Author: sproatmeyer

Waterfall Tutorial with Ivy Swing

~ sproatmeyer ~ 2 Comments

I have a background tutorial that I wanted to share on coloring a distant waterfall on a tropical world, far, far away!  The planet of Avatar to be exact, however, you can use this same technique for a waterfall on any of your projects.  First of all, my project uses the Ivy Swing rubber stamp from Make it Crafty plus a Sugarplums Cherry Emma from CC Designs.  The character was stamped first and masked with a sticky-note then the Ivy Swing was stamped on top of that.  The positioning was tricky but I was lucky this time.

I started with the Ivy Swing and colored the leaves, flowers and birds.  The colors are actually listed down on my paper if you’re able to see them but you’re going to need better eye sight than me at the moment.  LOL  Unfortunately, I don’t have the originals either.   But the tutorial is more about the technique than the colors so you can substitute for the colors that you like.

The next plan of action was to sketch in where the water would be falling.  I looked at waterfall pictures and thought it would be something like this.  Next time I would watch the direction of the splashed a little more but this works for now.  I used a lighter color for this step and will bring in the darker colors later.

Here’s the darker colors I was talking about!  I went all the way to the darkest color in the spectrum and then I’m going to work back to the lightest color.  I wasn’t sure what I was doing at this point and was starting to get second guesses – I thought for sure I messed it up.

For the next couple of steps, the basic idea is to work from the darker colors into the lighter colors.  I’m not going to worry about blending at this point and I just want to layer in the colors.  I used colors from dark blue, gray to light blue and light turquoise.

 

The final step was to use the blender pen and the lightest colors to blend in all the layers.  The lower part fades off but when I get that cut off it actually looks better.  That’s the end of the tutorial – the next steps are the finish coloring the character and make a card… to be continued!  But you can find the end of that story on another day!  😀

Polka Dot Pals Ryker

~ sproatmeyer ~ 4 Comments

Today is a very special day as we’ve not only combined the Super Saturday post with some awesome Guests, but we have a very special fundraiser going on too!  My daughters, Cassandra and Lydia, are participating in a “Jump Rope for Heart” activity at their school where kids learn jump rope skills and raise money for the American Heart Association. 

Learning about a healthy heart at school really hit home for her girls, especially when it came with a connection to a few close family members.  For example, their cousin Ryker had open heart surgery when he was only 6-months-old!  He is now a teen and doing great!  He loves many activities including photography and was the inspiration for the new image I has drawn for today… meet Polka Dot Pals Ryker.

 I’ve combined this image with Dandelions from Make it Crafty.  
This image is available in the Little Miss Muffet Stamp store but the best part about him is you can also help Barbara’s daughters in their fundraiser!  How, you might ask?  There are two ways!  First, for every PDP Ryker purchase, LMMS will donate $2.00 to Cassandra and Lydia’s fundraiser!  Secondly, you can also donate directly on the American Heart Association website to their individual fundraiser page by visiting these links:  Casssndra’s Donation Page and Lydia’s Donation Page.

But wait, there’s more!  That’s not the only image you’ll get in the package – there are two other very special images.  Those two were drawn and colored by Cassandra and Lydia themselves!  They’ve entered their artwork into the T-shirt Design Contest for next year’s Jump Rope for Heart.  Maybe they’ll win, maybe they won’t, but the fun was in creating and now you can create with them too!  Both colored and uncolored versions are included.

Thank you for being a part of this fundraiser and we hope you can take action to have a healthy heart even if it isn’t via jump rope.  Spread the word and share your creations online in the current LMMS Challenge and/or in the FaceBook LMMS Group too!

Get Your Jump On – Getting bored with just jumping over a rope?  Check out these neat tricks and stunts you can learn with a jump rope.  There are instructions for over 30 ways to jump rope – now how about that?!

Looking for other activity based stamps to play with this weekend?  Then you might also enjoy these other Little Miss Muffet Stamps that feature heart healthy activities such as bicycling, sports, winter fun, playing and even house cleaning!  Oh yeah!

