World Card Making Day 2019 - Trying to get Christmas cards done!

Running a small business has left me with little time for card making of late - you can see my last blog post was way back in June - but at the end of September I took the time to go to another of Faye's colouring classes as it gives me the opportunity to a) get out of the house on my own; b) colour in peace and quiet and c) learn from an expert. I'll share my colouring when I've finished them off and made a card from the images!

I took some of my hard earned cash from my Etsy shop and made the most of  Dies to Die For being there by having a good rummage. I decided upon two stamp sets for Christmas cards. I've been feeling a need to colour some Christmas cards and get a bit ahead of myself. Plus Lisa told me she's already made 20 so I know I need to catch up!! Lol!

I love Stamping Bella images and this polar bear is just adorable. I decided to try a technique I did a couple of years ago after watching Elaine Hughes' video on how to colour the Northern Lights. You can tell I need a lot of practice, but I really enjoyed myself with my markers. I'm getting to that stage where I need refills now though!

I started with the bear and stamped him out onto some Make It Colour! card and coloured him in with E41, 42 and 43 with R81, 83, 85 and a bit of RV34 for his scar. I love that I can use the colouring on the stamp packet for inspiration. Oh and the picture has bleached out the colouring I did for a shadow to ground him. He isn't just floating I promise you!

I then decided to cut him out for some reason. Don't you love how cards evolve? I didn't really need to!

But anyway, I took another piece of Make It Colour! card and got colouring. It took me a fair amount of time to get anywhere near a decent blend and it still looks fairly messy to me, but I cut it to the size of a C6 card and stuck it on. I then trimmed the bear piece to fit on the bottom and popped him up on foam pads - well actually, it was the left over bits around a pack of foam circles. Always reusing and not wasting!

I feel pretty good I was inspired to try this again. It had been a long day on a school trip with 60 eight year olds (they were all excellent) and my brain needed something creative to do just not sewing....

Happy World Card Making Day! Hoping to get inspired to do some more very soon so I'm not rushing in November like always. Happy Crafting Everyone!

Crazy Chicks and Starry Skies - Colouring With Faye

A couple of weeks ago I did another colouring class with Faye Wynn-Jones. I officially finished my European Copic Colouring Programme earlier in the year and you can read all about my exploits in my earlier blog posts on ECCP 1 & 2, ECCP 3, ECCP 4, but I really benefit from the classes, so when the Crazy Chicks and the Starry Skies classes came up, I had to do them. Especially as the location had now changed to the next town over from me :)

These are two of the shorter classes and were in the afternoon, which was a little odd, but nice as Jen came round to the house for lunch first and drove us both to the venue, where we met up with a lot of the usual crowd, including Dawn.

Both classes were a lot of fun and as always having the shop next to it makes for a nice relaxed atmosphere where you are drawn to purchase things.... of course I did, despite telling myself I didn't need anything!

Crazy Chicks is all about colouring the Stamping Bella chicks as other birds like penguins and robins. This is so much fun! Jen then went off and coloured them as blue tits. It just shows you what you can do with a bit of imagination and some Copics. I learnt a lot about the colours to use for black - we used BV a lot for the penguins - and blending techniques that made the robins look very odd to start with, but with patience (not that I have a lot of that!), it all comes good.

Starry Skies is all about creating, well, starry skies and we coloured in this Gerda Steiner penguin with a very dark blue background behind him with snowflakes. This uses the colourless blender and the white gel pen. I think it would also look great with some Spica pens too. 

Had a great time as always, and I'm hoping Faye will be back up north with another class next year. There is talk of Copic backgrounds which would be a fabulous technique to have. These classes always inspire me to break out my Copics and try new things. I highly recommend!

Thanks for stopping by, see you again soon. Happy crafting! :)