I’ve tagged the tutorials I’ve posted here – and I hope to be creating more of them in the future! If you have something you would like a tutorial on, especially something on my daily blog posts, please leave comments to let me know.
If you use one of these tutorials, I’d love credit – and a link back here. Let me know what you’ve createad, I’d love to see.
Thanks!
Hero Arts House: Fall Tutorial [video]
Thanks for the comments on yesterday’s beach house tutorial! Today’s technique for the house is a lot easier in terms of coloring skills; it’s not as subtle as the clapboard, and can cover up some of a beginner’s blending struggles. (And believe me, I’m all for covering up things I wrestle with!)
The papers here are all from My Mind’s Eye; it’s my favorite of MME’s lines, and I’m so sad that I think it’s going away 
I may need to hoard a couple 6x6s for when I need a fix in the future! All the papers go so nicely together, and each paper combo gives a totally different look!
Copic colors: E33, E15, E37, E29, R46
And now…your video! For my smart device readers who might not be able to see videos embedded: Click here for the video.
Hero Arts House: Summer Tutorial [video]
Happy Monday, everyone! I’ve got a pretty special week planned here on my blog…I’ve wanted to do this for ages, and have finally gotten around to it: finding more ways to use the Hero Arts Right at Home set, particularly the house! Lots of you have asked me over the last 6 months to do more tuts on how the heck to color it, so….better late than never, right? (New stamp sets are in progress right now – as soon as I get some in my hands I’ll get busy on tutorials sooner!)
So since we’re still in summer, it’s time to go to the beach! I went for a whitewashed beach house, right on the waterfront – I went to Nags Head years back and this scene reminds me of the house that some friends and I had rented for that vacation. Maybe there’s not enough of the beach grasses here, but…well ya know 
Copic colors for whitewashed house: C2, E00, E000; shadows C3, C1, C0; doors E31; windows B21.
I had particular fun with the ribbon embellishment; there’s so much going on I wanted it to add to the design, not overpower it, and I think it works pretty well! The May Arts jute cord strikes just the right tone for the beach.
Here’s the video tutorial….I kept it short, just showing you the most interesting bits. After you watch (and like!)—- go get beachy!
All Tied Up in Twine
Hello everyone! This month’s challenge over at Oozak is bright colors! I combined it with a special treat…an exploration of TWINE! Some friends and I got together last year and bought a hugeamongous batch of twine together and each one got several yards of every color…and I’ve been working at ways to use it up. (That was a LOT of twine!) When Oozak owner Rusty asked if I had some twine ideas—-well, I got busy! Check out the video for the twine how-tos, and I’ll talk more about the cards in the text and photos below as well.
In addition to the twine, I also highlighted some cute images by Some Odd Girl – Rusty’s got a great collection of them in his store, too. They’re SO much fun to color, lots of big spaces to color in! This is Tobie and his puppy….and I made him a little more ethnic than usual. Copic colors: E35 B99 B97 BG23 Black100 C7 YR23 Y21 R20
This is a SOG stamp too, but one of the embellishments with the Tia in Stitches set – the spool totally inspired me! And hey look – a CAS card. Imagine that! Copic colors: B18 B28
This one has no stamping….but what FUN! I’ve seen people do small embellishments with circles of twine, but I decided to go BIG! lol. Had to add some May Arts to it too, of course ;0)
This one isn’t exactly bright colors, but it’s sure merry and bright! Tree Trimmin Kaylee is decorating her tree with peppermints instead of ornaments (the original stamp has an ornament in her hand!). I kinda like peppermints better! Copic colors: E53, E51, YR23, Y02, Y08, R59 R29
Here’s another with Tia in Stitches – and that cute little grid. It was a lot of work but worth it for a super special card for one of our heroes to send to their sweet little girl! I love that the heartstrings sentiment goes so perfectly with the twine, too. Copic colors: E53 E51 B97 B99 E79 E37 E35 RV14 RV06 Y17
God’s Love….Criss Cross Bow Tutorial
A blessed Sunday to you all! I’ve got another simple bow for you today…and I’m gonna call this one SVCAS. Maybe that’s a stretch…but it is what it is, peeps!
This card uses a stamp I borrowed when at an LSS – I wanted to use it for background paper sometime so had stamped a bunch. Not a clue who makes it! Nor the sentiment, that was from ages back, way before the days when I thought it was even remotely important to know who made what. LOL. Nonetheless – it’s the ribbon I want to talk about here.
