Song Birds...

Hello there crafty peeps. Another Thursday is upon us again and along with that is another Twisted Thursday challenge over at the Outlawz.

I'm sure that most of the blogs you have been visiting lately are talking about Mother's Day. 

As we all know Mother's Day is a celebration honoring mothers and celebrating motherhood, maternal bonds and the influence of mother's in our society. 

One of the nice things about making cards or just crafting in general is that it gives you the freedom to create something unique to an individual. 

Something that perhaps reflects that persons personality, talents, attributes and so on.

My artistic interpretation to celebrate my wonderful mother has been entitled; Song Birds, for she is and always will be the song within my heart.

This beautiful image is just one of five in a collection called; Birds In my Hair from adayfordaisies.com

I find them to be so beautiful and graceful. I just had to have them because I didn't have anything in my collection that was grown up if you will. 

Everything I own seems to be either cute, adorable, whimsical, or wacky and that is not how I see my mother. 

My mother is one of the kindest, most gentlest souls I know and she has taught me a lot in my lifetime. This image truly reflects how I feel about the wonderful woman who gave me life, and  I count my blessing everyday that I still have her to talk to. 

I coloured the image with my Copic markers, and used a cream Viva Decor Pearl Pen to add tiny pearls to her awesome hair. I also added them to the centers of the flowers that I made using a MS punch. The DP are from DCWV's The Far East mat stack. Next I coloured a pearl stick pin with my Copic markers for that finishing touch.

I know there is a Mother's Day challenge going on over at Through the Classroom Door, so I think I will enter it there as well as the following:

Crafts and Me Challenges Favourite Color Combo 

and

My Mums Craft Shop Challenges Embossing

On behalf of all the gals over at the Twisted Thursday challenge group, I would like to wish you and yours a blessed Mother's Day. 

If you have the time please drop by their personal blogs to show them some love or better still, join us for our Mother's Day challenge over at the Outlawz. Let's see what your artistic interpretation is!

Thanks for stopping by :)S

Hello Little Lady...

Hey there crafty peeps! 

I was blog hopping over the weekend and came across this challenge blog called (Pin)spirational Challenges, created by Deanne Clarke-Saunders. It is a relatively new challenge blog, and Deanne has a call out for card-makers and scrapbookers alike to help her get started, in case anyone is interested. 

If you are familiar with Pinterest, then you will connect with it right away. A cool thing about her site is that she offers free Digi images to compliment each challenge so that you can use it for inspiration. How nice is that? So hop on over and take a look yourself, you just might be looking for an opportunity like this. 

I took advantage of this free little Digi image so I could participate in her very first challenge, but I got side-tracked over the holiday weekend and completely forgot about it. When I looked to see when the challenge closed I had less than an hour to complete a card. Now, this gal doesn't like to rush her artistic skills so needless to say I opted out of the challenge. I did make a card though using the image, and will likely hunt around to see if it qualifies at another challenge somewhere else in blog-land. Hopefully I will have the time to grab another free Digi and play along on challenge #2. 

The challenge that I missed was to design a card/layout by taking your inspiration from a photo of these adorable and yummy looking ladybug cookies. I downloaded this image from a link the site provided that directed me to a blog called Little Scraps of Heaven Designs. The Digi image was simply called 

"Little Lady Bug".

I printed this little cutie on Neenah card-stock, and then coloured her with my Copic markers. I don't usually use sketches because I prefer to design my own, but on this particular occasion I decided to use one. 

I followed a sketch that I found over on "I Need a Sketch" in group 30. I thought it to be a perfect sketch that kept within the circle theme of a round little ladybug. I cut all the circles out with my SB small standard circle dies, and pulled the colours from the image. I know that is backwards, but I can be backwards at times too. I embossed some of them using my CB dots embossing folder. 

I did a little experiment this time with my Black Viva Decor Pearl Pen and used it to give the black spots and antennae some depth. I think it turned out pretty good actually. Then I pop dotted the image up to further enhance the dimension.

The border is from EK Success and the flower/ladybug embellies I had kicking around forever. See, you just never know when you will use something, so never ever throw things like that away.

To finish everything off, I decided to combine peel and stick letters with a computer printed sentiment to create a little hello card for one of the girlie girls in my life. Ooh, I wonder who it will be???

The ribbon ties it all up (no pun intended) into a neat little package! 

So there you have it, the card I didn't make in time for a challenge. Oh well, I still enjoyed making it for my stash. 


Just a tidbit more...I found a couple of challenges that my little lady bug can enter:


Simon Says Stamp! Challenge Blog - April Showers brings Spring Flowers (well one flower and a cute little ladybug) :)
and
Just Keep Creating Challenge Blog - Anything Goes


Thanks for stopping by :)S