Mojo Sketch and a quick background tutorial

I should have had this ready yesterday as I am having an unexpected vacation, instead I started ripping the house apart. Everything has moved and all are being tortured as they try to find things. love it!. So while I was doing this I thought I'd show you a quick background. Here's my card and the sketch.


Take your card stock and rub chalk into it with a cotton ball adding as many colors as you like. Fill in your piece.

Now take a straight edge and run the eraser down whatever you are using forming white lines. Make these lines go in all directions and add as many as you want.

You'll end up with something that looks like this. Spray it with a sealer. This Krylon Fixatif is excellent because you can stamp on it.

Now you can stamp on your background. Here I used SU stamp set "Playful Petals". I stamped the larger flower several times colored and cut them out in different sections and layered them. Colored part of the background also using Metallic pencils.

A much better start to the week

The black cloud has moved on and I am right on time this week with the Mojo Monday Sketch. I used a Spellbinders die for the shovel and sand bucket and a Cuttlebug Die for the other embellishments. The Stamped tag was given to me. I liked this sketch as soon as I saw it. Lots of possibilities with this one.


Here are a few cards I made Sunday.The Stained glass fish is from I Brake for Stamps. The Sand Castle and shells are a Spellbinders die. They are chalked. I framed the fish with a glossy black oval.

This last card is a Spellbinders Edgebilities. I stamped the Happy Birthday on acetate and attached it to a pastel paper with V2 Vellum spray adhesive and then attached that to the inside of the opening. Added the extra roses and some Dazzling Diamond Dust.

Copic versus Adirondack refillable pens

Back in Feb. I pre ordered the new Adirondack refillable alcohol pens. They came about 2 weeks ago but I hadn't looked at them till now. Here's a picture with one up against a copic.


Can you imagine how much space these are going to take up!!! They are bigger around than those big chunky crayons for kids. They stressed do not overfill. So I stressed. How do you know how much is too much. Put some in then put more in and then more again. Tip was full of ink so went to coloring and it was dry after a few strokes. I'm sure it's me and I will continue to play with them and figure this out. I bought 6 but will not buy anymore. Tooooo big around and toooo big to store as far as I am concerned.
I also had ordered some of the new Alcohol ink colors. Those I love and I went right to stomping with them first thing this morning.



So with that done I went to coloring in some images I just bought from I Brake for Stamps with both of the alcohol markers. What I found out is you can't use alcohol markers with embossing. It smears it.

See it. This was using detail black. So I went to another embossing powder I bought awhile back at Michaels. It has glitter in it. Smeared also but not as bad. The orange on the fishes head is the new Sunset Orange alcohol ink. See how drab and dry it looks. Not sold on those markers at all.

So with all my coloring done I went to work. The burn is on the inside of my arm so all of this was very trying. Needed lots of padding to rest my arm on the desk. This rose image I got in a swap and decided to try what I saw on a blog to color it with Copics. You first put the darkest color where the darker areas would be. Then go to the next color and blend bringing the color out just a little farther and then repeat with a third color. Don't color to the edge. Take your blender pen and drag some of the color out to the edge. This was not working until I turned the pen over and used the chisel edge. Perfect!!



Here's a color combination that is not ME but it turned out well I think. This is the new Peach Bellini alcohol ink and Slate. Layered it on black, blush and grey SU card stock. The white square is from a Cuttlebug die I bought a long time ago but never use. Must remember to bring it out more and use it. Stamp is from I Brake for Stamps. I also used Versa Mark to stamp the image around the edges.


Last card is similar to the one I made the other day. Using the other half of my technique scrap and another I Brake for Stamp image. Layered that on top of 2 other technique scraps made with the same colors. Well I've enjoyed my afternoon. Temperature feels like 190 instead of 90. Hot flashes!!! Who dreamed these things up?? I'm going to continue to play here until family gets home. Then we will be watching. Marley and Me. Everyone have a wonderful Mothers Day.

