STEPPIN'

R. Kelly's Steppin' in the Name of Love video is one of my all-time favs.   I love to dance.  Can't, but that doesn't mean I can't love to :)

For a Scraps of Colors challenge, we had to design around a song.  I knew right away which song I would do, already had the digi.  The image I used is a Robert Jackson digi called "Steppin'".  Had a chance to work on coloring whites, shadowing, and darker skin tones.  

Promarkers
Hair:  Cocoa, Cinnamon, and Tan

Skin:  Cinnamon and Walnut

  Completed card

Scraps of Color is a network that showcases African-American paper crafters.  You don't have to be African-American to join in the fun. 

Robert Jackson has a vast array of digis that represent the African-American community.  If you've been looking for something different to color, these may be the digis for you.

Thanks for stopping by

My Outlawz Creative Freebie Challenge Entry

August 25, 2012

This is a bear image created by Sandi Huggett over at The Outlawz.  I created it for their Creative Freebie Challenge.  Didn't post it with a sentiment there because I didn't want to miss the deadline.   This is the completed card. 

I used copics to color.  Don't you just love Tilda.  I'm amazed at how well I can get her colored now.  Lots and lots of practice.  But I can't just color Tildas, so my quest to conquer copics continues :)

Thanks for stopping by.

Hello, Hello, Hello. So Happy You're Here!

Thank you so much for coming over and following my blog so I could keep up with all of you lovely people.

For those of you who are not with us on the Provo Craft MB, I had decided not to renew my Circle membership based on principle.  However, once the new Circle cart was released I wanted it.  Cart is same price as membership.  To keep to my principles, I decided to buy the cart from someone who wanted to sell.  Each seller asked the same question "Why don't you buy the cart and use the membership?  You'll already have paid for it." 

The message board is my most favorite feature of the Circle.  If I bought the cart, I would miss all of you that I've gotten to know over the last 3 years.  So putting aside my principles, I decided to go ahead and take  advantage of the "perks" of being in the Circle.  Doesn't make much sense to deny myself the joy I get from participating in the message board.  So I'm with the Circle for another year.

 I watched a video by a woman who used Promarkers, and I loved her style of coloring.  I tried to replicate her coloring with the Copics, but it's not quite the same.   I'm going to be posting not just what I've done and learned with Copics but will be adding some Promarker comments as well.  If any of you use Promarkers, please feel free to share your wisdom with us.  We do appreciate it.

From time to time, I am going to pay tribute to those who regularly make good quality digital images available for free.  I love free digis, good quality free digis.  There are several that I make sure not to miss.  So I will color one or two of their digis, post a link to their site, and hopefully you guys will want to go over and check out their blogs or websites.

Here's a few things I've been coloring recently.  I hope you enjoy them.  Let me know what you think.

This little digi came from my Stretch 'N Bubbles stash.  This is the one where I used the Copics to try to get a Promarker look.



Same with this little girly.  She's one of the digis created by Anne Fenton from the Outlawz Creative Freebie Challenges.



This little gate image is another from The Outlawz Creative Freebie Challenge.  I colored Tilda to enter into Enfy's totally girly challenge, but I got a little intimidated and didn't enter anything.  How do you like my gray-haired Tilda walking with her little puppy all decked out in pink?

 

To those who came over, again I say thank you.  I will be focusing on my blog
and will try include some things that will be of interest to those of us who love to color.  As always, if there's something you want to ask questions about let me know.  I've got a lot of craft stuff, and I will give you my honest experience with a particular product.

Thanks for stopping by. 

BEEN COLORING...AGAIN

Here's another page from the coloring book "Blossoms and Butterflies" by Dover Publications.  This one is called "Giant Swallowtail with Geraniums". 

I used my Crayola color pencils, and I had to research the butterfly and 

geraniums to know what colors to use.  Remember with colored pencils, it's the white eraser and the kneaded eraser that you use to remove color or for blending.

 

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These pictures were taken with the light box light on.  

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I hope you were inspired to do some coloring.  Whether you use copics or pencils or watercolor, coloring can be fun and relaxing.  Try it, you might like it.  We're all learning together, so feel free to leave your comments or suggestions.  They are appreciated.

