Trying to get into the Halloween spirit in Texas. It’s a little hard when it is 105 outside. With Halloween in mind, I stumbled upon this stamp set ( Craftin Desert Divas’ Coffee Wizards ) and thought this could work. Then I realized that I forgot to pack my Copics and Prismacolors while travelling this weekend. YIKES!! What was I thinking??? I figured I’d give it go with what I had on hand, a school supply of 36 Crayola pencils. The ground and the yellow “fumes” are stencils from My Favorite Things used with Distressed Oxides. The remainder is colored with pencils and a bit of black ink I found in the bottom of my craft bag. All was done on X-press It Cardstock. Lovin’ this paper!!!

HAVE A MAGICAL DAY Y’ALL!!

My 13yo daughter, CLM, receives a sketchbox every month as part of her Christmas present for 2018. This month’s box had various white and black inks with toned blue mixed media paper. This is what she is currently creating. I love how this mythical creature is turning out. This one almost looks “petable”. LOL! CLM, don’t kill me for that. What type of fantasy creature is it? What do you think??

AAA card challenge has inspired by a song as part of their challenge. The base of this card is truly inspired by my daughter and some art work she is working on. Then I knew the colors for my project. Kindred Stamps supplied Mary Poppins and the sentiment. The flowers in the background reminded me of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag from the original Disney 1960s movie. The coloring is no line coloring using ink and pencils. OMG, I made a card without any Copic markers. WOW! I think this is a first???? Have a great creative day!

I saw the current asyoulikeitchallenge and wasn’t certain what to create. The challenge is what is your favorite color combination. I can’t say I knew what my favorite color combination was….. so, I went through my stash of created (and unused/unmailed) cards and took an tally of the combinations I’ve used in the past. Low and behold, there was a clear winner, BLUE and GREEN. The background is a stencil I created using my cricut, and the girl is a drawing from a local artist. I love her expression and joy that this image gives. I scanned the image from her book and printed it on Nina card stock. The coloring is some simple Copic coloring. I then cut her out using a ScanAndCut and mounted her on the card with some foam tape.

NOTE: I will update the post once I find the artist’s name off of her coloring book and give the artist her due credit.

Simon Says Stamp summer vacation: kids challenge (anything goes with sparkle) was taken up by my daughter KM. KM is 13 years old and loves crafting. She is currently into crochet, but took a break to work on some paper crafts. She used lawn fawn stamps for the trees and the unicorn. She used copic markers for her coloring. She embellished with some glitter spray, white gold paint, and a few crystals for a little shine, shimmer and glimmer. Happy coloring!

The AAA Birthday challenge this month is for the boys. I love this little Tokidoki character. I think he makes a great start to any boy birthday card. The happy birthday sentiment is embossed using WOW embossing powder. This is the first time I’ve used their products. What a joy they are to use!! The remainder of the card is copic marker to ground the image. Fairly simple to make, once the design was determined. The Tokidoki character was downloaded, colored with copic markers, and cut using a scan and cut. Happy crafting!!

I can’t help but keep trying one-layer cards. Kelly Latevola and Sandy Allnock make it look SO EASY. I don’t find them quite so easy to do. But they are a tremendous amount of fun! This is my newest attempt. When I saw this lady at MayMayMadeIt, I just had to have her. She just screams elegant to me. I put her in front of a background stamp from The Ton. The colors are inspired by the color throw down challenge #555. . Like all one layer cards, there was some masking involved. Then the fun with the background began; I used life changing brushes and distressed oxides. Microbrushes were used with the oxides for the flowers and pebbles. The dresses, awning, dog, and lady were then colored with distressed oxide and a small paint brush. The sentiment is from The Ton and embossed in black. Hope you enjoy!

I live in Texas and love seeing the bluebonnets in the spring, especially in the hill country. It is just stunning! The asyoulikeitchallenge for August is your favorite flower. I could not find any bluebonnet dies, so I improvised. This is a Simon Says Stamp die cut. I cut it twice. The top layer has all of the pieces removed leaving a white frame. I left the bottom layer intact and used some distressed oxide inks for coloring. The background paper is made with acrylics, MFT ray stencil, and a gell press. Happy crafting y’all!