Faux Copic Marker Coloring

Today is my younger brother's birthday, and I'm sharing with you the techniques I used to make this adorable card for him. DIeCutCrazy has added some new contributors, and one of my new peeps, Deepti, recently shared a card made with a little monster. I had to grab an old set from CloseToMyHeart that NEVER gets used. Now, I'm in love! 
My little brother is a lot bigger than me, now. I laugh a little whenever we are introducing each other, becuase he literally towers over my 5'3" short self. But to me, he'll always be little, and he'll always be the monster that irritated me to no end as a teenager. Fortunately, I now realize there isn't anything that doesn't irritate a teenager, and I've learned to respect him and admire the man he's grown to be the last decade.
For my first technique, let me tell you how I gave my little monster such depth. I've been watching a lot of copic marker coloring tutorials, (even though I don't have any!) and decided to try my colored pencils at creating a similar 3D color look. Start by stamping your image in a light color. With your lightest color desired, lightly color in the entire image where applicable. For me, this was the light pink body of my space buddy. Now, grab a watercolor pen and, with small circular strokes, blend the color until it looks smooth.
Next you'll want to go for your darker colors. I chose to go for the darkest shading color of the dark purple in the creases and shadowy places. Again, blend with the watercolor pencil. Then fill in and blend with your mid tones, repeat until your are pleased with how it looks. Accent areas can be colored and blended with less color applications if you desire. I guess it depends on the sharpness of your pencils, or how many colors you have!
My brother is such an amazing guy. He can find the silver lining in any situation, he's a terrific friend and coworker, is always willing to lend a hand when he can, is a terrifically loving uncle, and in our house, is known as "the perfect movie date EVER," much to my honey's chagrin.
 For an out of this world effect in the background, I stamped stars with clear versamark ink, then heat embossed them with clear powder before painting over with some regular blue crayola watercolor paint. To acheive a constellation effect, I sprinkled salt on the wet paint! Once dry, I just brushed it off. Try layering a dab or two of another paint color over the salt for a really cool spacey look.
As I mentioned before, my brother's influence on me has taken on nicer significance the older we get. He taught me to share, how to recognize when winning is more important to another, and how to fart on command. Well, I never really got the hang of the last one... But who would I have been able to take out my teenage angst on? Who would I have screamed, "Get out of my ROOM!" at all those times, my parents? yeah right. 
On the other hand, who would have accompanied me on all those unapproved drives to go swimming with my friends, who would have lived with me for years (and never asked me to clean my room),  who would have taught me that family can be friends too? I remember vividly the day we brought him home from the hospital. In retrospect, my life changed for the better, and our household dynamic was made even stronger. 
To make your image really pop after all the color treatments, stamp over the image again with a darker ink, or for a more subtle look, use the light color you started with. Clear stamps make this really easy to do, but you can use a stamp-a-ma-jig or other stamp positioner too.  I even colored in the speech bubble and the monster's eyes with a white pen to make them extra bright, then went back with my colored pencil to darken the pupils.
On the back panel of purple paper, I stamped a repeated  calendar image. Then I overlapped that back panel and the card with a die cut star, to bring the layers together. My cropodile punched out the little circles from a multi-colored polka dot print by SEI. Here's a tip: apply little dots of glue where you want your small dots to go, and you won't end up with glue all over your hands. Or at least not as much glue :-) You can put all the glue down at once like I did, but I recommend doing it one dot at a time if you're a little more fastidious. 
My brother is really one of my best friends, and my life would be seriously lacking if I didn't have him around to bring a smile to our faces on a regular basis. A simple Happy Birthday stamp on the inside doesn't express that, but my happy little monster can hint at what a delight he is to have around, as he is pretty smile-inducing too. I hope you enjoyed some of the techniques I shared today, and feel inspired to try them yourself!
Happy Birthday, Jeremy!

Six by Six Series- Episode IV: Smile

Remember when the Stars Wars series renewed itself by starting its saga all over again with prequels, leaving you wondering how will this all lead up to what I already know?! Well this series won't be filled with laser guns and jet planes, but there will be a love story and maybe even some hairy animals!

I've got about four six by six paper pads that I've been experimenting with including on my scrapbook pages and card fronts. I'm seeing other designers incorporating these miniature patterned  papers in their projects too, and hope you'll share with me in the fun of training our brains to reach for them too.

