Jukeboxes and Elvis?

 Aloha friends,

The theme this month at Splitcoaststampers is Jukebox. Jukeboxes remind me of the 50s-70s when we had to pay a nickel (or more) to hear our favorite songs at restaurants or other public establishments. At home we would listen to the radio or play a record that we bought. I was happy when they replaced 8 tracks with cassette tapes. Music CDs came and went. Now people just stream from somewhere out there? That's a song, too.

The number one song ever played on a jukebox was Elvis Presley's Hound Dog. I had no idea. 

When we used to live in central Oregon, we often drove over the Santiam Pass or over Highway 2 next to Mount Hood. It's so breathtaking! The Santiam Highway runs along the river with trees and mountains on both sides of the road. I have a lot of fond memories of the Cascade Mountains. Although we didn't have a diner along the road there, I do remember eating at diners on the east coast. 

After sketching the background, I stamped the dog and used Copic markers to color the scene. His giant bone is popped up with the little red bow. The sentiment is printed and popped up. Thank you for coming by. PS I'm now a Dirty Girl at SCS. 

Stamp: "Doggie Kisses" by Art Impressions (the doggie)

Ink: Memento Rich Cocoa (for the doggie)

Cardstock: Accent White Opaque 120#, SMS Black 80#, GKD Cherry Red 80#

Rounded Rectangle die from SMS (sentiment)

Pencil & Copic Markers

Adhesive Foam Tape

Red Twine

Stickles Diamond & Wink of Stella

Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your visits and comments!

Flotnar! Seafaring Viking!

Aloha! or God tag!

Thar be vikings, argh! Let the voyage begin!

We have a good friend and each time I see him, I see a viking! I've always told him this and he laughs! So yesterday he stopped by for a short visit with Bruce and me and I knew it's time to get that card made for him. And here it is!

Years ago I even bought this little stamp set just to make our friend a viking card. While he does not have any facial hair, he is very muscular, fair and has light reddish hair - viking to me! He has muscles on his muscles. After a few minutes, I had to go rest and Bruce spent the rest of an hour or so with him. They had a great time talking about building things.

I looked online for old viking ships and sketched this one out with the mountains, rocks and the hill he is standing on. It's supposed to be a full, moonlit night reflecting on the water. The oars are pulled into the ship (use your imagination). And there is nothing sparkly or shiny on this whole card (yup, haven't done that in a long time).


Stamp Set: "Viking" by Avery Elle
Ink: Soft Glow by GKD
Copic Markers, color pencils, black Copic multiliner
Hammerhill Color Card 110#, GKD Black

Thank you for stopping by!

Quiet Forest

Aloha,

How are you? It's Friday! This is also the last segment of the Mini Copic Coloring Course - Autumn. It was a bit terrifying, just like her Drawing 101 course, but sometimes we need a little fear to push us onward.

If you decide to take this course, heads up. Near the end of the video while you are coloring along with Sandy, she will joke about cardmakers. I laughed so hard with my marker in hand, that I boo-boo'd really bad. There is no sentiment or sequin large enough to cover it up so I turned it into a few more trees. And now YOU know, what to expect...

Cardstock: GKD (my fav cardstock)
Layering card from SMS, Maroon
Copic Markers

Mahalo for stopping ~ Enjoy the weekend ♥

Ninja Warrior

Aloha dear ones,

I hope you and your loved ones are as well as can be, especially with the fierce flu bug going all over the place.

This scene was done with several Copic BV (blue violet) markers, one B60 markers and one C5 cool grey marker. When you take the Copic coloring courses online from instructors (this one is from 4th Part Copic Mini Autumn Scenes) you can look at your Copics or Sandy's Hex Chart and find similar colors to what are used in video tutorials. Don't be afraid (of this forest muwahh ah ah).  This will probably go to our youngest grandson ♥

Stamp Set "Ninja Mazing" by My Favorite Things
Cardstock GKD
Inks: Colored by Copic Markers; outlined with Memento Black
Spectrum Noir Clear Glitter Brush Marker (Oh, it's so fun to see all the glitter as you "walk through the tunnel).
Scotch Double Side Adhesive foam; Double Stick tape; Sharpie white paint pen

And the shimmer---

Mahalo for stopping by!

And aloha ♥

Feed the Bears

Aloha ♥

Part 3 of the Mini Copic Art Course: Autumn Scenes by Sandy Allnock. Note to self- color during the daylight, not at night. I had to add a bear to the scene as well as a little sign with a marker glued to his hand LOL! Guilty bear!

Everything is done with Copics plus the Bear stamp. The rest we have to use our imagination. Mine always seem to look like a scary fairy tale forest. What on earth is up with that?

Stamp Set: My Favorite Things "Bear Necessities"
Cardstock: GKD 120# white and Neenah 80# white, SMS Yellow layering
Adhesive Foam Tape
Glossy Accents
Sharpie White Paint maker; Tombow Tux Black marker

Aloha and Mahalo for stopping by :* kisses!

Penguins and Roasted Marshmallows

Aloha! I love penguins! They usually mate for life and have the fluffiest little cute babies ever! And they waddle. What's not to love?

When I have insomnia, I love to watch coloring videos on YouTube. They are soothing and I learn lots of "stuff." One of my favorites is Sandy Allnock! Be sure you watch some of her skills with coloring tools like Copics, watercolors and color pencils. Here is a link to her spectacular BLOG. I hope you'll check out her amazing talents!

