Colouring Challenge: non-blended hair

Hi everyone!  Hope you all had a good weekend and that the week ahead has only nice things in store for us. Thanks so much for the lovely comments for my last card, you make my day you really do.

News

It's all change at Make It Colourful. The fortnightly challenges have now ended BUT the colour addicts still love a challenge so we've all moved over to the Make It Crafty store blog and have become Colouring Inspiration design team members. We'll be choosing our own colouring challenges from a list that Zoe has given us, and as we all post on the blog on different days during the month there is something new to see and hopefully be inspired by every couple of days. Look for us in the Colouring Inspiration section.

Also on the store blog, you'll find inspiration for using Make It Crafty projects in the Design Team Inspiration section, and lots of colouring and craft tutorials in the Techniques section. So something new to see every day.

My card

My card today is my first project in my new role, and it is hopefully OK to blog as it should have arrived at it's destination by now (wink!).  I chose Zoe’s challenge of Hair With Fine Detail, i.e. no blending, and I used Copic markers with a little pencil overshading in parts. The hair I did with Copics only.

The digi image I chose to colour is Ginger House Wife and it doesn’t have a lot of fine detail in the hair, so it can be coloured fairly quickly without blending. I used short, light feather strokes with just the very end of the tip of my copic markers to achieve this layered look. The shades I used were: Y17, YR23, YR27, E37, and E19. Y17 is the colour that I wanted my hightlights to be – the parts where the light catches the hair and we see a shine. So I laid down a base layer of this colour first. Then I took the next colour (YR23) and made feathered strokes from the hairline towards the highlight and from the ends/outside of the hair towards the highlight, then with the next darkest shade I went over the same areas but with slightly shorter strokes so that the lighter-coloured layer underneath still showed through. To make sure that the inks didn’t blend I let each layer dry before putting the next colour on, just to be sure that I complied with the challenge!

Ginger was merged with another Make It Crafty image, Home Sweet Home. I think they go well together, don't you?

Tip: Get the stroke right

When making these feather strokes, practice using only the very end of the tip, keeping your stroke light – you are hardly touching the paper at all really. At the end of the stroke, lift the marker upwards so that the marks on the paper taper off to a point. This gives finer strokes with a tapered end so that you can more easily achieve the effect of strands of hair and texuture with strokes that are defined and not smudged together. This is the sort of line you are aiming for:

You can see how the copic marker brush tip makes a much finer tapered point than does the promarker regular tip, I don't have a fine promarker tip to compare (sorry).

If you're going for defined layers, let your ink dry before putting the next colour on - you can see the effect of feathering onto wet and dry inks:

The wet ink on the left causes the strokes to blur into each other, whereas the dry ink on the right makes the strokes much crisper.

Marker Recipe:

Hair: Y17, YR23, YR27, E37, E19

Skin: E00, E01, E11, R20, R22

Dress & Shoes: R32, R35, R37, R39

Stair carpet: YG61, YG63, YG67

I kept the card fairly simple as the coloured image is quite large, so just a couple of sheets of Papermania paper, some gold mirri card and a Prima flower were enough.

I'd like to enter this in these challenges:

Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Girls Girls Girls
Crafty Ann's - It's a Girl Thing
Oldie But A Goodie - Anything Goes (my papers are a few years old)
Papertake Weekly - Anything Goes
Stampin Sisters In Christ - option 2) Just an image on your card (no sentiment)
Touch Twin Challenges - Getting Hairy

Thanks for dropping by today and for any comments you'd like to leave. Have a good day and happy crafting!

We're off to Hollywood!

Hi everyone - today I've got a card to show that I made for our latest blog hop at Make It Crafty, for which we've teamed up with Simply Betty Stamps. Details about the hop follow, and my card is further down my post. The hop is for a release of some fun images that can be mixed and matched to make great scenes, and I've used a couple of them in my card. Here's a little sneaky peak before the hop write up:

 Make it Crafty and Simply Betty Stamps are really excited to be bringing you the combined Hollywood Release!