6x6 patterned papers, and 8x8 for that matter, come in a down-sized version, making them ideal for including in cardmaking, but I find that really helps to makes them more neutral when adding them to a background in scrapbooking, too. Their size is perfect for creating a quick grid of four sheets to equal 12 inches all around. If, like me, you tear a page a bit in your haste to rip it from the binding, just think of that whoops as a reminder that these papers would like a scrap piece or background underneath them. Trim off -or maybe enhance - the torn edge and you'll end up with a crisp little border frame on your page.

When selecting my prints for this layout, I looked for four busy designs with background colors going from light to dark. The little miniature cut-apart sheet provided me with some coordinated title pieces, and I used a couple of circle punches on the starbursts print for some simple confetti-like sprinkles. My Minds Eye papers are generally cream based designs, and for the journaling space I needed a really neutral piece, preferably with lines to write on. I remember using the full size version of one of the papers in a layout I made last year, and turned it over to find the same grid which would be perfect. You can see the full-size version layout here:

Have you ever experienced the rhapsody of pre-breakfast scrappin'? I spent Wednesday night at my moms house and she had that lovely 8.5"x11" enlargement of Grandma and little sister waiting to show me. Isn't this a beautiful print? It was taken last Friday while visiting with our cousin Paulette from Arizona- Hi Cousin!!!  I love that simply looking at the photo leads to a grin on my face.
While the girls ate breakfast and did a little crafting of their own, I whipped this together in less than 20 minutes. Now that's a habit that could use reinforcing! 
Thanks for stopping by my blog today. Check back throughout the week as I share the prequel pages in my six by six series, and if you happen to be at the craft store, investigate those handy pads of miniature designer papers!

Made Today

Sprinkles of mist behind a vellum sticker,
topped with an acetate balloon.

Well, technically, this fun birthday card (left) was made just before retiring to bed last night, but these two below were really made this morning just before I dashed the kids into the car and headed to Gig Harbor to enjoy the sunshine. My girlfriend Jen met us at Java and Clay and took the kids on a short stroller ride while I met with the owners to discuss the possibility of selling my handmade greeting cards in their shop. The meeting went well! Randy and Kelly both commented on the uniqueness of my samples... hoping of course that they weren't using that word "unique" as my DF and her hubby do... as in, wow, this dish you've made out of lettuce and eggs is unique! lol

There is limited space in their store though, so I'm looking for a smaller card rack than the behemoth double, 80 card spaces rack I brought in for show and tell, and found one online for only $25. So that's promising! No matter what their decision is, I'm proud of taking the risk to put my cards in their lap and ask, "what do you think?"

My favorite part of the meeting was when I invited Randy to open the card in his hand and see the fancy inside. Their young artist son was at the table as well, and when shown the card, he smiled. Then Kelly looked and smiled. Then Randy smiled and they all leaned in for a family hug while gazing at my card. Sigh! That is the exact kind of feeling one can hope to generate with a little labor of love :-)

Well, after walking up the street to replace some cards and oogle my future CraftWithAnna designated space at the Copy Mail It store, Rainie decided we needed to lunch at my favorite Tokyo Teriyaki. As we piled back into our jumbo Joovy stroller, Miss Kim came out with our diaper bag- whew! Yeah, cause it included our keys to the car parked about a mile away! So I quickly pulled this card out of my supply and didn't mind at all giving it to her. She saved me so many steps, and truly is an egg-stra special hostess. I've been going there for over ten years now and I feel like she's my Japanese mama!

Graphic 45 - Reads, You Are the Best
One of my favorite cards created lately!

I said I didn't mind giving her the card; well I have had so much generosity shown to me lately that my thank you list is miles long. Unfortunately I've been hoarding my cards for selling. Resolved: create or send off cards to loved ones this weekend! Preferably writing outside in the delightfully hot sun we're anticipating!

Fingers crossed that more store front opportunities are on the horizon!

Wait! Don't throw that away?

I admit, I have a problem throwing away little bits of pretty paper. So I'm not surprised that I was inspired to create my own version of enamel dots with this tiny punched circle from a cricut cut tag I used.

It doesn't look like much, but you wouldn't believe how proud I am of this little shiny dot and it's friends!


They were really easy to make, I just  added a blob of Close To My Heart's Liquid Glass to the top and let it dry overnight on a shred of wax paper. I wanted to be sure it was really dry before I touched it because sometimes I get over eager and ruin things!


This isn't a project I would necessarily recommend, as it was a tad tricky getting the paper to come off the glue tip without spreading sticky all over the place, but it was fun, and now I know how to make a very coordinated little blingie for any layout that "needs" it. And since you bothered stopping by today, now you do too!