Sepia-effect colouring --- A Man's Card

Hi everyone! Is there anywhere where it isn't raining? Here it's been wet every day for the last week or so, and it's been constantly raining all day and all last night! Not that I mind, I actually like the sound of rain falling, but I'm wondering whether to start building an ark, he hee.

Sorry I haven't been visiting many blogs recently - I've been feeling really wrecked and I log in with good intentions of dropping in on lots of buddy's blogs, but run out of energy too quickly and have needed a lot of rest again. I'm hoping to get round over the next week.

It's been a week of blunders for me....firstly, I hit myself in the face hard by opening a wardrobe door too quickly whilst bending over to pick up my shoes (idiotic); then I forgot to cancel a grocery shopping delivery and ended up with 2 deliveries in one evening (expensive and idiotic); and thirdly, I was reading a book on a Kindle, got to the end of my page and.......picked up the Kindle and turned it over like a page!!!!!! (inexplicable, lol). I assure you, I'm a perfectly intelligent woman most of the time but this week I've turned into a part-time buffoon, lol.

Anyway, this is a card I made for a special man in my life whose birthday it was recently. The image is one that I purchased specifically for this card: it's called Dare and it's by Mo Manning - isn't she a very talented illustrator? The papers I bought specially to use with this image, so for a homemade card it was pretty expensive! 

As the chap in the image looked like a pilot or a driver from a bygone age, I thought I'd have a go at colouring him in a sepia monochrome theme. I chose the E40's family of Copics because there are 7 available shades in that group and I luckily had them all. First of all I did a rough colouring on printer paper with a 6B pencil to get an idea of the tonal values I'd use, then I printed out the image on colouring paper and got to work with the copics. This is the rough colouring next to the finished one:

The 2 papers are from Prima's Almanac pack, and I distressed the edges using a distressing tool. The quote by William Hazlitt comes with the Dare image, so I printed it out and aged the paper with some distress ink. The 'Expedition 1910' diecut is actually from a clothing label which was already deeply distressed. I simply used a nestie die to cut out a label shape and added some more distress ink around the edges. A chipboard cog from a set called Gears Galore by Make It Crafty, which I heat embossed with black powder, finishes it off.

The card has gone down very well - I even sang him Happy Birthday in Welsh, lol. Here's a couple of close ups of the sentiment and diecut:

I'd like to enter this in these challenges:
Anything Goes Challenge - Time or Steampunk (I went for a Steampunk look)
Aud Sentiments - Anything Goes
Bling It On - Monochrome
Copic Marker Europe - Monochromatic
Crafts & Me - Embossing (heat embossing on the black gear wheel)
Crafty Catz - Anything Goes
Crafty Mess Challenges - Distressing & Embossing
Creative Inspirations - Anything Goes
Here Comes The Boys - Hobbies (flying/driving)
Lollipop Crafts - Anything Goes
Kaboodle Doodles - Emboss It (heat embossing on the black gear wheel)
Poodles Parlour - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes
That Craft Place - One For The Boys
Truly Scrumptious - Distress & DieCuts/Punches (my die cut is the Expedition tag)
Wags N Whiskers - Distressing
Whimsy Inspirations - Distressing

Thanks so much for dropping by today - I hope you like my card, and I look forward to seeing you on your own blogs in the next day or so. 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!



A new toy

Afternoon bloggers :) Hope everyone is loved up and having a happy Valentines day.  I am a happy bunny at the moment as there is a new toy to play with, a bright shiny red laptop! It became obvious that the cheapo desktop computer wasn't very reliable and it was decided that a new one was necessary, it's not particularly fancy but it should be better than the old PC. I got all excited and had to hop from foot to foot when I realised that I could sit in bed and watch DVDs and even talk to you all WITHOUT WIRES!!!! Fancy that! I know that this is probably very old hat to most of the world, but technology has made very slow inroads into my home so believe me this is a big deal, lol.

Anyway, I thought that this card is quite appropriate today, this might be me very soon, blogging in my dressing gown and playing with the new toy.  Coloured in copics, I tried to make it as if the light from the laptop was illuminating her face but the light should have been a bit cooler than I've done it. It was an experiment though so I'm happy enough with it.

I am entering this in the Make It Colourful challenge, which this week is to add shadow and depth to your image, I hope I achieved it with my colouring.


Happy Crafting!
Carole x