Simply Betty Stamps has a range of characters from Betty Monroe, through to Action Chris the movie director!!

Make it Crafty has a range of background scenes perfect to switch and match with your famous characters!!

Of course we are going to have heaps of fun with this theme and June 1st & June 2nd we will be showcasing our stuff and then June 3rd we're bringing you a fun guessing game... Will you be able to guess the movie??  We'll be giving you some clues to help!!

Join us for the two inspiration days and leave a comment along the way for your chance to win a selection of new images.

There will be FOUR winners each day receiving a surprise character with matching background digi stamps.

Then on June 3rd, guess 6 out of 12 movies correctly and you will have a chance to win:  

Grand Prize

A DVD Movie of your choice
PLUS the whole collection of MiC & SBS digi stamp Hollywood release images.

 

Second Prize
The whole collection of MiC & SBS digi stamp Hollywood release!

 

 

Can't wait?!!

But we know some of you just can't wait so both Betty and Zoe are offering you 25% off
their Hollywood collections between June 1st and June 3rd!

Click Here for Simply Betty Stamps & Click Here for Make it Crafty!

We hope you have lots of fun with us this weekend!!!

You should have arrived here from Lelia, but in case you want to go from the beginning, the hop order is included below.

 

I made a shadow box card using Simply Betty's Little Usher Miller and Make It Crafty's Watching Movies. It's quite a big colouring as the card is A5 sized, and I made some filmstrip ribbons of paper to cover the frame. I've left it pretty simple, it was mainly about the images and the colouring.

Image is sunk about half an inch into the card

Here are the other stops in the hop:

Barbara

Colleen

Betty

Cyndi

Viv

Alison

Jenn D

Suzi

Beccy

Lelia

Carole (you are here!)

Hope you like my card, and don't forget to leave a comment if you're following the blog hop.

Happy crafting!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Hi all, and Happy St Patrick's Day to you! I never mark this day usually or make any cards but I had to make this card, not for a DT project, but just because I wanted to use this new image. It's by Crissy Armstrong and it's called Young Leprechaun. I thought he was really cute and wanted to have a go at colouring him. I'm a bit off my stroke with colouring but I'm trying to keep my hand in, lol.

I merged him with a couple of background digi stamps from Make It Crafty: the Rainbow Dandelion and Petals & Palings (which is one of my all-time fave images).

I used copics as usual, and an off-cut of some Papermania paper. The leafy die cut was a gift from my friend Jean, the bow was made from some fabric from my friend Elaine, and the fabric-covered brad was in some candy I won from the wonderful Kevin. I downloaded a celtic-looking font from Dafont.com to make the sentiment, and just added a few gold sequins to complete it. I tried to include some gold in the image and embellies because the Irish flag colours are green, white and gold/orange.

I haven't entered any challenges for absolutely ages, so I'm gonna put this in a few:

Cardmadfairy's Digi Days - Add a sentiment

Fab N Funky Challenges - Luck of the Irish

Inky Impressions - You're my pot of gold....use gold and bling (gold flower sequins)

Just Inspirational Challenges - Photo inspiration (I chose the St patrick photo)

Just Some Lines - Spring Cleaning - at least 2 items over 6 months old (actually everything on my card is over 6 months old, the paper is a couple of years old and I've had the sequins for years! lol)

Kaboodle Doodles - Show us some green

Rainbow Lady's Challenge - St Patrick's Day

Sassy Cheryl's Challenges - Wearin' of the green

Simon Says Stamp - A bit o' green

Sweet Stamping - Use lots of green

Wags N Whiskers - Luck of the Irish

Have a great weekend all, and happy crafting!

Happy Birthday at Sundays With Crissy

Hello everyone - can you believe that it's February already?! Seems like only a week ago that we were stressing to finish Christmas cards in time to catch the post!

