - this card has been inspired by the song "Tea for Two" - some for me and some for the little fairy in the teacup.  http://mosdigitalchallenge.blogspot.com/2011/10/challenge-104-inspired-by-song.html

Blue movement

As LIM want us to show movement on our cards, I thought this was the perfect challenge to use Mo Manning's cartwheel image on a spinner.   I've coloured him all in blue as that is the challenge for this week's challenge on Mo's challenge site.

I've coloured him with copics, and added some additional shading on top with polychromos pencils.  I added glaze to his wellies to make them look like rubber.   To stick with the blue theme on Mo's challenge I added a blue card frame to conceal the spinner mechanism, and finished with a couple of sentiments from Hero Arts stamped in a bright pearl blue.

As Less is More is all about movement - I've attempted a little video clip to show Georgie doing his cartwheel in all it's glory.  (edit - video seems to have stopped working - sorry - if anyone knows why, give me a heads up and I'll try and fix it)

Off to make dinner - catch you all later.

Craftilicious x

Birthday Fairy

I knew I had to colour this image as soon as I first saw it on Mo's Digital Pencil.  I made this card for a friend, who as we were best mates as teenagers, and she is very much taller and thinner than me (not hard on either score lol!) always affectionately called me, 'her little fat friend'.  So I thought I'd send her a big fat fairy to wish on for her birthday!

The image is by Mo Manning and she's a delight to colour with all her voluptuous curves!  I coloured her with copics, distressed the edges of the card I printed her onto with Ranger distress inks in weathered wood, and added the swirly details to her dress and wings with sakura glitter pens.

The DP is from Ella Blue by GCD Studios again - I just love this stack.  I distressed the edges after cropping the corners again with weathered wood.  I mounted her onto some blue card stock (with a mirri layer inbetween) and added a couple of rows of ribbons and some blue gems for added sparkle. 

 

I'm entering my card into the following challenges:

ABC Challenge - M is for Magic well fairies are definately magical!

Cute Card Thursday - 1, 2, 3 Recipe - I have one image, 2 ribbons and 3 layers of paper.

Flutterby Wednesday Challenge - Open Week - just has to contain a butterfly, fairy or angel.  :-)

Creative Craft Challenges - Monochromatic Madness - it is all shades of blue except for the flesh tones so I think it counts ;-)

Happy New Year!

Now I'm feeling slightly less like the creature from the black lagoon and have stopped coughing long enough to colour inside the lines, I thought it was time I made a card again, so I made a couple of Happy New Year cards for my mum and auntie.  I used a Mo Manning image of a little child asleep on his dog and made my own sentiment.  It reminded me of when I was a child and used to fall asleep on the dogs in the pub when my parents took me to the parties on Christmas Day Night when the pub was shut.

This image fits with the theme over on Mo's Digital Challenge which is "Bless the Beasts and Children" so I am going to enter my card into the challenge.  The image is called "Buds" and comes in 4 versions - the one I used can be found here but search for buds if you want the girl or aa versions.

As there is a child in the card, it also fits the theme of "C" on the Anything Goes Challenge Blog, so I am playing along with that this week as well.

I printed the image onto glossy card stock and coloured with copics - I should have added some texture to the fur with pencils, but I was short on time as I need to deliver them today, but I think the copic shading gives a hint of fur.  I double mounted onto plain card stock, added ribbon and a couple of buttons, and mounted onto patterned paper from My Minds Eye - Laundry Line.

Hopefully we'll be able to keep our eyes open for long enough to see in the New Year tonight, but if past performances are anything to go by, we might be emulating the little boy and miss it all again!

Happy New Year everyone - and here's to a very crafty 2011!!!

Mo's Design Team

 
My all time favourite rubber/digital stamp designer is having a DT call.  I'm not sure my work is worthy, but it really would be a dream to join Mo's Dream Team.  If you haven't heard of Mo, then go along to her blog where you can see her new designs and buy them in digital download format.