Little Avatar Navi Scene

~ sproatmeyer ~ 29 Comments

Here’s a fun project I wanted to share using two images, Baby Fairy Flora from Mo Manning (Stampavie) and Anthuriumns Garden from Make it Crafty. I had recently watched the Avatar movie and wanted to color something using the bright fluorescent colors from that world.  So I had used a bit of creativity and decided to color up the fairy rubber stamp and the large flower background.

This was one of those coloring jobs where I went over everything about a hundred times and wasn’t sure what it would look like until I was nearly finished.  It was a new challenge and touch and go for a while.  LOL  To get the Avatar look, I colored with blues, green, blue/greens and even some yellows to create the skin tone and strip pattern.  Then once the skin was finished I added the white dots with the gel pen.  The eye were colored with greens and yellows and the lips were colored with a little bit of pink/purple.  Here’s a before and after slice of the fairy.

At first, I wasn’t sure what color to do the clothes but decided to bring in some neon purples and pinks which coordinated well.  The hair was done by dotting the gray tones and was a lot easier than I had anticipated. 

The background image is one that I’ve colored using some blues (BG and B).  For this one, I wanted a bright fluorescent type color of blue so I blended in some green (YG and G) on the tips of the leaves and some purples (BV) for the darker parts of the leaves.  I like how the effect really changes the blue/green color.

I wanted to keep the ground the same neon colors as the flowered background but I also wanted grass.  So I later went in and added green strands for grass and then placed my fairy image on top of that.  The mixture is a little different for me and I’d probably go for all green/grass the next time.  But I think in the end, this might be considered a “happy accident” which is always a bonus!  LOL

Finally the last thing I needed to do was place the images on a card – this was a challenge all in itself! But I managed to find some scraps that didn’t fight with the image and chose to go with something very basic and simple.  I hope you like it and maybe you’ll be trying a little Avatar Navi image in your future! Yes?!

I’d like to enter this into the following challenges:
DP2 Challenge E217 – “Something New” (coloring blue skin)
Card Mania #38 – Anything Goes
Make it Monday #175 – Anything Goes

Sugar ‘n Spice Dolls Vanilla

~ sproatmeyer ~ 4 Comments

It’s a Super Saturday sale at Little Miss Muffet Stamps where the Design Team gets to choose the sale items!  That’s right – what ever the Design Team has chosen to create with that weekend will be on sale until the following Wednesday.  So if there’s a stamp you want to see on sale and just can’t wait… start dropping hints and we just might be inspired to use it.  😀

The image I used today is Sugar ‘n Spice Dolls Vanilla from Little Miss Muffet Stamps in rubber and it was colored using the Marvy Le Plume alcohol markers.  I used some of my scraps to complete the card plus a few dragonfly chippies from Make it Crafty.  Lastly I added a border using a white gel pen.  I hope you like it and thanks for dropping by today.  😀

Crystal

~ sproatmeyer ~ 13 Comments

At Make it Colourful this month the challenge is blue and yellow and I had stamped and colored this image and showcased it before.  But now I have it on a card front and the paper I chose was a little more on the turquoise color than the blue I had originally colored.  But never fear… that’s the bonus of alcohol markers that we can change the colors!  So if you click HERE you can see the blue it was originally before I went over it with B10 and B32.  I didn’t have to blend too much so I used the B32 in the dark blue areas then b10 over the rest.  Voila!  Now I have my image to mach my papers.

Make it Crafty:
To see the post on the Make it Colourful page, click HERE to view post.

Sugar ‘n Spice Dolls Rosemary

~ sproatmeyer ~ 4 Comments

There is a new challenge and new releases at Little Miss Muffet Stamps today!  If you like tangles, Polka Dot Pals or Sugar ‘n Spice Dolls then you’ll want to run over there and grab up the newest and latest images!  Today is also the start of a new challenge and the theme is “Fussy Cutting!”  Which means we want to see where you’ve used your scissors and spent some extra time on your project.  LOL

For my project I’ve used Sugar ‘n Spice Dolls Rosemary from Little Miss Muffet Stamps available in rubber!  I also used some new wood elements I received from my Secret Santa this year – thanks Delphine!