Anyhoo, on to my card today.....the theme this month at Sundays With Crissy is HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and I chose this lovely image by Crissy called Love You Sis because I've been wanting to use it for ages. It seems a perfect image to use on a card from one sister or friend to another. Using Paint.Net, I merged it with the fence image (Petals & Palings from Make It Crafty) and coloured it with Copics. The pinks are a little outside of my comfort zone, but I had to justify buying the RV63 and RV66 last year by actually using them at last! And as it turns out, I quite like these shades now as they're not as candy-pink as the lower-numbered Red Violets tend to be.

 

 

Images: Love You Sis, by Crissy Armstrong

Petals & Palings, by Make It Crafty

Colouring: Copics and Polychromos

DPs: Prima Annalee and Papermania

Metal corner: Wild Orchid Crafts

Computer-generated sentiment

Flowers, centres and doily from my stash

If you'd like to join us in the challenge this month, pop over to the challenge blog and upload your project. There prize for one lucky winner is some digis of your choice from the talented and super-lovely Crissy.

Thanks for dropping by today, I'll see you soon; in the meantime Happy Crafting!

Just to show I haven't been completely idle...

Hello bloggers! I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone that has been leaving comments for me whilst I've been away, even though I couldn't visit or leave comments, it touched me that you'd still drop by, and kept me going while I was feeling so poorly. I'm still taking it easy, but glad to be colouring and crafting again. I am NOT glad to be suffering a messy work area once more, I did like having a nice clear dining table, he hee.

Anyway, following Chrissy's post recently where she was asking about what Kraft papers were light enough to go through a printer, I promised her I'd try my Kraft and tell her the results. Well, as I'd test-printed some images, I thought I'd at last get round to experiment with colouring on it. This was my first attempt, using the lovely Summer Dreams by Make It Crafty. I used Faber Castell Polychromos (I only have about 30 shades at the mo) without any blending with Sansodor, and I quite like my first go. I find some of the pencils nice and soft, some are very hard and scuffed the paper up on the hat ribbon. I might have a go with Prismas next, although I only have a handle of pencils. Hope you likey:

Here's a quick card I made using this image and some scraps of paper which happily matched the colours in the image. Not sure what I think of this one, but I'll definitely be colouring on Kraft again:

Will have a DT card to share in a few days....till then, happy crafting!

Colouring snow for Make It Colourful: Ragged Angel and winter background

Hi all, I did some colouring last week and have only just today made something with it.  This is my DT project for Make It Colourful, where the challenge this fortnight is to COLOUR SNOW. This means not just adding glitter to look like the white stuff, but actually using your colouring to depict snow.

We are so lucky in that there are some new background snowy winter scene images now at Make It Crafty, and I've used 3 of them in my scene together with this fabulous image from Mo Manning. Now, I have to admit that Ragged Angel melts my heart, she's beautifully drawn and so adorable, and a poor little child out in the freezing snow - well, it can kinda move you to tears. So I had to colour the Angel in warm colours so that she could be warm inside despite the cold environment.

Colouring is in Copics as usual, and the way I've coloured the snow is to leave the majority of the paper white and uncoloured, and added some shadows and little areas of very pale blue (B0000) and a pale cool grey (C1 and some C3). It's a daytime scene, hence the lightsource from the right, but I decided the street lamp would be lit even though there's daylight, so it just casts a little warm light onto the snow on the lantern itself. The sky is coloured in a pale violet as if there is more snow in the sky - oh that poor little urchin!




Images merged with permission from Mo Manning


The finished colouring has been made up into a shadow box card so the image is sunk into the cardstock. The paper in the border is from Websters Pages, inked around the edges and matted onto green card.  The sentiment is from Stempelglade, and some lace, a metal filligree corner, a poinsettia, punched snowflake and a couple of roses finish it all off.

I hope it is OK to say that I do like this scene that I merged and I'm really pleased with how the colouring went. Always room for improvement but I'm happy.

I made this card for Mo's Bronte & Bella's challenge which this week is Inspired by a Song. When I was planning this, I had the song "It may be winter outside (but in my heart it's spring)" going round my head because I didn't like the thought of our little Angel suffering the cold and kind of imagined that she'd have an inner warmth to keep her OK. Kind of like the old Ready Brek advert, for those of us old enough to remember, lol.