For the DT call, the rules are simple - just choose you're favourite Mo image, make a card, and link it back to her site.  I say simple, but it wasn't easy - my first problem was choosing my favourite image - it took me 5 days to make a choice - they're all so darn good!  I narrowed it down to a handful - Diva, Young Love, My Friend, Bossy or Fairy Dee.  In the end, the cupcakes in the Fairy image won out (well cupcakes are becoming part of my identity...)  One of the things I love most about Mo's images are their humour, and I love that this little birthday fairy has pigged out on the cakes - so much so that she can't even finish the one she started - you can even see the little plum shaped belly she's developing that's full of delicious cake!

I also found this image a challenge to colour as I've only ever done caucasian faces before so figuring out the colouring took a few practices.  For anyone else in the same predicament, I ended up using the following copic colours:

E31, E11, E35, E57 and E50.  I substituted a stronger peach tone in R32 for the cheeks.

For the cupcake cases, I switched to pencils and used the following colours from Faber Castell:

9201-133 - Magenta
9201-125 - Middle Purple Pink
9201-151 - Medium Flesh.

For the cupcake top I used one of my new copic sketch pen in the really pale colour range - RV0000 and added some shading with another Faber Castell in 9201-189 - Cinnamon.  A bit of glitter for the hundreds and thousands finishes it off nicely.

I went for a green dress on Dee as I love pink and green as a colour combination.  So to make the image into a card I picked two pink papers - one pale with glitter from the DCVW Sweet Treats stack, and a simple darker pink polka dot beneath.  More cupcakes, with my favourite EK Success punch and some nontraditional "green" cherry's on top with some iron on clothes sequins simply stuck on with a little silicon.

You can check out all the entries here - there are a lot there already - I just hope Mo likes mine :-)

It's Snowing!

Snow is definitely the theme for today, so I've decided to enter one of my favourite Mo winter images which is now also available in rubber from Stamping Bella into the weekly Bellarific Friday Challenge which is "snow" this week.

The door is coloured in pencils and blended with sansoder and blending stumps.  I used Linda's towel technique using lots of dots in various shades of green copic markers to colour the actual wreath.  Red stickles for berries, and white stickles for the all important snow finish the look, along with a little bow from my stash of ribbon.  The background papers are both from the DCWV Christmas Stack.

We've already got the worst snow Sheffield has seen in 30 years, and its still falling.  The cat has cabin fever and much more of this and we'll not be far behind her!  Keep warm everyone and get the soup on!

Birthday Diva Two Ways

I needed to make an 18th and 40th Birthday card this week for my cousin's daughter and one of the book club girls respectively and I thought that "Diva" by my favourite digi-stamp artist Mo Manning would be just about perfick for both of them.

I coloured her up in two completely different ways - one pink, one green and blue and to be honest I'm not sure which I like best - the image itself just makes it so easy to colour it right.  Copics, blended pencils and quite a bit of glitter and crystal embelishment and you're good to go Diva-tastic.  I even used a little "smooch" pearl ink to highlight the pearls around her neck, highlighted with glossy accents.

The bracelet was for the 18th Birthday - it's a clubbers bracelet - the round beads glow in the dark :-)

All About the Boys

 It's was all male birthdays for me in July and I usually find men's cards hard but I was really pleased with the ones I came up so I thought I'd share a few.  My favourite was this one for my husband's friend who is a video game addict so this Mo Manning digi-stamp is just perfect!  I was very pleased with how well the jeans came out.  I coloured him with copics and pencils blended with sansoder.

Then we had a couple of bikers - one of the pedal power variety which is just a great wire topper mounted with a lot of silicon onto a mount and then onto an embossed happy birthday using my sissix.  The other biker prefers a bit more petrol so I used a kanban pop-up motobike and coloured it copics and metalic markers for all the chrome and added some bubblewrap behind the headlight to provide some texture.