The Sunday Strolling, Walking Dead.

Hi everybody.

Holy macaroni - October already?!  That can only mean one thing...HALLOWEEEEEN!  And I'm getting into the spirit of things this week...

I saw this card doing the rounds in blogland this week, where one very talented lady had turned Mama Elephant's Penguins into Zombies!  It was so clever, and so funny, I just had to try something similar...

I used Mama Elephant's Sunday Stroll and Sunday Sentiments to build up my scene as the way the little boy and girl are standing looks just like the way zombies walk haha.

I added some scars and scratches to my little characters, and coloured using Distress Inks as watercolour.  I added the purple as that kind of smoky ground haze you always get in Zombie films lol.

I finished off my sentiment using Mama Elephant's Starry Night set to help make the card make sense...kind of haha.  Just go with me on this one, I didn't have any 'Zombie sentiments' lol.

This was so much fun to do and really shows how far these gorgeous little character sets can be stretched.  I now want to 'Zombify' everything I own...I'm going to spend all of October turning my cute stamps into mean monsters!

I really hope you like it.  As always, everything is linked below so go make your own monsters!

See you next week.

Jillx

    

A friendly natter

Hi everybody,

Well, after the mid-week excitement of our 'Surprise' blog hop, it's a pleasure to see you all again so soon!  And I'm going to keep the fun, friend feels going with this weeks offering...

I used Wplus9's 'Going Places' stamp and matching die set to create this week's card.

The set comes with a little cute hot air balloon, and all the little critters sit in the basket and look awesome, but I wanted to see what else I could do with them, so dreamt up this little, 'neighbours chatting across the garden fence' scene.

                             

Everything on my card is coloured using Distress Ink as watercolour.  I used Mama Elephant's 'Landscape Trio' cloud die to create my hedges, and Lawn Fawn's 'Picket Fence Border' die as, well, obviously, my picket fence!  The sun is from Lawn Fawn's 'Spring Showers' set, and the sentiment, which is stamped onto vellum and attached using 'Stick-It', is from Mama Elephant's 'Sunday Sentiments' set.

                               

You are, literally, spoilt for choice with the amount of cuteness to choose from in the 'Going Places' set, all as adorable as each other.  As you can see, I couldn't choose, so didn't...and just went with them all haha.  I only wish I knew what they were chatting about :)

I really hope you like it.  As always, everything I used is linked below so be sure to go have a look and see what world you want to create!

See you next week.

Jillx

    

  

 

Pretend Pencil Sketching.

Hi everybody,

Jill here.  How are you all feeling today?

I was on Instagram the other day, and the guys at Mama Elephant posted this amazing picture to celebrate 'National Elephant Day'.  It was so simple, yet beautiful and brilliant.  It was the 'Ella and friends' set, and it looked like it had been pencil sketched.  I fell in love with it instantly, and knew I had to try something similar...

I don't even know how they did it to be fair, but certainly mine doesn't come close to how awesome theirs looked, haha.  Never mind, practise makes perfect, eh?

I used grey colouring pencils, but I think it would have looked much better using actual pencils.

I used Mama Elephant's 'Woodland Gifts' to create my 'sketch'.  I stamped out my scene using a really pale ink, and followed/sketched over the lines using a dark grey colouring pencil with a lighter grey to blend.  I introduced a touch of colour and some Glossy Accents to the balloon for a little interest.  I stamped the sentiment in grey ink, and matted onto an Avery Elle 'Truffle' note card.   Obviously this technique is all about the simplicity, so I left it there.

*update*

I've had a try with a normal pencil, and a little shading and blending, so thought I'd share where that got me...

...I actually much prefer this as it's a lot darker and a lot more intense.

What a relaxing technique though?!  I really enjoyed it and can't wait to give it a little more time.

I hope you like both efforts, and would love to see if any of you have given this technique a try yet, if so, maybe leave a link below and we can share our findings?

As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

  

         

Sweet Smiles and Umbrellas!

I have a couple of cards to share today both of which feature Lawn Fawn's Sweet Smiles stamp set but the first one is probably not quite what you'd expect from that set!    I have a card I saw on the Mama Elephant blog on Friday to thank for my inspiration for this card, which I would credit, but it seems to have been removed.  [edited - the post is back again now so click here to see the card that inspired mine] It was a card filled with a rainbow of umbrellas and when I saw it I immediately thought of my favourite Pixar "short" - The Blue Umbrella where two "different" umbrellas meet and fall in love.  So I recreated a scene from the movie to make an anniversary card for my husband who is a huge Pixar fan.

Here's a still from the movie in case you haven't seen it so you can see where I got the idea to add the faces to the umbrella's from Mama Elephant's Chance of Rain set (it's only 6 minutes long so google it and watch it, its such a sweet story)   To make it into an anniversary card I needed an appropriately mushy sentiment - that came from Sunday Sentiments - I just didn't ink up the second line of this one as I'll pop that on the inside!   The background is a simple watercolour technique using the new hickory smoke distress ink and wide brush to get deliberate downward strokes to look like rain falling.

For my second card I used the gumball machine and ignored the faces this time!  I wanted to concentrate on the machine and make it realistic with a clear dome and a back that could be seen inside the card.

You don't need anything fancy to do this - just a piece of acetate and some stazon ink.  Stamp it twice (taking care to not stamp the gumballs on one image - only ink up the outline) and cut it out taking care to cut outside the lines on the glass dome, but just inside the lines on the parts you want to cover up with cardstock at the top and bottom so that the acetate edges don't show.

Now stamp once more on card stock with copic friendly ink - this will be your front so it is a "full" stamp.

To stamp the back I inked up the whole machine again but then used a cotton bud to wipe away the ink from the mechanism that would only be on the front.  This leaves you with a gap in the bottom of the machine so just use a multi-liner to join the lines back up again and you've got the back of your machine!

You need one more stamping process to get the back view of the gumballs - some mirror stamping.   You can do this several ways - stamp onto acetate (or even your acrylic block) and then press that onto your card, stamp onto the back of another stamp and use that to transfer your image or use a roller to take the image from your stamp and roll it onto the paper.   As this is a pretty simple image, I just used my acrylic block and then a multi liner to make the lines more solid to match the front as mirror stamping gives you a second generation style line.

Colour everything with copics and cut out all the pieces you need.  Stick the gumball images together so the colour is showing on the outsides and then using a clear glue like glossy accents stick it to the front acetate making sure to line it up with the black circles.  Sandwich the two acetate sheets together.  Glue on the backs and fronts of the machine pieces and set it aside to dry.

To make the card itself, set a stitched circle die just off the edge of your card to cut your aperture and use the next size up die to emboss a second circle around it.  Stamp the "HAVE A BALL!" sentiment which comes in the set underneath it.  The other sentiment is from "Year 3" also from Lawn Fawn is stamped onto a strip of paper from their Beachside pad.

NEWS FROM THE STORE:

• We will be getting our first shipment from My Favorite Things this week - we are starting small and got all that was available from the last couple of releases along with a few other bits and pieces that caught my eye.  Some items were out of stock so I will try again to get those with the next release which will be available in early July.
• WaffleFlower Crafts latest release will be here shortly as well along with their ink pads which several of you asked for last time.
• We will be restocking Paper Smooches this week and getting their latest couple of releases.

Have a great week - catch you on the flipside ;-)