Images: Festive Lantern (from Festive Elements), Large Pine Tree,

and Winter Fence from Make It Crafty;

Ragged Angel from Mo Manning

Colouring: Copic markers

DP: Websters Pages

Metal corner: Wild Orchid Crafts

Martha Stewart snowflake punch

Prima poinsettia, lace, roses from my stash

Sentiment: Vintage Christmas from Stempelglade

I'd like to enter this in these challenges:

ABC Christmas Challenge - U for Unused Stash (all my images are brand new, and this is the first time I've used this sentiment stamp)

Bronte and Bella's Challenge - Inspired by a song ("It may be winter outside")

Aud Sentiment Challenge - Winter theme

Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Lace it up

Fabulous Friday - Fancy trim

Flutterby Wednesday - Open challenge

Whoopsie Daisy - Free & easy

I hope you like my project today. It's gone very cold here in Brum and I'm sitting with a hot water bottle as I type this, lol. Keep warm everyone!



Happy birthday Zoe! and the hop starts now!

Hi all! Today I have a couple of cards to show you but first I want to say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZOE!!!

Yes, it's our Make It Colourful leader's special day today, and to celebrate we're having a blog hop!
 

The hop has a Christmas theme because today Zoe is releasing some fab images for the upcoming season of goodwill - but the best part is you get 15% off ALL the Christmas digis from now until Sunday, October 2nd.  Click on this link HERE to see them all.  Be warned, the coupon code is only for this week even thought the blog hop is for two weeks - so make sure to grab them at this sale price while you can!

Even better, everyone in this blog hop is giving away Blog Candy!!  Whoohoo!! You'll have two weeks, until October 12th, to visit each member in the hop below and leave a comment; winners will be announced on Friday, October 14th on their individual blogs.  Feel free to grab the blog hop badge above and display it on your sidebar to spread the word about Zoe's Birthday and Blog Hop!

But that's not all... we've got yet another surprise for you!! We contacted one of Zoe's artists (S.H.) who also wanted to participate and drew us this gorgeous party girl for the occasion. Thank you!!

This is "Party Girl Zoe" and isn't she cute! We wanted to make sure everyone was included in our celebration so we're giving away Party Girl Zoe as a freebie to everyone who wants to join in and spread some birthday cheer!! All you need to do is create a new project using a Make it Crafty image or chippies and upload it into the gallery HERE by October 12th. Then email Barbara, at ForgottenScraps@gmail.com with a link to your project to claim the freebie!

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So, you should have arrived here from the lovely Beccy. If you got here some other way or if you get lost, then go HERE to begin the hop.

I made 2 cards using a couple of little elf images that were really just too cute to ignore, fixing each up in MS Word so that they both printed at the same size. At the weekend in my online browsing I even found some jingle bells like the ones on their hats! You can see them nestled in the fairy lights garland and the poinsettias below. Many thanks to Crafters Cove for super super fast delivery.....ordered on Saturday night, appearing on my blog on Tuesday morning, how's that for service?

Zippy, the boy elf

Tinkles, the girl elf

Do you like the little jingle bells?

 Images: Tinkles and Zippy by Make It Crafty

Colouring: Copic markers

DPs: Websters Pages

Sentiments: Craftwork Cards

Poinsettias & leaves from Prima
Jingle Bells from Crafters Cove
Other: Spellbinders Lacey Circles & Large Standard circles dies

Everything else from my craft stash

Your next and final stop on the hop is the incredible Barbara.

We hope you enjoy the hop and make sure you head on over to Zoe's personal blog and wish her a Happy Birthday! Grab the Christmas Blog Hop badge and display it on your sidebar to spread the word about Zoe's Birthday and Blog Hop! Until then, happy colouring!


A little edit: Amy has asked if Tinkles is supposed to have hands.....of course she is, but I somehow totally omitted to give her any, LOL, just one of several errors in colouring these 2 cuties (blush).  Well, let's just say I've given her red gloves to wear (wink). Thanks Amy, I'll remember to give her hands next time I colour her, he hee. I tried to visit your blog to reply but your profile wasn't available, sorry.

