Third Coast Creative Coterie Challenge!

Uh-oh Domino! That's right, Third Coast Creative Coterie Challenge Blog is holding an Altered Domino challenge! Leigh, who is in charge of the Challenge Blog, is also known as the Sharpie Domino Queen, so it's only fitting that she challenged us to use our Third Coast stamps to create altered dominos! You should participate for a chance to win a fabulous prize!!!

These are the dominos that were part of my Fubar run last week. I had initially stamped with Adirondack ink, heat set, then colored them with Prismacolor markers. I heat set them again. Then when I went to test them, the ink got all smeared. Bummer. So I put them aside and called the project a failure.

The next day, I decided that I would stamp on cardstock, color with my beloved Copics, then adhere them to the domino, heat emboss, the coat with Glossy Accents. But being a frugal me, I thought that I should recycle the Fubarred dominos by cleaning them off with rubbing alcohol.

I was shocked and delighted to see that the smears disappeared with some of the ink, leaving subdued pastel images behind. Here they are!

Eastern Dancer (VB-123-C) from Third Coast's Early Spring 07 supplement


Wise Old Wizard Small (DT-114-D) from Third Coast's Early Spring 07 supplement


Chile Ristra (AP-184-G) from Third Coast's Summer '05 supplement.


Once I saw that these were so cool, I went ahead and altered an additional three dominos using the same stamps as above. I'll share those next week!

Meanwhile, go hop on over to the Third Coast Creative Coterie Challenge Blog and see what the other gals have created.

Thanks for visiting today!

Favorite Ice Cream Flavor Challenge!

Last week, Kenny K's Krafty Krew challenged us to create a project inspired by our favorite ice cream flavor. I'm not a big fan of ice cream, but I do like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.

I also used this week's sketch (#220/1) from Sketch Saturday's challenge blog.


Here's my card using Captain Locke!


Captain Locke was colored using Copic markers, which were chosen to represent Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream and to go with Graphic 45's Steampunk Debutante 8x8 pad. I've used the heck out of this pad, so I clearly will need to get another. But back to the project. . .

I colored her using some of the new stuff I learned last Saturday. I have a light source. I chose colors using the 10 + 2 rule to give more contrast. And I have a few cast shadows. I couldn't figure out the floor shadow, but such is life. Black Glaze pen was added to the buttons and silver/grey Glaze pen was added to the nailhead/studs on the bag. The shoes and goggle lenses were coated with clear Glaze pen.

Here's a close-up.


The sentiment was created using Maya Road rub-ons. Gosh. I wish more companies made alphabet rub-ons in cool fonts and smaller point sizes. The sentiment piece was matted with some leather-look specialty paper by FiberMark. I used strips of that same paper for the the horizontal elements. Staples from my ever-so-useful Tiny Attacher added a bit of visual interest.

Thanks for visiting today!

I shall enter this card in the following challenges.
• Sketch Saturday's challenge blog
• Kenny K's Krafty Krew's Favourite Ice Cream Colours Challenge

Oops! Or time flies...

Greetings earthlings! I bet you were wondering what had happened to me, that is all three of you who visit my blog. Ha!

I haven't stopped crafting. I was just busy getting stuff submitted and trying my hand at some new stuff. If you look down at the sidebar on the right, you'll notice that my blog is sporting a spiffy new item.

Yep. I attended an Intermediate Copic class last week and am newly certified. The class was taught my the enthusiastic, entertaining, and super-talented Colleen Schaan with an able assist by the lovely and also-seriously talented Lori Craig.

It was a long class, but I was sitting with some fabulous people and I learned a lot. I'm embracing "the dark side" with my color choices and am trying to use what I've learned. I'm still processing a lot of the information, which will no doubt result in some total failures. That's cool because I do learn from my mistakes. It's odd for me to plan light sources and such like. I guess I'm not used to thinking while I create. :D

Here's one of my experiments.


The stamp is Hailey's Heart (AB-007-V) from Third Coast's Spring 2012 supplement. She and her sister live on page 53.