Thanks for stopping by!



Tilda Shopping

I love Tilda, and I'm so happy she's become one of my little girls.  I posted this one on the Cricut MB for the weekly color challenge and the monthly challenge.   I cleaned up an oopsie, so now she's just fine.  I used Paper Wishes specialty papers and Dazzles, and of course, my copics to color.

  

Tilda Shopping

My sisters and I were doll lovers.  We would play with paper dolls and Barbies for days on end.  Like little soap operas.   There was always tension for Ken whenever a GI Joe was around because we preferred GI Joes.  GI Joes had muscles, and they could bend and put their arm around Barbie instead of just straight out like Ken. LOL

To make our Barbies pregnant, we would tape these tiny little baby dolls that were put together by rubber bands to their stomach until the birth date.  Red yarn served as tubing for a blood transfusion.  We were an imaginative crew, and my mother's soaps sparked the inspiration.

I still have a love of dolls and paper dolls.  I used to wonder why old ladies seem to have a lot of dolls.  Now I know, not that I'm old, but I do have a hankering to play with and dress up dolls since I'm not as busy as I once was.

I fell in love with Magnolia's Tildas when I picked up my first issue of Cardmaker magazine.  Little did I know I would eventually have a small collection of my own.  I've been coloring them with copics, and when they turn out almost as beautiful as the ones I see in the magazines my heart is filled with joy, and I wish I could have that feeling every day, all the time.

Thanks for stopping by.

Snowman Card

I made this card for a friend of mine who's been sick.  She asked me to make her a snowman card, and so I did.

I made this card from one of my cardmaker kits from Paper Wishes.  Like I say, I can't come up with anything new, but I can follow direction.  Thank God for instructions.

Thanks for stopping by.

BEEN COLORING -- AND IT'S SO PRETTY!

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I like to color and wanted to get into copics but didn't feel comfortable on the MB trying to learn about a  non-PC product.  There were others who wanted the same info, so the blog, a place where I can go and make comments about my coloring projects, including copics, and a place to learn and share with and from others.

Today's project:

Can you guess what I used to color with?  Crayola 24-pk color pencils.  Yup!

I got this picture from a book of 16 stainned glass images on vellum to color called "Butterflies & Blossoms" by Dover Publications that I purchased from The Cracker Barrel restaurant.  If you've never been to Cracker Barrel, you should go, but not just to eat.  Each one has a general store where you can buy all sorts of goodies from days of yore and not so yore.

My lastest go-to book for using color pencils is "The Ultimate Guide to Colored Pencil"  by Gary Green.  I so love this book.  It covers everything you would ever want to know about using colored pencils, from the types of pencils available, to tools, to techniques, to color charts of some of the most popular brands of pencils.  It's in a hard cover binder so it lays flat and comes with a 55-minute DVD where the author leads you from start to finish on drawing and coloring a rose. 

Watching Gary on the DVD clarified techniques and terms related to colored pencils.  This was money well spent.  And improvement is immediate. 

Here are the tools and techniques I used for this project.

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White vinyl eraser

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Kneaded eraser 

Kneaded erasers are to colored pencils what colorless blenders are to Copics. They're like clay, and you can make them as large or as small as you want, small enough to get into the tiniest of spaces.  To clean the eraser you just knead it like clay,  so you can use the over and over again.  

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Light box  - Martha Stewart Craft Station

 The darker pictures have the light on my MS Craft Station turned off.

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Techniques:

In these next pictures you can see the debris left by the pencil.  You use the kneaded eraser to remove the debris, blend colors, and/or remove color.

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Working between the pencils and the erasers, you can lay as much color as you want, use the kneaded eraser to remove debris, blend, and leave a smooth, shiny finish.

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 The following are pictures at various stages of the project.  Some have been zoomed in, some are darker or lighter, some show before and/or after blending.

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The finished product is transparent (vellum), intensely colored, beautifully blended, with a smooth and shiny finish.

This project was fun, relaxing, and satisfying.  If you have any questions or comments about this project or post, please feel free to leave them.  This is a learning experience, and your comments are very helpful and encouraging.

Thanks for stopping by!