Zoe All Excited

~ sproatmeyer ~ 20 Comments

Our challenge for this week at Make it Colourful is “Coloring Grounds” and for my image I created and colored a sidewalk with grass. In other words, adding a ground to an image that does have one. There is some fabulous inspiration at the challenge blog that you don’t want to miss too! ;D

On my journal page I used Zoe All Excited from Make it Crafty and thought it would be fun to have her skipping down the sidewalk! I embellished the page with bits and pieces including gems, metal bits and brads, and leaf chippies from Butterfly Leaves.

Here’s a close up of the image with the sidewalk. First I drew the lines of the sidewalk with a fine tipped marker then colored it like a normal image. I added grass on the one side then a few strands in the cracks of the sidewalk… because I always have a few strands in mine. ;D

The grass was created by flicking the brush tip of the marker from the sidewalk as the starting point up and away into the air. I used four different shades of colors and varied the length of the stroke to give it a more random look. Hope this gives you some ideas and don’t forget to check out the Make it Colourful challenge for more ideas!

Hatters

~ sproatmeyer ~ 18 Comments

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in writing up the challenge blog that I forget about my own post! LOL So I hope this isn’t coming up to late. ;D This week’s challenge at Little Miss Muffet Stamps is to use Multiple Images! We want to see what you can create with more than one image not including sentiments.



I created this journal page with all four of The Hatters… Melba Flora Hatter, Iris May Hatter,

Peggy Sue Hatter and Linda Lee Hatter. I hadn’t planned it this way but it was nice that all four were printed out the same size and small enough to fit on the page. ;D I eve got to use some of my new papers, chippies, pearls and even some forgotten Magic Mesh.



I don’t remember if this is part of my first journal or my second one but the point it… they’re so much fun that I’m on my second book! The pages are super thick watercolor paper and there are 22 pages per journal. The first book I did over half then gave it to a friend to finish it up the remaining few pages. (Hint hint Zoe!!)


I’d like to enter this into the following challenges:

Ruby’s Rainbow Challenges #10 – stitching

Stampavie & more Challenge #149 – Girlie

Creative Craft Challenge – Anything but a card

My Time to Craft Challenge #153 – G is for girlie

Try it on Tuesday – Anything goes

Queens Cutie

~ sproatmeyer ~ 13 Comments

I have another Urban Scene to show of today for the Whimsy Stamps & Make it Crafty joint release blog hop! After all, another journal page is so much better to land upon than a colorless paper test. LOL This one was also inspired by many of those on the blog hop and I had to try out some of the new ideas I saw along the way!

The basic inspiration for my project came from Vicky as I was totally intrigued by the way she used the chain link fence and the city skyline sentiment – I loved that and such a brilliant idea! I merged the images together using layers and used gradation to go from the black sentiment down to the white ground. (Which by the way, I discovered the chain link fence can be merged so tightly together which is so smooth!) I figured merging the image might save me from coloring behind the fence… however, I ended up doing that for the sky anyway. C’est la vie!

For my project I used Kenny K’s Queens Cutie, Cityscape Saying from Whimsy Stamps and elements from the Urban Street Collection from Make it Crafty. When I color a Kenny K image the first thing I do is Google Annika‘s blog to look for inspiration and I’m so glad she had this one colored too. I love the brown colors she used but felt in the mood to use other colors – after all, I can’t copy her 100% all the time, right?

I colored the bench with inspiration from Zoe and Marlene‘s projects and I liked how they made it look like a wood bench instead of concrete… and because most city things are green (don’t know why) I chose to color a green city bench. ;D Unfortunately by time I got to the boom box I was plum tuckered and just wanted to get it finished – maybe later on I’ll color up another one and dimensional it on top of this one to cover it up. That’s my tip for the week! ;D

The Paper Project – Experiment VII

~ sproatmeyer ~ 4 Comments

Welcome back to The Paper Project! I don’t know why this test took so long for me to think of but I’m so glad I did! And on that note, if you have a suggestion for a test just drop me a line. ;D

Experiment VII – Paper Purities

The purpose of this experiment is to find out if any of the papers have hidden dyes that might or might not effect the markers. To do this, I applied two drops of Various Ink Blender 0 to the paper to get it really saturated and hoped it would push out and reveal inks in the paper. So let’s get to it and see what I found!

The papers are identified in the Introduction and here are the results:
(Click on the picture for a zoomed look.)

Can you see it? I tried scanning this and nothing showed up so this picture is actually one step better. 😀 The results? I did find ink! I actually knew I would beforehand because of the paper I use on a regular basis has problems blending to white.

Papers A, K, L, R and V all had ink in the papers and resulted in a purple-ish ring. L shows up the lightest but is darker than what is actually pictured. (Please note: I have updated and tested with X but didn’t retake the picture.)

Based on this test alone I would recommend B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, M, N, O, P, Q, S, T, U, W and X to be the better papers.

Strong Island

~ sproatmeyer ~ 82 Comments

Welcome to the joint release blog hop!! Whimsy Stamps & Make it Crafty have come together to create a fun Urban Themed digi collection!

We have broken it in to TWO HOPS – HOP A Starts HERE & HOP B Starts HERE! You are currently on HOP A and should have arrived from the incredible DEBBIE!

Ann Vento has whipped up her magic and designed an incredible collection of funky wall sayings, city landscapes and of course a range of super cool street signs. Check out the Sentiments collection HERE!

Make it Crafty is trying something new offering all the different elements for you to build your own urban backdrop. Check out the Urban Street Collection HERE!

Then of course, what better characters to incorporate into such a scene than the fabulous KennyK rubber stamps available from Whimsy Stamps!

For my project I used Kenny K’s Strong Island image and used Annika’s project for my coloring guide and also used one of her hair colors too! Then after I had seen how Carole had colored her Urban background I had to copy the windows too. ;D Mine were blue before but I loved the black and had to change it.

I feel that this project is was isspired and put together completely by my friends … I even had Zoe merged the Urban wall background for me. All I did was just the coloring. LOL Well I can’t think of anything else to say … so I hope you enjoy the project and both hops!

Our incredibly talented Design Teams have had a blast playing with all the different elements to bring you LOTS of inspiration so I hope you get a chance to see them all! Your next stop on HOP A is the fabulous MARLEY, but before you go make sure you leave a comment below!

You have until August 21st 8PM Australian QLD time to make your way through the hops!

Kai in the Rain

~ sproatmeyer ~ 23 Comments

Are you ready for another challenging challenge? This week at Make it Colourful we want to you experiment coloring something that looks wet! It’s actually not as hard as that sounds and there are many wonderful examples on the challenge blog that you don’t want to miss out on.


On my project I used “Kai in the Rain” from Mo Manning and Pebblestone Patch from Make it Crafty. I also used one of my new dies to make the clouds and because it was raining I took the opportunity to use my gray felt too! 😀


The water on the coat was actually simple and I found it much more difficult to make the raincoat shinny – after all, that requires me to leave a part of the paper uncolored! Gasp! But after I colored the raincoat then I went in with a white gel pen and colored in the water droplets. Then I used a darker shadow of the yellow to give the water droplets a shadow – easy peasy!


I even tried to color the water splashing in the pool of water in front of the cobblestones but gave up after four tries… so if you look closely you can spot those around the bottom of the image. ;D The rest of the journal page was decorated with the usual regiment – brads, chippies, and a metal frame journal tag. Hope you enjoyed and good luck with your water project this week!