I was trying to get away from "Vampire" coloring, which is totally out of my comfort zone. I was really happy using very light colors with subtle shading for the skin of my people. This one uses E000, E02, and E4. Yikes. Really, really scary. I went with some fairly strong contrast on her face because she's on the edgier side.

I also learned that people really do have halos, especially me. *snicker* So, I put a halo into her hair. I also added two cast shadows. Brave me.

The patterned papers are ancient Daisy Bucket papers that had hearts and dots and worked well with my plan, so I matched the BG colors and R colors to the paper. I cut the sentiment pinked circle from the patterned paper and added a few gemstones to finish it. I used one of my tried and true "go to" designs, because I was feeling lazy.

Why was I feeling lazy? Well, I colored her once, then a C3 marker ran dry, so I refilled it and it dripped directy into the center of her face. FUBAR#1. So I stamped it and colored it again. The eyes came out blotchy, so I made them the last thing to do. I fixed the pupils with black, then proceeded to color the irises. Except, I colored the white of the left eye, after coloring the right eye correctly. *sigh. FUBAR#2. So I went for the hat trick, but didn't screw it up. Woot! Yay me.

In addition to those two epic fails, I also have been trying to stamp and color on dominos with totally ghastly results. Twice. Sigh.

Anyways, thanks for visiting today!

Bombshell Stamps Sale!!!

Bombshell Stamps is celebrating their Fifth Anniversary with a sale!

25% off everything in the store, but you need to hurry over there right now because the sale ends tomorrow, August 7th at 11:59 p.m. PDT!

Use coupon code "BDAY5"

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!!!

Welcome to Happy Town!

You can probably tell that I was in a whimsical mood when I created this card.



I was in the mood to create a scene, so I pulled out my Happy Town stamp by Victoria Case for SCACD. Since I sometimes like to create back stories for my stamps, I tried to figure out who might live in this cute village and remembered all the Chicklet stamps by the late lamented Odd Bird Planet.

So I stamped the lady & gentleman chicklets, masked them with Cansor & Newton masking fluid, then stamped Happy Town. I decided that the scene was missing a little something, so I added the little something fairy chicklet atop one of the houses and a trio of hearts.

I lifted the mask, colored the scene with Copic markers, masked again with masking fluid, airbrushed the background, lifted the mask, added glitter and Glaze pen accents to the windows, a lovely glittery skirt to the fairy chicklet, and then wrote a huge run-on sentence to describe my process. BTW, I colored first, then chose papers, which is a deviation from my norm. Oddly freeing.

We know a lot of folks (including ourselves) who celebrate anniversaries this month, so I added a Paper Trey Mixed Messages sentiment to a die cut.

The striped pattered paper is by Basic Grey and I'm not sure who makes the paper with the big dots.

Thanks for visiting today!

Queen of everything...

Simon Says Stamp & Show "What do you say?" challenge has inspired me to create this card. Actually, the challenge made me go through my stickers and rub-ons to organize them. While going through those drawers, I found some great cat-themed stuff.

Hence, this card...


which is based on this sketch from Craft Your Passions challenge blog:


I flipped the sketch and used crowns instead of flowers.

Pretty Kitty (VB-108-J) by Third Coast Rubber Stamps reminds me of my familiar, Duchess, who is a fluffy tabby ragdoll/American shorthair mix. However, there is no way that Duchess would deign to wear a frilly collar like that. She's way too regal. This Pretty Kitty stamp lives on page 17 of the New Year '07 supplement.

Anyways, I was so happy with the trees in the Painted Ladies card (below) that I decided to use the same dot technique, using the W series of Copic markers. I dotted the lightest color, dotted the darker colors, blended them out, added some shading,tabby striping, and suchlike. I got a bit heavy-handed with the blending and the blender wasn't pushing the color back into the lines, so I opted to outline the kitty with a darker color and chose a BV marker. I wanted to use some papers from my stash that had crown designs and came up with MME Bohemia and Imaginisce cardstock and matched custom less-than-R81, R81, R83, and R85 for the collar and ribbons.

