Worn Shoes Birthday

Cheerio on a sunny Thursday afternoon and welcome to 2 lovely new followers:
Nadine of My Scrap'n'Stuff and Nancy of What's on My Kitchen Counter.  Please take a visit & tell these talented bloggers that I sent you to say Hi, and just enjoy a good browse around their blogs. It will be a fun visit I can assure you.

Before I share today's card, let me say that I enjoyed the free workshop by a Silhouette rep sponsored by our local Scrapbook Creations. I'm not very advanced with my usage of the Silhouette Cameo that lives here, but one exciting thing I learned that I want to pass along. Silhouette has a new kind of mat (PixScan) that allows the user to place a 12x12 cardstock on the mat - stamp an image, photo the image either with a digital camera or your smartphone, upload to the silhouette software, and then have the Cameo cut it out. No more fussy cutting. I want to learn to do this! Here's a picture of the mat & I hope I'm not violating any copyright laws with sharing this picture! This mat differs from the regular cutting mat because it has registry markings on it. (I hope I've relayed this information correctly, but I'm sure the Silhouette website has better information on this mat. It's not very expensive either to save a lot of fussy cutting!). I saw the rep do the stamping - then upload and cut out the stamped image, so now just gotta learn myself.

Today's card was done with the Polychromos pencils that I'm trying to learn how to use. I think the pencils worked better for me on this one, but the image was so detailed, I kept to just a neutral palette of colors (beiges, tans & some greens). I tried to go very lightly with the pencil strokes and get the intensity by repeated layers, and not going too hard with the pencil strokes.

- Impression Obsession Worn Shoes, by Gary Robertson, one of my favorite IO artists. Stamped with Versafine Sepia ink, since it was such a detailed stamp. Thought the Sepia would work better with the theme of the image, rather than a harder look with black Versafine.

- colored with Polychromos pencils, distressed with DI Frayed Burlap around the edges after taking the distressing tool around the edges of the trimmed out image.

- mats are snippets of black, gold and green from the snippets box. All underlying areas were removed with a deckled S/B rectangle. The cardbase is kraft.

- Cheery Lynn sentiment die was cut 3 times from a snippet of natural c/s that was the back piece of an old recycled card. Colored with Copics to pick up the tones in the card, then glued together for dimension, and some Glossy Accents added. I'm on the hunt for some less fancy family word dies. This script is not particularly appropriate with the subject matter of the image, but it's the only one I have. As my friend told me yesterday, I _could_ cut out this type of thing on my Silhouette, if I but would!

Woo-Hoo..Just did a quick check and Lil Parsnip is still waiting by the Snippets Playground to let in any latecomers. Since he's a cute little bear-type of fella, I want to go give him a big ole hug, & as there's some snippety bits on this one, I think he'll let me in. C'mon along, if you have time. I KNOW you must have some snippets to use on a card & play with the Snippeteers for Week 139.

Now I must be away to visit some Rudolph Day cards and then back to see some lovely Snippets Playground cards...so off I go. Thanks for stopping in to say Hi. Big Hugs.

Impression Obsession Watercan

Hello friends & thanks for visiting this afternoon. Have you ever colored an image, thought it looked ok, then begin to turn it into a card, and one thing after another just doesn't 'look right'? And each additional thing you try, doesn't work any better? Well today's card is just one of those for me. Here it is:

- Impression Obsession cling red rubber, which stamped out crisply, colored up easily. I was happy up to this point.

- die cut & dry embossed with S/B Labels 38, (still happy!) ----- then it went downhill from that point, when I decided to add a little vintage touch with DI tea dye & pumice sponging. The image was still in the die; thought it was placed properly & got one edge done ok. Then the die must have slipped without my notice as I kept going around the edges with the sponge applicator. When I lifted the die, to reveal the white 'frame' that should show around the edges, some of that frame obviously wasn't even. So how to fix it? Well, sponge the whole thing to the very edge, right? That didn't look appealing, so then out comes this distress tool thing-y, which I scrape around the edges. Then comes decisions as to mat & card base colors. Should it be cream mat with kraft base card, or vice versa?You can see what I chose, and I didn't like this combination either way I tried it. Other color combos didn't look any better to my very discouraged eyes.

- Elizabeth Craft Hello sentiment die, done from 3 layers of a snippet of Dylusions sprayed paper that had been cluttering up the desk. I was ok with that. The thought of burlap occurred to me, so went rummaging around the ribbon box, dragged out this open weave pattern. Not all that great, but better than some other pieces I tried. Off to the button box, and found 3 old buttons. After the buttons, I called it quits! Not sure if this one will ever get mailed, but dang it, I had worked hard on that coloring, and I was pure disgusted with this wart!!!

So thanks for stopping by, letting me vent a little bit, and I hope you can laugh along with all my mistakes on this one. I trust I'm not the only one this ever happens to! Many hugs. Come again soon.

Edit: Some sweet blogger just reminded me this has a butterfly and can fly over to Mrs. A's Butterfly Challenge. So it's jumping over the pond to join in with the Summertime Butterfly Theme. Thank you sweet person, who knows who you are!!!

Friday Fun Day Challenge #26

Hi and welcome to another Friday Fun Day at Jo's Scrap Shack, where our sponsor for Challenge #26 is Fitztown Digi Stamps.  I chose Wild #8 (here) to use on the card for today's Anything Goes theme.

- Wild #8 was colored with copics using a snippet of Copic Xpress paper. Used BG0000 as a base color. Chose various earth shades for the brownish fur tones, then started adding in some warm grays. Changed to cool grays where I thought those would look better. Printed out a color photo of a wolf to see as I colored. Used some Silver Star gelly pen around in places just for a little sparkle - and oh yes, on his icy blue eyes.

- Die cut image with a S/B deckled oval, and smudged DI Iced Spruce around the edges. Used  BV0000 to shade the image background, switching to BV01 for the shadow around his head.