Mermaid - Vannessa

Good morning! Won't you all join me in wishing Art by MiRan a very 

Happy 1st Birthday! 

As part of our birthday celebrations, the design team are here to share with you some fantastic projects for the next 2 weeks or so.

I have chosen to share my very first design team card for the Facebook Challenge, which used the gorgeous Mermaid digi back on August 15th 2014. I love mermaids and this cutie is just so sweet soaking in her big bubble bath! Love the strong, rich colours on this card.

And for the next part of my post I have used the same image and created a new card using it. I chose a very different colour scheme; this time going for pink and turquoise and doesn't she look fab in these colours as well?!

You can read more about this card on my blog here.

I hope you will be joining us in our birthday celebrations this year and will pop back every day to see all the other design team members gorgeous creations! I know I will be! 

One winner will be chosen each day to win 3 digis from the Art by MiRan store and all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is leave a comment on each of the birthday celebration posts. Fabulous, right?!

The winners will be announced on January 24th!

Hugs, 

Vannessa - Shaped Shadow Box Tutorial with Trick or Treat

Good morning and Happy Hallowe'en! Hope you're all ready with your Jack O'Lanterns and candy for all the trick or treaters tonight! We have all our decorations ready to go up and our pumpkins carved. Just now need to wait for the doorbell to ring...

I thought today I would post a little tutorial for how I made one of my Hallowe'en decorations this year - a shadow box Hallowe'en scene with the gorgeous Trick or Treat from the Art by MiRan store. Perfect for tonight's festivities! This post is long and photo heavy so beware... and please excuse my messy crafting mat. It is heavily used!

1. Cut a base shape to the size you want using black card - mine is 7 inches wide. Cut the same size again for the top layer, but cut out the centre using a smaller size of the same shape. My smaller shape was 6.25 inches wide.

2. Cut a square of white card and ink it to make a dusky sunset. My square was 6.5 inches and I used 2 shades of orange and 3 shades of purple to create the night time sky background.

3. Glue your sky background to your base frame and trim off any excess in the corners. 

If you want to hang your frame you will need to add the holes/eyelets and ribbon at this stage. I opted for a standing frame so did not add these here.

4. Cut lots of pieces of foam tape and position them round the edge on the reverse side of your top frame. Depending on how high you want your frame or how thick your foam tape is, you will probably need more than one layer. I used 3 layers on mine to get the height I wanted.

5. Add your die cuts to make your silhouette scene and pop them up using foam pads/tape before adding the top frame. Trim off any excess from the edges of the frame.

6. Add your top frame over the top - I would recommend peeling the cover of your tape a side at a time, so you get the positioning correct. Decorate however you like. I added the Stickles dots at the end.

I glued the pumpkins over the top frame but added foam tape underneath where they hang over, so they remained upright. I only glued the banner where it touched the top frame to allow it to hang free.

7. Colour your Trick or Treat digi from Art by MiRan and attach to your frame. I printed her at 9cm high and used Copics in the following colours:

Skin - E000, E00, E21, E11, R20

Hair - V01, V04, V06, V09

Greens - YG61, YG63, YG67

Pumpkin - YR16, YR68, YR18, YR15

Broom - E31, E33, E35, E37

Stars - Golden Star Gelly Roll Pen

To make the frame stand up I used the centre piece cut out from the top frame, folded it in half and glued it to the back towards the bottom of the frame.

I hope you have enjoyed my little tutorial. This simple shadow box can be adapted for so many different occasions and I already have plans to make a Christmas themed one to add to my Christmas decorations! 

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN!

Hugs, Vannessa 

Art by MiRan Facebook Group and Challenges - Vannessa

Happy Friday everyone. It's my turn to host the blog post today, but as it is my first time I thought I would introduce myself a little bit first.