Bad week but I finally found my Mojo

Bad bad bad week. Lots of wallowing in self pity and crying for days. Then I was told the devil was having a good time playing with me. That woke me up.I said you are right but he's not going to get me. So no more whining. Last night I sat down and did not go to bed until I got my Monday Mojo sketch done. I ended up with 2 cards. The first one uses my new SU paper that just came in the mail along with a new Inkadinkado owl. Pretty spring colors. It got the thumbs up from daughter as she walked by.




The other one uses more of that SU paper and a new stamp from I Brake for Stamps. It's from the Stampin Back line. I used a piece of a background I had made. My favorite kind of background. The Smooshing kind. This stamp was perfect. I had been wanting a few solid type stamps for just this purpose. I Brake for Stamps was my enabler for this. They had several flower ones and now I have them.


Well thank goodness it's Friday. I am going to play all day tomorrow to make up for my lack of creativity this week. And next week has to be better!!

a great week end

I had another play day Saturday. Husband and daughter were both at work so I took advantage of the time and did all my swaps for May for all of my groups. Going into the mail this morning. Yeah!! So then I started to clear off my desk and put things away. Came across a few images I colored and some Grunge board bugs I put out so I would use sooooooooo I used them. This first card is made from a Zindorf tutorial if any of you follow her blog you probably saw it. This is done completely by swiping ink pads across the paper to make the background. Stamped the tree and added white gel pen here and there. Little Grunge butterfly I inked up with a dauber.



Then I did the soda can experiment with my punches. I have a hard time punching SU paper with my Martha Stewart border punch. Couldn't punch the can with it either but I had a bunch of wallpaper scraps on my desk from envelope making and liked how this particular one looked punched. Added a water colored sunflower from I Brake for Stamps and another inked Grunge butterfly.



I colored images as I came across them mixed in with all my papers. Some with Copics and some with my pencils and Gamsol. I really think I prefer the pencil and Gamsol look to Copics. I even did some with both and I colored over the pencils with the Copics. I'll have to show you that combination when I get a card made. I then found a Sunflower cut out so inked that up, put it together and added a Grunge dragonfly. I colored him with glitter pens so he sparkles. And now it's back to work.

Mojo Sketch time again

I really wanted to do this last night but I sat down and did something I haven't done in eons. I knitted. When I was visiting my son and daughter in law I noticed all her dish cloths were hand made. It just so happens I was going to do this a few years ago for myself and had the booklet and yarn for the project so out it came. Have 2 done so far. Going to make a few more and then send them off to her. Hope she will like them. Now for my sketch. I used a new Inkadinkado stamp I had colored with pencils and embellished with white liquid pearl. The paper is a double sided card stock I got in a swap. The colors matched perfectly. Some pretty pink pearls, a SU punched scalloped circle finished it off. Now I need to get busy because the supply of colored images in my basket is dwindling.

2 Sketches this week

Spring Break is over and I am back to work and have been very busy making Robin's Graduation announcements. I want to mail them Monday. I also am working on matching Thank you cards for her. But I took time to work on 2 sketches today. The first one is the Mojo Monday sketch. This sketch is for a square card. I searched through my basket and found this Shadow stamped edge I had made with a SU stamp. I used the scalloped edge punch to finish it off. Not sure about the little daisy stamp. It is an image I have had laying around for quite some time and it was the only one I had that was the right size. The Butterflies I punched out of a scrap of webbed card stock.




Then I have been participating on a Cuttlebug group. Besides following the sketch you must Cuttlebug something on the card. Again I looked for an image that would work with something I already had Cuttlebugged. Found the leaves I made just recently. I also ran the top piece of paper through in a folder.




This last card I have been working on for days. I'm not really into big bows but I was trying to make something a little different then my usual. One of my favorite blogs is Amazing Paper Grace. She always has these great bows on her cards. So I gave it a try but it took me days trying to figure out what I needed on the card with that bow. It is finally finished. I'm putting it away before I have a chance to do something else to it.