Saturday, July 28, 2012

Life is Good


It's just too hot to do anything outside! In response to the earth's unseemly heat, I decided to take the plunge and start my own little blog to help keep track of all the inspiring artists I love and the artistic progress that I make. My crafting goal is simple: get better!

Feel free to make a suggestion, share your growth, help me make sure I appropriately cite my artsy sources (this really matters to me - I don't want to accidentally skimp someone) ... or just say hi!!

Here is my first posted project - a simple little card that I have been mulling over but needed inspiration for. The Picture Perfect challenge over at Paper Smooches was just the ticket!

The paper reminded me of their pictured flowers - it's from the eco stack by DCWV - and although it's sturdy, I struggle to find projects for it. So, yes... I felt slightly triumphant about using it. Those super cute mushrooms and clouds are from Forest Whimsy by Paper Smooches. Actually, the flowery part of the paper was a little too high on the page, so I cut the bottom off - conveniently it was blue and I thought "my goodness, that would make lovely clouds." I love being right! The dark clouds are the leftovers from the bottom and the light cloud is from a scrap I had lying around. It's from the eco stack, too. The blue rectangle in the back is a mystery scrap that I found. It's probably really old paper because it's quite flimsy.

The mushrooms are colored using a mixture of Tombow and Copic markers. *le gasp!* You can tell in some places that I mix markers - especially since the mushrooms are stamped on watercolor paper, but I wanted to experiment with what I've got. It was a lot of fun and quite challenging to try watercoloring with the Tombow ink while simultaneously avoiding the Copic colors! Currently, I'm in transition mode from Tombows to Copics and am buying my markers one at a time.

The "Life is Good" sentiment is from an old Little Yellow Bicycle stamp set I've had for quite a long time. I don't know how well it shows in the picture, but I cut out the round "IS"part of the sentiment after stamping it in blue ink. (I trimmed it a bit so the black inked "IS" would show, but the effect is minimal even in the best light.) "Life" or "Good" would probably have worked, too, but it seemed so ... right to do the "IS" ... it's all round and circle-y ... like it's asking for something to be done to it.

It's lost in the picture, but I edged each of the pieces with ink - the mushroom and sentiment rectangles are edged in a brown ink and the cloud piece is edged in a blue ink. After using it, I don't much like the blue ink because it's fussy on different kinds of paper.

Well, that's my first post! Thanks for stopping by and keep it crafty!

*No Copics were harmed in the making of this card.