A new Challenge Blog!

My cyber friend Lesley Croghan is a whiz at starting new challenges - Inspired By All the Little Things has been a feature on her blog for the past few weeks, and she has decided to create it's own blog.  The exciting part is that she's invited me to be on the Design Team, along with herself, and two other talented designers - Jeanne Jachna and Tracey McNeely!

Each week, one of us will be the host of an inspiration challenge - providing a graphic to get you started.  We will have a guest designer join us to share a project and help pick a featured participant at the end of the week.  Our first challenge will be next Saturday, March 5th - we hope you'll check out the blog, become a follower, and play along!  Today we're doing design team introductions - you can read all about it here!

Another Hoppy Easter card

We are starting week two of our Shake, Rattle & Roll challenge on the Art Impressions blog.  Last Thursday, I shared a tutorial on colouring Easter eggs & making a shaker card (you can see it here), and for today's post, I've put together another one of the bunnies that I coloured up from the newly released Hoppy Easter Set (Sku #4754) :

 He's a 4 1/4" square card, and I popped up the bunny with pop dots.  

Copics used: C1, C00, R20, R81, BV01, B21, B01, YG03, YG01, YG00, Y15, Y13, Y11

Head on over to the Ai blog to see what the rest of the Design Team has to share - and be sure to link up your creation to the challenge, we want to see your cards that move!

Fusion & Inspired By challenges

I am combining a couple of challenges today with a quick card that I've made to send to my sister.  I used the sketch on the Fusion challenge, and the inspiration photo from Inspired By All the Little Things on Lesley Croghan's blog:

I was inspired by the dots & stars, as well as the colour combo in the inspiration photo - it started out being as crisp and cool as the photo, but I added some warmer tones, and softly distressed the edges of my papers.

Patterned papers are Odds & Ends Mini Deck by Cosmo Cricket; Cardstock is Colonial White & Flaxen, CTMH; Stamp set is Hello, Life - CTMH;  Inks are Bamboo & Cocoa, CTMH; Stitched Square STAX die by MFT; Seeing Stars die, Taylored Expressions.

Am I Skinny Yet?

 I have a card using one of the newest Ai People sets today, here is Skinny Yet Set (Sku #4672:

With such a busy background paper, I kept the rest of it fairly simple, with just a few die cuts as an embellishment.

I enjoyed colouring her up with my Copics - especially the excercise ball, it was a good chance to practise colouring a sphere.  I don't have an overly blended style of colouring, so it's a bit streaky, but I like the effect!  Don't forget that our current challenge on the Art Impressions blog is "Shake, Rattle & Roll" - we would love to see your creations with movement.

Copics used: BG18, BG15, BG13, BG11, YG07, YG05, YG03, YG01, YG00, YR18, YR15, YR12, E11, E00, E000, R20, E31, E34, E37

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Mojo & All The Little Things

I am playing along with a new challenge on Lesley Croghan's blog, called "Inspired By All The Little Things".  She has posted an inspiration photo, which immediately made me think of this floral paper from Teresa Collins.  I'm using this week's Mojo Monday sketch:

I needed a sympathy card, so I pulled out an older set from Close To My Heart (Card Word Puzzle) and stamped it on a circle of watercolour paper.  I used the CTMH inks that matched my paper and used a paintbrush to paint the inks onto my image.  I popped it up over a piece of organdy ribbon to finish it off.  The sentiment is from Verve's "Blessings".

Patterned paper is You Are my Happy, by Teresa Collins; Cardstock and Inks are Sorbet & Desert Sand, CTMH; Colonial White organdy ribbon, CTMH; Sentiment is Blessings by Verve; Stamps are Card Word Puzzle, CTMH; STAX Circle & Stitched Circle dies, My Favorite Things.

Shake, Rattle & Roll!

We have a brand new challenge on the Art Impressions blog today - "Shake, Rattle & Roll!"  we want to see your cards with movement.  I have a sweet Easter shaker card to share with you today with some tips on colouring Easter eggs.  My card features the wonderful new clear stamps in Happy Easter Set (Sku #4754):

 This is a 4 1/4" square card, and I'll share how I put it together in a minute.  First I want to tell you how I coloured my eggs.  Here are the Copics that I used on all of my images.  For the shaker card, I just used Y11, R81, B21 and BV01 - and you'll notice that all of the colours that I selected end with a "1".

 My intention was to recreate the look of the hand dipped eggs that we all made as kids.  As long as you select colours that end with the same number - they will blend together, without getting 'muddy'.  I tried various combinations first to see what I liked - all I did was overlap each of the colours by about 1/8".  I went over some of the colours twice, but there is not a lot of repetitive blending involved - let your work sit for a little while, and the colours blend themselves together really nicely.

 As always - test your combos on a bit of scrap cardstock first to make sure you like the effect.  Here's a bit of a rainbow effect that I made using all six colours together:

Here are my finished bunnies:

 To make my shaker, I taped together two different circle dies, to make a 1/4" frame.  I used some leftover packaging that I had on hand, that is about 1/16" thick.  I cut the frame out three times and glued them together in a stack, then filled the middle with sequins, added a circular piece of acetate, and then covered it all with a pink cardstock frame:

 Here you can see my stacked cardboard frames.  I placed the sequins in the middle before adding the acetate & pink cover:

After fussy cutting my bunny out, I glued her to the edge of the frame, and tied some Baker's twine around my card.  Enjoy!

Be sure to enter your creation over on the Ai blog - there are always fabulous prizes to be won!

Copics used: E53, E51, E50, C1, C00, RV10, R20, Y11, R81, BV01, B21

Wooden Door Watercolour

 I have another Ai Watercolor Mini card to share with you today - this one is using Wooden Door (Sku #4702):

 The set includes four stamps: The door, the wreath, the logs & the small tree.  It is perfect for a Christmas card, but I made mine more of a general winter themed card, by using non traditional colours.  I wrapped some irridescent twine around the base, multiple times, and sprinkled on a few irridescent sequins, and then added pop dots to the matted circle so that it could sit over top of the twine.  There are also some tiny clear sparkles on the wreath to act as the berries.  The card itself is 5" square, and was painted with a combo of Distress Inks, and both Marvy & Tombow markers.

 Have you tried the Art Impressions Watercolor Minis yet??  You can find them all here - and if you scroll back over the last several Wednesdays on the Art Impressions blog, you'll find some amazing tutorial videos done by Bonnie Krebs, showing step by step instructions on how to paint with these wonderful stamp sets.

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Love, Love, Love Challenge

The current Art Impressions challenge is "Love, Love, Love" - you guessed it, we want to see your Valentines!  Ai has two newly released sets available on the Ai website, so the Design Team are all sharing projects today to inspire you.  Here are a couple of cards using In The Air Set (Sku #4753):

 These skunks are the cutest little guys to colour and create with!  The set comes with three different main images, some small accent images and three sentiments.  If you scroll down to see my Tuesday post, you'll see the third skunk done with a watercolour background.

 Head on over to the Ai blog to see what the rest of the team is showing us, and be sure to link up your own creation for a chance to win a prize.  Copics used: C7, C5, C3, C1, C00, R20, R37, R35, R32, R30, R85, R83, R81.