Monday, December 26, 2011

A few cards from the last two months

As long as I have the time tonite, I'll post a few cards that I made recently.
Here are some birthday cards.  





This red badge card I made for my Max's 1ast birthday.
 

I only made a few Christmas type cards.




 And, I made only a few Chanukah cards.









 I used a variety of either stamps, peel offs, or pictures I found on the web to design these cards.  


I haven't had time to use my Copic markers much with my holiday cards. I had so little time that I just made them as simply as possible.  


So for now, that's all I have to post.
Happy New Year to everyone out there. Let's hope this year is the year of improvements for all!
Lois...

Oh, My...Two Months have gone by!


It seems that as I get older, time goes by too quickly.  Here it is December 26th and almost the new year of 2012.  I have been busy with work, travel and making a few cards for events.  My job keeps me busy 5 days a week.  I work in a busy office and my duties including managing the daily coming and goings of mail, deliveries, greeting guests, catering meals, being liaison with the building management, managing a small side business for my boss and assisting other departments when necessary.  Right now one gal who also manages a small business within our company is going on maternity leave, so I will do her chores as well. So, I keep busy all during the day.  I commute to and from work, so I arrive home very tired. If I'm lucky, I have enough energy to work on my cards possibly one hour in an evening.  I try to get to my craft table during the weekends.  
   My grandson Max became one year old on December 8th.  I flew to Hawaii on the 7th and returned home on the 13th.  It was a short but wonderful visit with my beautiful, fun and delightful grandson.  Of course I spent time with my son and his wife...who are also the best!!!
  


Here is a picture of my kids at Max's luau birthday party when everyone was singing Happy Birthday to him and Max just joined in the fun too.  Jackie and Eric are there with great smiles on their faces as well.  It was a great party and that tired little boy just partied on. 


So, for now, this is my posting.  I will post some pictures of some cards I made these past two month as soon as I can.
Happy New Year all !
Lois...

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

October just flew by .....

I was hoping to post earlier this month, but life seems to have a way of moving along just a wee bit too fast!
  
I'm still working on my Copic lessons and have made a few cards in between my practicing.  I'll post a few here now:  


This card was made from this practice piece:  

The above card is a funky card using alcohol inks and a stamp.  I am still a bit collage challenged.



Here's another card made for my office.  A young man was getting married.  I make the card, the employees sign the card and donate a little money to send him on his honeymoon.  


I made this as a birthday card for my daughter-law's mother.  This card is full of sparkle that can't be seen from this scan.

This cat was a practice cat for my Copics.  It  came out good enough to make a card with it.


The following are just Copic practice pieces.







I'm getting better with the Copics, but I still have two more classes to finish in the Suzanne Dean series.  Each class has as many 15 videos teaching various methods.  So, it is a long process and will continue leaning all through the coming New Year.

Be well all !  I hope to post again soon!
Lois...

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

I guess I missed my August posting

It is not easy to find time to post on a blog.  Working full time, taking care of a house, husband, and two cats, leaves little time to myself.  Actually, I do believe that my husband Ron manages the cats' lives.  Having geriatric cats with various illnesses is almost a full time job.  Ron is semi-retired engineer and works from home.  As the old saying goes:  Ron and the cats are one.  LOL  Still life gets busy around our house.  So tonite I have a small window of time to do a quick post. 
    I am still practicing my Copic Markers and trying to watch the videos on Suzanne Dean's site.  With the small amount of time I have to work on my card making, I have made a few cards and done some practice work.  So, here goes:  These are a few practice pictures using the Copics. 






Here are some cards with a variety of styles:

This is the card with the completed window image I displayed last time with only the wood.



Since I scan and not photograph my cards, it is difficult to see the three dimensional dots and glitter on this card.  It is so much brighter in natural light.



I love this cat stamp and finally designed the right card for it.



This red card is full of glitter and dimension.  I haven't decided the occasion for this one yet.







This next card is so much prettier in the light.  I glued a 3-dimensional flower onto a strip of paper with similar flowers on it.  The ribbon is velvet.



The next card seems so peaceful to me.  






This is a fun birthday card. I love the combination of paper and affects

It's time for me to get to bed.  I hope that I am not so tardy at posting for next time.
I'll try to post some current Max pictures.
Lois...

Monday, July 18, 2011

Copics - the Journey Continues

Life gets busy, especially when I want to spend more time practicing with my Copics.  I'm now in the Second Class and I've viewed many of the videos, but I'm still working on the first 6 videos.  There is so much to learn and practice is necessary, so I'm moving slowly.
   But, I have done some work.  Here is a practice picture.