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I'd like to enter both cards as my 2 entries in these challenges:
Anything Goes - Anything Goes
Crafty Ribbons - Anything Goes
Digi Makeover Challenge - Resize your digi
Paper Sundaes - Anything Goes
Partytime Tuesdays - Anything Goes

I'd like to enter the Zippy (boy elf) card only in these challenges:
Here Come The Boys - Bingo (Die cuts / Cute Image / Metal: circle die cuts, and metal jingle bells) 
PanPastel UK Challenge - Anything Goes
Lollipop Crafts - Anything Goes
The Squirrel & The Fox - Anything Goes
Ooh La La Creations - Punches/Die cuts (my circles)


I'd like the enter the Tinkles (girl elf) card only in these challenges:
Paper And Such Design - Recipe challenge (ribbon / designer paper / flower)
Southern Girls - Anything Goes
Top Tip Tuesday (for tip see below) - 2 or more ribbons/lace/twine/fabric (I used 2 ribbons, a dark red on top of a wider gold one)
Magical Mondays - Christmas in September (I hope elves count as magical creatures)

And finally, my tip for Top Tip Tuesday is: if you know what elements you want to include on your card but you're struggling to come up with a layout, lay the pieces out on your card in different ways and take photos of each arrangement. Scrolling through the photos on your camera and comparing the layouts can help you decide which arrangement you like best. I do this all the time!

Thanks so much for visiting and for any comments you left - you really make my day!

Get ready for Halloween!

Hello everybody, I hope all are well. Welcome to my newest followers, I'm so happy to see you here.

We have a fun challenge starting at Make It Colourful today.....colour with Orange and Black. The Design Team have made some Halloween projects because there are some terrific new images at Make It Crafty, but you can of course make a project for any occasion you like. I've not really used my orange markers much so this was a good time for me to get to know them.

I used a brand new image, Spooky House, and kind of experimented with an orange sky.  Well, I went a bit mad with those Yellow Reds, didnt I? he hee, but it was fun. Having a new image that I've never seen anyone colour before is a challenge but one I really enjoy, it's cool to see what you can make with it and then see how others use it. This week I also had a play around with the Mini Headless Horsemen which was another that was such fun to colour, isn't he great? I printed it off again slightly larger and used just the pumpkin head as an embellishment, added some lettering and a couple of bats, a bit of Atyou Spica glitter around the lettering (you can't really see on the photos) and it was finished. I don't do Halloween cards, so this will end up as a page in my art journal when I finally get around to making one.

Images: Spooky House and Mini Headless Horseman, both by Make It Crafty

Colouring Copic markers

DPs: DCWV All Dressed Up Matstack

I'd like to enter this in these challenges:
Charisma Cardz - Sky
Crazy 4 Challenges - Create something with a pumpkin on it
Creatalicious Challenges - Anything goes
Creative Inspirations - Anything goes
Cute Card Thursdays - Anything goes
Digi Doodles - Autumn colours
Digital Tuesday - Celebrate the season
Di's Digi Designs - Anything goes
Lexis Creations - Autumn
Sew Many Challenges - Halloween


So get out those orange and black pens, pencils, paints and inks and have some fun. If you'd like to join in with us, we are now using the NEW Make It Crafty gallery for the challenge - you just need to register and upload your photos directly to it, whether that be a completed project or simply your unfinished colouring - you don't even need to blog it first! Happy colouring :)

Make it Purple

Hi all, I'm really late in getting this card made for the Make It Colourful challenge this weekend, I've been in bed with a bug for a couple of days. But better late than never, as they say.

The challenge this week is to colour with purple. Until recently I hardly ever used purple, now I'm quite getting to like it!

We are sponsored this week by Some Odd Girl, and I used one of Kristy's images, Roller Mae, on my card.

