Strength for Today

 Jeanne invited me to make a sample for her Dare To Get Dirty challenge over at Splitcoaststampers! Dare To Get Dirty is a week-long series of challenges for our Fan Club members.

I thought it would be fun to make a sunset for this ocean scene using my Touch Twin Markers! I have a tutorial written up for this technique, which you can view by clicking HERE. I used blender paper on this project, which is a clay-coated paper. Glossy cardstock will work as well.

These are the Touch Twin Markers that I used:

... and this is what my tile looked like before I spritzed it with rubbing alcohol, so you can get an idea of the gradient:

The stamps and die that I used are new releases this month from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps. The sentiment is from a set I designed, called Bridge of Hope.

 If you're a Fan Club member, I'd love for you to play along with us over at Splitcoast!!

I'd like to enter my card in Oozak's monthly challenge, too! The challenge is to use bright colors.

Thanks for visiting me today!!

A Whiter Shade of Home

Just wanted to share one of my favorite cards from yesterday's challenges at Dare To Get Dirty! Dare To Get Dirty is a week of fun challenges presented to Splitcoaststampers' Fan Club members by current and former Dirty Dozen design team members. The challenges range from color combinations to themed cards or supply challenges - all for fun, and prizes donated by our member companies!

I created a scene using die cuts from Quickutz (bicycle and border on roof), Impression Obsession (fence, tree, door, house), Spellbinders (tag), and Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps (flowers and clouds). The sentiment is also from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps and reads "Peace be unto you."

The bicycle die is part of one of Quickutz's country collections - Denmark, I think... I may have possibly bought the whole set mostly just for the bicycle...

Speaking of Quickutz, I usually buy my Quickutz dies from Creating Everlasting Memories on ebay - they have a really wide selection, and frequent awesome sales.

Impression Obsession will be releasing a ton of new dies ve-r-r-r-r-r-r-y soon - I am super excited about them, and can't wait to show you the ones I designed!

Now that I'm finally adjusted to the 15 hour time difference... I have a flu bug. Ha! Trying to get homeschool books in order and other materials off to the copy shop so that we can get started on time. Students are rolling in this week and we are expecting as many as 60, which is 19 more than we had last year - they are frantically trying to make the newly-constructed-but-not-finished-yet dorm liveable enough for a few families and singles. For now, some newlywed couples are having to double up in 2-bedroom apartments, and I can't imagine that's comfortable!

Hope you had a great weekend! 

Nest Collage Spotlight

Here's another one of my CHA catalog samples, using the Nest Collage image. I used a white Twinchie Square from Inchie Arts to highlight one portion of the image, then sponged the edges with sand and black ink to soften the contrast. I love how these matteboard squares take color! Love.

The background is stamped with 2 Cover-a-Card stamps (Ticking and Rolling Waves) then covered with Amber Clay ink (Colorbox Fluid Chalk).

I used Touch Twin Markers to customize my black cardstock layers and my adhesive pearls! Handy things, those alcohol markers!

TTC22 - Inspiration Challenge

There's a new challenge up at the Touch Twin Markers & More Challenge blog - this time we're using our markers to create projects based on the inspiration picture below. We hope you'll join the fun!

I used the colors of the top pillow for my inspiration, and an image from Impression Obsession called Pretty Potted Peonies.

  I was also testing out Shinhan's marker paper - I am used to coloring on cardstock, but enjoyed using this marker paper too. I colored with a light hand and the colors blended with very little effort. The paper is very light weight (around 20#), and more often used by illustrators, and architects because it's thin enough to trace through.  The paper comes in a tape-bound pad (20 sheets) - it is pH neutral, and specially coated to be bleed proof and feather resistant. You can see how much ink this piece is holding - and no ink bled through to the surface I was coloring on. Here's the front of my piece:

...and here's the back:

Looks like Jerry's Artarama has these pads on sale, if you're interested in trying them out.

You can visit the Touch Twin Markers & More Challenge blog for all the challenge details if you'd like to play! Don't have a blog? That's OK. Just post to any online gallery with the keywords TTC22 and touchtwin. Have fun!

Home... ♥

Just a quick note to let you know we made it home safely! We had a seamless flight despite delays. We were traveling with quite a bit of extra baggage... and amazingly we were able to avoid import tax and customs charges (it helped that the porters knew who we were and were on our side... really we're only allowed $1000 worth of 'stuff' for our entire family, and you can imagine with clothes and school books, not to mention "my stuff", that we were just slightly over...)

Here's our mountain of luggage at the SF airport... 18 pieces... 900 pounds... really?

My heart was really torn this last week, as our travels coincided with the CHA Summer show in Chicago, where my stamp line was debuting in the Impression Obsession booth. Mitra posted this picture on Facebook so I could see, and I'm proud to be able to share it with you! I'm so excited about this new role with IO.

We arrived home Friday and I've been working since then to unpack the things we had stored away along with the things we brought home with us (someone was staying in our house, but I had put some things away, and other things had been moved around) - I think my kitchen is functional again and my studio is mostly put back together and looking very inviting at the moment...! I have some fun fun fun surprises to work on for August... can't wait to share those with you! Slowly getting used to the time difference... I managed to sleep until 3 this morning, so that was progress.

One more week until our annual Dare to Get Dirty challenge spree - if you are a Fan Club Member over at Splitcoaststampers, we would so love for you to come and join us!  We are spreading the fun over 7 whole days, with 5 challenges a day brought to you by current and former Dirty Dozen design team members known as the Dirty Girls. You can click on the blinkie above for more information!

Thanks to those of you who follow our ministry and my design work, and are always encouraging me! 

Impression Obsession CHA peek #5

The Impression Obsession team is showcasing some new images being introduced this week at CHA! You can visit the I.O. Blog each day this week for links to the previews. Be sure to leave a comment on each designer's posts throughout the week for a chance to win a gift certificate from Impression Obsession!

This is one of Gail Green's new images called Snow Couple with Birds - this snowman couple is so sweet, and really fun to color! I love the look of it in a light grey ink - it really makes the coloring pop. I colored the image with my Touch Twin Markers and the colors I used are below. I used the Herringbone Cover-a-Card stamp for my background panel, and added some scored diagonal lines with my Scor-Buddy.

Today is the last day of our blog hop - we hope you've enjoyed the projects we have shared with you! If you have been with us and commented on each of our posts this whole week, you're qualified for an extra gift certificate drawing - our winners will be announced over on the IO blog, so be sure to check back to see if you have won. Thank you for your encouragement and support all week!!