The sticker on the upper right is from 7 Gypsies and the rub-on on the bottom left is from Junkitz (Remember them?).

The crowns were cut from shimmery white cardstock using a QuicKutz die. I adorned the crown with purple and lavender gems.

I'm sewing impaired and this apparently applies to faux-stitching too. I used an EK Success rolling poker gizmo tool with a scoring board, then used Spica Lavender glitter pen to add the faux stitching. Poorly.

So there you have it.

Thanks for visiting today!

I shall be entering this card in these challenges:
• Simon Says Stamp & Show "What do you say?" challenge
• Outlawz Copic/Promarker Friday: "Anything Goes"
• Craft Your Passion # 121: Sketch

Bon Voyage stash!

This one is completely "out of my box", so I should be saying Bon Voyage box! I also used a ton of older stuff from my stash, plus some neglected tools! I had fun creating it though, so that's what counts. Now someone just has to go on a trip so I can send it to them.

Here it is!


My focal image is the Third Coast's Painted Ladies (WT005-S) stamp, which is located on page 21 of the Spring 2012 catalog supplement.

It was stamped with Onyx VersaFine ink and heat set. The Painted Ladies were colored with Copic markers. Being me, I googled Painted Ladies and found a photo that was close to the scene in the stamp. I then chose my colors accordingly. When I was done coloring, I (finally remembered) to add clear Glaze pen to the windows to add dimension and shine. I masked the image using Winsor & Newton masking fluid and airbrushed with my custom less-than-B21 and B21 Copic markers.

Then the big fun started. I wanted the card to look vintage collage-y. First I chose script text patterned cardstock from DCWV's Timeless Type 8x8 stack and a collage-style piece that had a San Francisco postmark. I cut that out and got out an old, Old, OLD Stampin' Up "Postal Card" stamp, which was stamped to the left of the postmark.

Then I raided my sticker drawer and found ancient Nostalgique stickers by EK Success. I should mention that I didn't initially find what I wanted, so I pulled three drawers out of my Iris cart, dumped them, and re-organized them for 45 minutes. ADHD is so much fun.

Anyway, I used some tags from one of the sticker sheets, but I first scratched 'em up with my handy-dandy Tonic-Tim scratcher tool. Then I sponged Distress over 'em and distressed the edges with my Tonic-Tim distresser. The stickers were looking a bit empty, so I pulled out a sheet of 7 Gypsies rub-ons from the Whimsey sheet and added the pointing hand and clock to the tags. The tag with the hand still needed something, so I added a 7 Gypsies sticker (Historic location) to it. Much better. I found a humongo eyelet and added it to the sticker using my neglected Cropadile and then hammered the be-jeepers out of it using my Tonic-Tim hammer.

The sticker with the clock was added to the San Francisco/Postal piece to cover up a playing card and an eyelet was set. Red, white, and blue twine was dragged across an Old Paper Distress pad to get rid of the whiteness. Then the twine was wrapped around the tag/SF postal piece and through the tags hole. I echoed the twine wrapping thing on the left.

I had to use lots of dimensionals to pop the Painted Ladies focal piece over the twine, so I used two layers of ejection foam from QuicKutz. I kept all the excess foam because I knew it would come in handy one day. I also used some really, really old 3L photo corner stickers on three sides of the piece.

I dug into my sticker drawer some more and found two sheets of old typewriter-key dimensional stickers which I used for the sentiment. I also found some old QuicKutz rub-ons, so I used the "Bon Voyage" definition too. The bottom left corner looked lonely, so I added two rub-on keys from that same 7 Gypsies sheet.

I think I'm done blathering, so I'll say "Thanks for visiting today".

I shall enter this card in the following challenges:
• Simon Says Stamp "Anything Goes" challenge.
• Simon Says Stamp & Show "What do you say?" challenge
• Outlawz Copic/Promarker Friday: "Anything Goes"