I used purples in different ways in my colouring....Roller Mae's jumper is coloured in blue violets, her scarf is coloured with violets, her socks are violets and blue violets, I used BV25 to add some of the shadows on the fence. The far end of the field was coloured with BV31 before I added the greens to try and make that part recede some - not sure if this was successful! The hills in the background are made of some blue violets, and I used blue violets and violets to make the sky too.

Images: Petals & Palings, Old Oak Tree, and 2 elements from the Urban Street Collection, all by Make It Crafty; Roller Mae by Some Odd Girl

Colouring: Copic markers

Lasercut chippies: Round Leaves by Make It Crafty

Metal corner: Wild Orchid Crafts

Flowers from my craft stash

Purples I used: 

jumper: BV02,04,08;  scarf: V04,06,09;  socks: V04,06,09,BV02,04,08; 
hills: BV20,23,25;  sky: BV31,V0000,01.
Some BV31 added to grass at far end of field.

I'd like to enter this card in these challenges:
Charisma Cardz - Inspired by a song....."Brand New Key" (the Rollerskating song) by Melanie
Crafty Boots - Anything goes
Creative Card Crew - anything goes
Di's Digi Designs - Anything goes
One Stitch At A Time - anything goes
Secret Crafter - Inspired by a song....."Brand New Key" (the Rollerskating song) by Melanie
Stamp Something - something to say goodbye, anything goes

I'm heading to bed now so goodnight all!

Happy crafting,

No black lines

Morning all, I'm here with my latest project for Make It Colourful, which today has a very interesting new challenge. You may have spotted this new technique around blogland recently, Zoe has had all the girls in the MiC Facebook group trying it and there have been some gorgeously-coloured images as a result.

Well the technique is one that Zoe is calling No Lines - you stamp your image in very pale ink, or print your digi stamp at a reduced opacity, so that you are colouring inside very faint lines, not the heavy black outlines that we are all used to as stampers. Interesting, eh?

For my project I used a new freebie digi that Zoe made available to the Facebook group - her name is Pipi and she comes with long hair on either side of her head, but I gave her a quick trim, he he. Colouring is Copics as usual with a bit of pencil here and there, and for the dress I used my favourite copic pinks: R81, R83, R85 and R89.

Image: Pipi, a freebie from Make It Crafty

Colouring: Copic markers

Computer-generated sentiment

Magnolia Rose Leaf Doo Hickey die

Doily, DP, ribbons, flowers and gem brad from my craft stash

From this week, we will be using the NEW Make It Crafty gallery for the challenges - you really must check it out, you can join and upload your own projects as well as seeing all the makes from the Design Team.....loads of inspiration all in one place!

This is another image I tried using the No Lines technique....I stamped Tilda in Angel Pink memento ink and used Copics to colour her. I find it's necessary to concentrate much more when you don't have the thick black lines to help keep your ink under control, and you have to add the eyes back in using inks or pencils. My tip for this technique is to persevere even if you think you have messed up - it sort of comes together at some point, and if it doesn't then you've still had some practice.

Image: Magnolia Secretive Tilda

I'd like to enter this card in these challenges:
Aud Sentiment Challenge - card/sentiment for a girl
By The Cute & Girly - All things bright and beautiful
Cardmadfairy's Digi Days - Add flowers
Cardmaking Mamas - Go digi
Copic Creations - Pretty in pink
Crafting For All Seasons - Bingo (I chose Ribbons-Glitter/Shine-Flowers....2 ribbons, shine in the form of a gem brad in the flower centre, and flowers in the embellies, image and paper)
Crafty Purple Frog - Birthdays
Delicious Doodles - New and Fresh (the image is new as is the 'No Lines' colouring technique)
Ellephantastic - Here come the girls
Stamp Something - Digi day
Top Tip Tuesday - Shabby chic (I chose the backing paper and colour scheme for this challenge as it looked very shabby chic to me)

So that's me, sorry I've not been in blogland much again, I'm afraid I'm struggling with the M.E. a lot more these days and have to ration the time and energy spent crafting and blogging/visiting blogs. But I'm still making it round to visit, just try and keep me away, he he.

Happy crafting!