First step is laying down adhesive for the cross piece of the ribbon on the panel it’s attached to. Before laying down the long one though, lay the piece you’ll make the criss cross bow from. That way it’ll be attached and stay put! If you want banner flares on the ends, you might try cutting them now, it could get harder later.
Then fold over one side, and put a little adhesive under it; I recommend a little ScorTape or a glue dot, you won’t want liquid adhesive, and you also want something that will really stick.
Fold over side two, attach the same way.
Using a piercer (I have no idea why Tonic calls it a craft pick. lol), make a hole for the brad. Holepunches may go through some ribbon, but not this yummy May Arts satin.
And you’re done! Attach the panel to your card and you’re done. It’s a good flat technique, just make sure you don’t use supergiant thick brads or you defeat the purpose of a flat bow.
Did you see this week’s vlog yet? They’re baaaack, at least for now – I’ve had a couple topical videos to make by special-request of one of our partners
And now for that candy I’ve been taunting you about!
Tonight I’m going to go through all my blog comments since the hop, and do a random.org to pick a winner for a BIG YUMMY BAG OF RIBBON! It’ll be mostly May Arts – though I might include some others too. I’m trying to wrangle my way out of a ribbonfest around here, and want to give away goodies to one of my faithful followers! You can go through the week’s posts today if you’d like, though it was a lot easier doing it throughout the week – subscribe and you’ll get notified of my new daily posts – and when there’s more candy Stay tuned for the winner to be posted tomorrow…it’ll make someone’s Monday a GOOD DAY!
Oozak Challenge and tutorial video
This month I’m the hostess for the Oozak Challenge….and I’m so stoked! I created this video for it after a conversation with some friends – we laughed about how much we once thought we would save by making our own Christmas cards. (Ha!)
I stressed so much over this card, believe it or not! I wanted to start off right with Oozak I made it several times, with different papers, etc.. Copic colors are: B00 and B0000 for the background; I colored it first so as not to drag any of the other colors out into the blue area. Flesh: E53, E00 and a little E0000, and his feet have a little YR61 and RV10 in them; Greys are W5, W3, W1; Basket is colored with E57, E15, E35, and the hearts have R59 for the shadows, and R46 and R17 for the rest.
I punched the heart out and trimmed it down, adding the sentiment from Hero Arts to it (just half of the XOXO sentiment), and created my own embellishment out of it! Last touch was Glossy Accents….since I’m a messy crafter, I leave the wet things for very last so I don’t dare touch them while working on something else on the card!
Let me know if this type of product linking is helpful for you…I’m hoping it helps me keep things straight and enable you as much as you desire!
Art Impressions + May Arts with tutorial
Okeydokey, I came up with something to do with these penguins! I wanted a simple ribbon use; they’re such darling penguins, I wanted the card to stay fairly simple, so the image would truly be the hero here. The coloring tutorial is in Sunday’s Memorial Day coloring (see the post here with the video in it)…Copic colors are:
I went with a simple white background so I could play around with a ribbon embellishment – on complex paper this could get crazy. Solid seems to work well to let the ribbon work show. Wondering how I got it even? I used a scrap punched piece of paper as a guide! I first did the row shown here – I made a mark in every other opening. After punching that row, I moved the scrap to a new location and made marks for the other row of holes. Easy peasy!
Here’s what the back side looks like after threading the ribbon through it…
And a closeup of the front, with a brad added on one side.
It’s a super easy technique once you figure out your method for making the holes even; my method is what was at hand, but rulers work great too! Thread it the opposite way (front/back), and you can have the x’s on front. (That seemed too girlish for a card that might possibly go to a guy. And I’m always up for leaving gender neutral cards as is when I can! Hope you enjoyed this…come on back tomorrow, more ribbon fun ahead!
Penny Black Love
Happy Tuesday! I hope you enjoyed the long weekend I’m back and continuing with the week of ribbon love….remember to keep coming back for more I’m always asked about new ways to use ribbon, so I’m having fun coming up with ways this week.
First things first: I picked a winner from the bloghop! And it is….
Kay: What a great way to use up that ribbon I have hoarded…umm….i mean, collected… Love this hop for all the inspiration but you are so right about it being hard on the wallet!
Kay, send me an email (my little contact form at the top) and I’ll get your stamps out to ya…or if you have them already let me know and we’ll find something else you need
Today’s card has a darling Penny Black puppy that was colored in the livestream on Sunday (see yesterday’s post); and if you didn’t hear me mention it, all Penny Black stamps are on sale at Oozak through the rest of today, I think! (I never know when companies say “from this date to this date” if they mean “through.”) Copic colors: B12, B0000; E37, E35, E33, E57, E51; BG96, R37, R29, R35. Papers are by BoBunny (polkadots) and Studio Calico (hearts in the wood grain).
