Great Impressions and Doodle Pantry

Hope everyone had a great time visiting all of the great stops on the Operation Write Home Memorial Day Blog Hop!  Then this last weekend there was the Great Impressions Blog Hop.  Check that one out if you missed it.  They have some great cards and really nice stamps.  Some of the stamps are fundraisers for OWH.  The highlight of the hop was sketch number 227 shown as a rectangle or circle.

 

So first I tried the rectangle and decided to make it manly for the Doodle Pantry Digital Challenge #47.   I really like their images for cards.  They work so well with my Silhouette.

 

 

Then I tried the circle sketch using the Doodle Pantry June Fundraiser image.  It's on sale for a few more days.  Do check it out!

 

 

A few months ago, I found a bunch of pencil pouches at the local thrift store.  They are perfect for organizing card kits.  I can fit up to a dozen card kits in one pouch.   They keep them clean and organized until ready to go.   They lay flat and make them easy to pack for class.

 

 

Another item I found useful is pet food bags.  Washed and cut, they make great craft mats for class.

 

Hope you are all ready for a great summer! 

 

 

 

 

OWH Birthday Party Card Class

I enrolled in the Operation Write Home Birthday Party card class.  There are several neat tutorials and videos in the class.  I finally finished a few of my cards from the class.  Here's the results:

I think they came out kind of cute.  I tried coloring different skin colors for the faces and outfits with Copics.   The stamps are from My Favorite Things and I used cardstock from my stash.

Copic Skin Tones and Hair Colors

Now that I am in the middle of the CreativeLearning.com classes, I've started to experiment with coloring skin and hair.  I found this cute little digi by Kenny K and thought it might be a good image to practice on.  I just might be getting this coloring thing down so I can improve my card images.  Here's my latest attempt:

I colored the skin on the blond with E00, E11, and E13 and her hair is YR20, YR21 and E31.  My favorite is the redhead.  Her hair is YR14, YR18, and E09 and her skin is E00, E000 and BV000.  The Latino skin colors are E11, E13, E15 and BV11 with hair colors of E37, E39, and E79.  The black skin was done with E33, E35, E37 and BV11 with the hair done in E79, E57 and 100. 

Next lesson is to do a real person's face.  That should really be a challenge.    Hope I can master it!

Taking a Card Class

Most of my crafting friends in my community have gone North for the summer.  Really miss those folks!  So to fill the void, I decided to take a card making class at She Scrapbooks in The Villages.   You can see her blog at: http://www.she-scrapbooks.blogspot.com/.  The class was about making masculine cards.  Since Operation Write Home is always asking for Masculine cards, I thought this would be just the thing to do.  Here's the results:

 

To make the cards, we used embossed backgrounds, distressed and inked them.  Then chipboard accents were added.  They were inked with two colors of distress inks and then clear embossed.  It's been a long time since I have embossed but it was fun to get back to using it.  I think they came out very well and I'm sure I'll use this on other cards. 

On a trip to Michael's, I found the cutest ever sock monkey magnets in the clearance section.  I thought they would make perfect cards for kids. 

 

Each one had accessories to go with them and I had just the right papers in my stash to go with them.  I really like the chef monkey.  The background was perfect for his outfit. The camo monkey just needed to be in the forest.  The background I used there was a scrap I had left over from as 12X12 sheet.  Unfortunately it had a big chunk out of it.  So I had to get creative in the placement of the monkey to cover that part up.  I think the card works ok.   I still have a Sheriff and Rock Star monkey left.  I'll have to mull those over before I come up with the right backgrounds for those two.  These were just so much fun to work with. 

 

All of these cards have found their way to Operation Write Home.  Hope all my friends are having a crafty summer and will be back in the fall ready for some more fun.  Keep cool.  It's been hot, muggy, and very wet here.