Archives for November 2021

Christmas Sentiments for Cardmaking

Hello and Happy Monday! I’ve been away for the holidays and didn’t schedule any posts so I apologize for the silence. I had a lovely time with my family and ate more than my fair share of food. But then again, that holiday pretty much endorses overconsumption. 😉

The winter holidays are fast approaching and I have managed to miss the deadline for creating products geared specifically for the holidays for my shop. Since re-opening my Etsy shop in April, I had thought about the timeline I would need to keep to meet the winter holiday selling opportunities. However, as a one-person enterprise, I wear many hats while having a family that always keeps me happy and preoccupied so I missed that window. I would have had to have my holiday merch up by end of October at the latest. So some hard truths had to be told and I had to pivot. I will spend the winter months making products but this time, I will include batches of holiday products for next year. Because I have to tell you, I don’t like to work on winter products in the warm months. It’s just me, I like to work the season. But the retail schedule says otherwise and so I find myself in this predicament.

All that said, I will be including some of the winter products I will be working on for next year in my updates as well as the less seasonal products. Today I did some mass production work stamping Christmas sentiments and then die cutting them. So they are ready to go for any cards I make. I love doing this because it helps to streamline the cardmaking process and that is something I am constantly seeking. Plus I love seeing them all laid out on my table. It makes me happy!

I absolutely adore the mix of fonts used for these sentiments. I look forward to creating the cards that can accompany these beauties.

Have a lovely Monday!

Good Morning Monday – More coloring

Ok, so it isn’t exactly morning. I had a few things to do this morning so I didn’t get a chance to write and push this post live until now. Let’s pretend that it’s still morning! I had a really nice visit with my sister this weekend and I managed to complete two coloring pages while crafting with some of my girlfriends on Saturday.

The first one is from that color by number book, Christmas by Creative Haven. The artist is George Toufexis and this will not be the last of his books I buy. I really enjoy the carefree coloring when the colors are all selected for me and the images are beautiful. It was quite relaxing.

By the way, I am listening to Christmas music while I type (don’t tell my youngest son!). That music really lifts my spirits. My youngest says I should wait until after Thanksgiving, but I usually cave before then.

The second coloring page is from Debbie Macomber’s Very Merry Christmas Coloring book. I used a lot of different mediums for this page. I used my Inktense watercolor pencils, Prismacolor Pencils, SparklePop silver glitter pen, and clear Wink of Stella for the snow. It was so much fun working on this page. I am definitely going to work on this one again.

I took a close-up so maybe you can see the Wink of Stella I used on the snow. It shimmers so pretty.

Have a lovely day friends!

Good Morning Monday – Christmas Coloring books time!

Hello! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I had a very nice one and am looking forward to a productive week. I spent some time crafting with my girlfriends on Saturday and I pulled out one of my Christmas coloring books. I decided to start now because I am not so into them after Christmas. I will color winter scenes then but not Christmas-specific pages. So in order to get to some of my newer books, I decided to start now.

This one is a color by number one so all the color selection is handled leaving me with relaxing coloring. This book features the artwork of George Toufexis. He has a number of coloring books and I own at least two of them. The pictures are really pretty and fun to color. I used my Prismacolor pencils and a couple of Polychromos.

I continued coloring on Sunday while watching football. I have a few more things I would like to do before it is complete. I was thinking of using my posca pen and gold and silver gel pens to add accents to the page and then it is on to the next page.

I hope you are having a happy and productive Monday!

Inky Play Friday – Distress Oxide and Stencils

It’s Friday and it’s time to get my fingers dirty! I have these new stencils I wanted to try. The idea is that they can speed up the coloring time for those who don’t want to go the Copic coloring with stamps option. The first thing I realized is that I needed to figure out what order the colors should lay down since it’s a three-stencil process to produce a multi-colored ornament.

I also needed to figure out which colors go well together. So it was a lot of trial and error. On this first one I laid the green down first and then purple and then I put the green on top. Because the green is sort of neon and bright, it managed to show up on the final layer. I will need to play around more to get different results.

I still liked the results but was anxious to try the other ornaments. I have been loving this purple and I like how it almost look like it was glowing on the edges because the color was lighter on the edges. Unfortunately, you don’t get to see that much because the next two layers cover the edges.

I stopped after filling the page with ornaments so I can see how they look when they are diecut. The result is the first picture you saw at the start of this post. I like how they feel in my hands and the die also debosses areas on the ornament. I really like how they look once I cut them out.

After doing this batch, I think the next time, I will do a batch of all the same base colors and then assembly line add color two and then the final stencil. I think that will make it faster. I will also need to look closely at the Distress Oxide colors that I own to come up with more color combinations.

We are having torrential downpours today and I think my coloring books are calling me. So I am going to say goodbye for now!

Have a wonderful weekend!

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