And of course the ribbon is by May Arts! The piece on the left is adhered with ScorTape; I punched 2 holes in the right hand side of the image and threaded one piece of ribbon through both, and trimmed the ends as banners.
Memorial Day
Happy Monday – and happy day off work! I always wish that this were truly a happy day though. I know that for too many families, today is just. plain. hard. While others flippantly celebrate as if it’s a happy day (the fireworks started this weekend – geesh), there are those who have lost a loved one and just feel pain today. If that’s you…I am so sorry for your loss.
I’ve been watching AMC a lot this week, well at least during a little down time here and there. They’ve had “war movie week” going on, and watching so many war flicks has brought home a little more of what our heroes go through. Even if it’s Hollywood, there’s truth behind those movies. My plan for today is mostly serving our heroes…working on packing boxes, making a few cards, and perhaps serving my neighborhood by killing off a few weeds.
My card for you today is the one I began in the bonus LiveStream yesterday. It’s an image from Hero Arts; I don’t find it on their website, but there’s one very similar to it that I linked to in the product linkies in the doobliedoo. Copic colors are R59, R29, R37, RV13, RV02. I wrestled with the outer edge of the flower and ended up going with orange YR68. White just ended up too stark. I added a little pearl pen into the center of the flower. The paper here is one I picked up while in Puerto Rico, and it’s made by American Crafts – strips of crepe paper. Very cool stuff I’ve been hoarding, and decided Memorial Day is a good reason to break it out! Unfortunately I didn’t find anywhere online to hook you up…but if you ever hit Puerto Rico, I’ve got a craft store for ya
The ribbon on this is a simple ribbon candy fold – I laid down strips of ScorTape across the top of the card first, and laid the ribbon down with the flared edge first. I pressed it down only a short distance til the left side of the rightmost fold, and placed a gluedot under where I wanted to fold it back onto itself. Then I did the same thing with the other two, and wrapped the edge of the ribbon behind the cardfront. I added a button punched with a MS punch and a little twine. The verse is in the same Firecracker set used here.
Here’s the video with the coloring tutorial….it’s a rough one, a crazy live experiment of course – but you can see the coloring of the flower in it:
Tutorial: Coloring the new Ciara Camouflage stamp
Did you SEE it? The brand new Ciara stamp in the Stampers Best store??? Oh wow am I excited…..she was cute as digis but in real live stampable red rubber? UhMAZING!
I figured lots of folks are going to be asking about how to color her, and especially the camouflage – so I made a coloring video; see the colors used listed below. Go order your stamp, then come back here and color along!
Copic colors:
- Ciara’s fur: E35, E53, and go over it all with Y21
- Camouflage: Color the whole thing with E31; then fill in patches with greens you have (some can be greys too). In the video I used BG98, Y28, YG63, and G99….generally I use whatever greens and browns are at hand. It’s the overall effect you’re going for, so use what you have.
As for my cards for today – the one that is on the Stars and Stamps blog for the Make em Laugh bloghop…I used Graphic 45 papers, Sizzix circle dies, a sentiment by My Favorite Things (from a set with bunnies…it no longer seems to be available in their store).
And my card for this blog today is doggone cute, just like my lil Ciara! Tomorrow’s her birthday by the way…I’m going to attempt to make a SVCAS card with this stamp, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold back! To see if I can get overembellishing out of the way, this card sports some papers from an Authentique 6×6, the “Loyal” collection. Paper and real buttons, sewing, distressing, sandpaper, stickers and thickers, twine…you name it, it’s here! Yep, went just a little nuts I actually stitched in a circle – agh. Not well, so I turned it into a shabby chic look to make my messes look purposeful.
The sentiment is made with circle stickers from MME, and the cute is Thicker stickers; they were originally natural chipboard color, and I made them brown with Copics. That wasn’t showing up too well on the card, though, so I peeled them off, edded them to the blue Authentique paper, and trimmed them out to readhere.
Tutorial: Ethnic skin coloring (Copics)
By popular demand – finally – another Copic tutorial! My apologies for the color on the videotaped portion, it’s pretty dark. One day I’ll get a real camera and lighting worked out. (After I hit the lottery, lol!) I chose to use images from The Greeting Farm – they’re so awesome for practicing your coloring!
Recent Comments