Here is a card I made with the picture:

 I'm not quite sure I like the card, but for now it will do.


This is just a practice picture to color wood.  I do need to finish it with color.


I gave this card to my friend at work, Aaron S., who was married this past weekend.  This is an embossed image made with my Cuttlebug machine and an embossing die.  The paper is a layered paper with two colors.  I used a fine sandpaper to bring out the raised image to the color lavender underneath.  It is a nice affect.  



 I'm not sure how I feel about this next card.  I made it quickly to present to an employee who's wife just had a baby boy. I didn't have time to stamp and color, so I used what I had in stock. 
My cards are passed around the office for people to sign and donate towards a gift.




 This next card will be given to my boss David for his birthday on July 22nd.  I love that stamp and have used it often.  It always make me smile. I hope that David gets a chuckle out of it too.



So, for now, this is what I've been doing and what I've produced.  
More to come as I continue my Copic quest!
Lois...
 

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Still working with my Copics

Wow, two posts in one month!  I've been busy working on Class 1 of Suzanne Dean's Copic class.  I finally received my orders for markers and paper and now I'm moving along a little faster.  After viewing all the videos and doing some assignments, I have been going back and reviewing the parts that I feel I'm weak in...which is most of it. LOL  
Anyway...there are two occasion cards I made that have Copic colored images.   I am posting them below. It will be a good comparison to see how I improve as I go along. These are surely examples of a beginner:

This first one has a gross error. The stamp produced a black nose and I know that cats have pink noses, for the most part.  I tried to make it pink and it came out awful.  But, my friend will forgive me, I'm sure.



The card above was fun to make.  It is for my grandnephew's birthday on June 25th.  


It's late and I need to get my beauty sleep.  I'll try to write more soon.
Lois...

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Copic Markers: a real challenge

I had been researching for a local class for instructions on how to use Copic Markers.  I didn't know where to start to learn to use them except from some disjointed YouTube classes.  Then, my fellow card maker from Diana Kovacs' classes, Kim Bell, told me about Suzanne Dean's online classes.  I checked out her website and blog and have since started with the first class that has an organized agenda with plenty of backup material for the videos.  Check out her blog:  www.scrapbitz.blogspot.com. 
And, click on her "Color Me Creative" badge on the right of my page.

Since I am not an natural artist, but a real amateur, I find the classes a challenge.  I understand about color and shading but I truly need instruction on how to handle the ink in the markers as well as what combination of colors work best for shading.  I have found her classes hard work, but fun! There are four classes, each with many videos that are organized from basic techniques to more professional methods to get the most out of your coloring.  I am at the end of the first class starting to view the extra videos she has posted beyond the class curriculum.  


Here is a full sheet I scanned of examples of my test pictures (homework...yeah! Suzanne assigns homework !!)  from the first class.  Suzanne uses Magnolia stamps.  I have none, so I printed some out to play with, watermarks and all.  The others pics are of either stamped or printed pictures.


This scan doesn't seem to appear any bigger, but you can see that my work is still in the testing stages and needs more practice.  

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I did made a few new cards I'd like to post:


The above card was attempt to color using Prisma Colored Pencils, which I really enjoy using. The Copic class is giving me new insight on shading and have used that with my pencils.  This is also a learning experience.  I am planning on taking Suzanne's colored pencil class after I complete the Copic classes.



I love pretty paper.  I have become a collector more than a user with all the  pads of beautiful printed papers I have stored away.  The piece of paper I used here is a corner of a large 12 x 12 sheet.  It is so colorful and fun.  I added the black bling at the top, the bloom stamp and what you can't see is the glitter enhanced edges of the butterfly.  I think it looks better live.




The background paper is from Stampington from one of their  publications.  I saved it from last year and finally found a use for this piece.  It is simple and to the point and a little crooked. LOL



I love peel-offs.  You can get very creative with them.  Instead of an inked image, a foil one gives the object more dimension.  Here I painted the colors with  LuminArte's H2O and US Art Quest's iridescent mica water colors.  I used Inksentials Glossy Accent to pop out the colors in the flowers and stems.  It looks much nicer live.

So much else is going on in life.  My baby Max is growing and is soooo big and healthy.  He and his parents come east for two weeks to see family after almost 3 years in Hawaii.  I spent some time with him and breathed in every precious moment I had to be with him.  He's still my little buddy.  I'll post some pics of him soon.
  I hope everyone on the east coast is enjoying this warm weather after a very long cool wet Spring.  There are other parts of this country and around the world where the weather patterns have not been a blessing.  We have been very lucky!! 
  Well, it is hot here in my little studio space and I need to get into an air conditioned room. LOL
  Be well and stay cool!
Lois...