Author: sproatmeyer

Merry & Bright Ornament Kit

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Here’s another card I created using the Merry & Bright Ornament Kit from Queen and Company.  This is one of the ideas from their shop and same layout.

I’m not sure how the solid part of the ornament was done but I thought it was the center of the die.  However, I think it was another piece of paper that was cut out for the backing since mine has a gap and theirs doesn’t.  I’m wondering what I can do to hide it so if you have any ideas… please comment!

Shoot for the Moon

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My my project today, I’m using Shoot for the Moon chipboard embellishments from Make it Crafty. I attempted to do some water coloring on the background with my Spectrum Aqua markers.  However, the paper beaded up so badly that I don’t think it turned out well.  But I used my fingers and some water to smooth it out and salvage what I could.  Then the chipboard was painted and placed on top – it didn’t turn out so bad.  This is in the same style as the store samples for this product.

Little Houses

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Welcome to Day 7 of my Advent calendar!  Today I’m joining with Ute at Bastel-Traum on their Advent calendar.  I’m sharing a tutorial on how to add snow to an every-day image.  For this project, I’ve used Little Houses clear stamp by Little Miss Muffet Stamps. 

For today only – you can get this stamp at 50% OFF!  WOW!
Add Little Houses to your shopping cart. 
(Offer expires at midnight, Central Texas time.)

For each of the images below, you can click on them to make them larger.
First, I stamped the image in gray. It makes it dark enough that I can see the lines really well but also light enough that I get a good no-line coloring effect.  I used Memento London Fog ink.
 
I then colored the houses as I normally would except I didn’t color the green grass. That part will be colored later as snow by adding a little grays.

Here’s where I start on the sky. I put down a solid layer of B0000 to get the paper wet.
 

Then I used B000, B91 and B93 to gradually make it darker. I swiped the brush tip from the top down, making sure I didn’t go all the way down. For each color the strokes got smaller. I had planned to go as dark as B99 but the paper had some oils on it which I could see as I was using B91.  I then decided to stop at B93 and go for a light colored sky.
 

After all the colors were down, then I used the lightest color, B0000 to swipe up from the bottom to help blend in some more.
 

My next strategy is to work on the snow instead of the grass. I used C2, C3, C1 and 0 to create some depth and shadows.
 

This is where the fun part starts with the White Gel pen. I first added snow to the red house, then the blue house. Then I added icicles on the roof and finally snow flakes across the entire image. Remember to add snow flakes in front of the image too. This is a good way to hide some blunders.  LOL 

My last step is to add drop shadows or cast shadows.  I do this with BV23. Be careful not to color the white snow or the snowflakes. I added shadows under the snow on the bushes and tree, under the roof line and a little on the ground under the bushes. I also added some for the icicles. If you really want them to stand out, you can use BV25; or a mixture of both.

For the final product, I cut out the paper with some dies and layered the card. I added snowflake chipboard from Make it Crafty and some white gems for a sparkle.  
Hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial on adding snows and thanks for stopping by.
Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Pluto

~ sproatmeyer ~ 18 Comments

On this Day 6 of the Advent, I have a card featuring Pluto from Little Miss Muffet Stamps. I colored the bird as a Great Green Macaw.  I tried to add more yellow to the feathers since the belly and inside feathers are lighter than the back.

The paper I found had the Christmas tree and pressies and I decided that would be fun to use. So I fussy cut around the bird and ribbons to use the package on the paper instead. This allowed me use pop-up foam to give the card some dimension.  It turned out better than I expected.