I'm Vannessa, a full-time primary school teacher from Peterborough in the UK and also the Facebook group Challenge coordinator for Art by MiRan. I have been paper crafting and card making for about 8 years now and developed my love of Art by MiRan images when the first challenge on the challenge blog came out. I just had to have some of these gorgeous girls in my collection! I have to admit my collection has grown immensely ever since!

On the Facebook group we have regular challenges, each fortnight starting on a Friday. These alternate between a set theme and an Anything Goes challenge and we would love to see more of you enter our challenges. The prizes are always fantastic and you also have the chance to be a Guest Designer for the following month as well.

Our current challenge starts today and is a themed challenge. You have the choice of either Back to School or an Autumn colours project. Your entry does not have to be a card; it can be a card, a tag, a 3D project - anything you like as long as you use an image from Art by MiRan and that can also include the gorgeous stamps from Whimsy Stamps and Treasured Times too.

We also run other competitions from time to time and our current competition is to use your school colours on an Art by MiRan image. It does not have to be a complete project and does not have to be a school related project either.

I made a welcome sign for my classroom using my secondary school colours of navy, blue and white for mine using the cute Bookaholic Kaite.

We hope to see you all soon over at the Art by MiRan Facebook group, sharing all your gorgeous creations. 

Thanks for stopping by and we hope you have a great day! 

Hugs, Vannessa!

Meet our New Fan Page Coordinator Vannessa Hasty!

Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Vannessa Hasty!! 

Vannessa is joining artbymiran team as our 

Coordinator for our Facebook Fan Page!!

We are so excited to have Vannessa with us! 

She has lots of great and excitingplans for our fans!!

We asked Vannessa to tell us a little about herself by answering some fun questions 

1. What is your favorite way to color an image? 

 My favourite way to colour an image is with copics. 

I have tried watercolour pencils and Twinkling H2Os in the past but I'm just 

not very good at painting. Copics are by far my favourite choice and I'm 

getting better and better with them, through all these fabulous videos I keep

 watching!

2.What is your creative style?

 My creative style is layers I guess. I love adding lots of layers and 

embellishments, but not too many that it hides the main image. I love my

 ribbon and probably have enough to last me many lifetimes over but I cannot

 stop buying the stuff! I have boxes of it everywhere! I also love my paper 

flowers and die cuts. I bought a Silhouette Portrait with my Christmas money 

and love using it to cut different shaped card bases as well as making 

different embellishments with it. My favourite colour is pink so you will also

find lots of pink on my cards too.

3. My craft area is? 

My craft area is a section of our bedroom at the minute 

until we manage to buy our own house and boy it is hard to find something

 both my partner and I like?! I have a huge Expedit unit from Ikea filled to 

the brim to tidy most of the stash away but over time this stash has crept 

into various other areas of the bedroom too and my boyfriend has now had to 

empty his shelves of his Playstation games and DVDs so I have more room 

for my lovely crafting things! I am a tidy crafter and cannot stand to have 

stuff all over the place as I lose it too easily as well.

4. Where do you craft at?

 I do the majority of my crafting at the weekends. During the week I am a 

primary school teacher, currently teaching Year 4 children aged 8-9 and they

 keep me busy and tired enough, but as soon as the weekend arrives, I turn

 into crazy crafting lady. I spend a lot of my holidays crafting as well. I love 

making gifts and cards for friends and family and my classroom is dotted with

 my creations too.

 5. How will our Facebook Fan Challenge change? 

Our Fan Challenge will still be the same fabulous challenge as before but 

now there will be more of them. We will be having two challenges each

 month - one will have a specific theme and the other will be an Anything 

Goes challenge, both using the gorgeous images from Art by MiRan of course. 

We will also be inviting some of you to join us as Guest Designers for each 

challenge so you can share your fabulous creations as well. We are so looking

 forward to having you all join in this exciting new adventure!

We asked Vannessa to share some of her beautiful cards she has made

You will find lots of fun and exciting thing going on over on our fan page!!

Are you a member of our FB Fan Page If not we would love for you to join us!! 

artbymiran Facebook Fan Page