So very loved.

This month's Fan Club Gallery over at Splitcoaststampers is a beautiful tribute to a very sweet lady. Ten years ago, long before papercrafting tutorials were commonplace, Beate Johns started creating them for Splitcoaststampers. In February of 2004, these tutorials became the beginning of Splitcoast's free tutorial and resource section. Now, ten years, more than 500 tutorials and nearly 400 Weekly Inkling newsletters later, Beate is retiring from her job here at Splitcoast. It's been a huge honor to work with such an incredibly talented artist and friend, and we will miss her very, very much.

If you read the news article on the Splitcoast home page, you might have caught another announcement... did you see? Beginning on January 1st, I will be officially joining the Splitcoast team as Artist in Residence. I've been training with Beate for a few weeks already and I'm very excited to get started!

This card reminds me of Beate in so many ways! The layout was inspired by one of her sketches... she used the same Whiff of Joy stamp in THIS blog post... she shared a tutorial HERE on the coloring technique I used (pencil shading on an alcohol marker base)... and she showed me how to input new tutorials at Splitcoast using MY tutorial for the background technique on the rose panel - that's coming  January 1st!

Henry Mouse is colored with Polychromos Pencils and Touch Twin Markers - I love that technique and use it quite often... the markers are great for an even base of color, and I love the texture and gradient of pencil coloring.  Here's a close-up of the background - can't wait to share that technique with you! Easy and so much fun. That stamp and the sentiment are from Impression Obsession.

Beate - you are so very loved! Thank you for inspiring so many. xo

Bless You!

If you're a Fan Club member over at Splitcoaststampers, you know that the new Dirty Dozen gallery posts today at Noon Central! I made a card to go along with the new theme, using last week's sketch (SC366).

This image is from Whiff of Joy - isn't Henry the Mouse soooooooo cute? Thankfully I have been able to avoid the things that make me sneeze for several weeks here (YAY!!) but I definitely know his sniffly sneezy feeling. I sent him off to encourage a friend who's been having some allergy problems. :)Just a tip: sometimes I don't like a dark outline on my stamped images - for this one I used Memento Rich Cocoa ink, but I stamped it off once first before stamping.

These are the Touch Twin Markers that I used... I used a waterbrush filled with rubbing alcohol to color outside the image (tutorial here):Hope you're having a great weekend!