I've been striking out on my own, figuring out how to create scenes with little images I have. It is SCARY. The process puts fear into me. But when done, (keep going because there's usually a period of a hot mess to work through) sometimes I end up with a scene that makes me smile, inside and out. It's a challenge though. I hope you give this a try! I just grab a light marker and start sketching. I masked the fire and hats, then created the bowl of marshmallows because one on a stick just isn't plausible, right? Then I dragged some markers around to create the northern (I guess southern if it's penguins) lights, covered it with Wink of Stella, Crystal Lacquer and created a starry sky. Penguin love ♥


Stamp Set: Reverse Confetti "S'more Love"
Copic Markers
GKD Cardstock
Wink of Stella Clear glitter pen
Sharpie White marker (stars)
3D Crystal Lacquer

Mahalo for stopping by!

Wishing you the very best for the weekend and weeks ahead ♥

My Hero, a Weekend Warrior Bandit

Aloha!

We are remodeling (well, Bruce is) our home. 1 wall is pretty much off the house and tarps, sheets hang down to keep a few of the bugs out (not working). At least today Bruce is finishing the front entrance flooring so we won't have to use a ladder to get into and out of the house (whew, I hate ladders). Bruce is trying to get as much as he can done during the month off from work. Poor guy. He'll be 79 this year. I wish I could get up and help him like years ago when we worked on homes as a team, and I loved to landscape, even pull weeds :)  Yup, weeding was therapy, went by quickly and my mind cleared like the weeds I pulled. Now? Cardmaking is my speed, and slow at that.

You know, I can't help but gush over my main man - Bruce, I love you and don't know what words to say how much. You've taught me everything about building and doing-it-yourself whenever possible. I am posting pics on FaceBook as Bruce goes through all the process of moving the front door, building a new entrance porch, ripping out and installing a new kitchen, then tearing off and re-roofing the house and garage. As you can imagine, prayers are fervent on this end. With his age, Hawai'ian heat, and a pacemaker, my baby is at the top of my concerns. And as always, much love to all of you, too ♥

Entered into Art Impressions Slide On By Challenge

Stamp Set: Art Impressions "Weekend Warrior"
Inks: Memento inks (direct to embossing, bushes and grass in scene) and Copic Markers (all the house planks behind him are Copic markers with nails from Sakura navy gel pen)
Cardstock: GKD Sand, American Crafts dark brown & Neenah Solar White
Dies: SB circles and Tim Holtz tag dies; SU circle punch
Perfect Pearls in black, Woodgrain embossing folder, lots of adhesive foam (had no clue how to engineer this slider) and sketched in the house and flowers for the scene. Sakura navy gel pen and 3D Crystal Lacquer. His tools are colored to be DeWalt and his hat was supposed to be like a Home Depot hat. Add some lines on the shirt to make it plaid-like. Twine SU Crumb Cake (I think).

 The "card" is a shallow box, so I wrote a note on the back)

Open (Bruce was tickled and laughed when he pulled the image out==success!)

Thank you for coming by!!

Much aloha to each of you ♥

Leeward Layers with Wacky Wabbit

Aloha there, yet again! Yes, I'm back for the third post in one day. Mark that on your calendars please.

Layers. Lots of layers. Mine has turned out to be laughable, leeward (or the side opposite the endless waves here in island living) layers. You see, I didn't want to have 10-20 layers of everything on top of my card. So I did some flat layers. Cut some scrap paper into hill shapes, then use them as masks to ink some colors and "make" hills and a garden. As you sponge the hills and sky onto the card, it sorta looks like a layered look, right? No? Yes? YOU betcha! "I gotta be ME! I GOTTA be ME!" (If you are unfamiliar with that song from the 60s, well, I cannot help you.)

When I saw this stamp set, I had a deep belly laugh. All I could see was a bunny stealing away, munching on someone's beautiful garden of delights. So after stamping, coloring and fussy cutting all the images out, I cut slits into the basic layer and slid those veggies in, like they are growing out of the dirt. See the mouthful missing on the middle carrot? Bunny did it. He is laughing and high-tailing it out of there.

Everything is fussy cut and popped up with foam: bunny, veggies, trees, house, clouds (die cut). I drew cultivation lines across the center hill and used Copic Cool Grays to create shadows all over.

Can't believe I am able to enter a card into a challenge. It's been a long, long, long, time. But Paper Smooches Layering Challenge this one is for you ♥


Three Paper Smooches stamp sets: "Green Thumb," "Bitty Bungalows" and "Squeaky Clean" (I used the "dust bunny" from Squeaky Clean LOL. The other bunny I had from PS would have been like a Godzilla Bunny but that is an idea for a different card)
MFT cloud dies
Cardstock: GKD 120# white and Neenah 80# Solar White
Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, Bamboo Leaves, New Sprout, Summer Sky, Rich Cocoa
Copic Markers
Lots of adhesive foam squares, some doubled up to give more height and dimension
Wink of Stella, Signo white gel pen for highlights, Perfect Pearls "Buttercup" and "Ruby Red" (for the stones lining the rock walkway, the apples in the trees and flowers in window boxes)

Run bunny run. See bunny run? Run bunny run!

As always, I thank you sincerely

for stopping by and leaving some love ♥

Desert Arrangement

It's me again - aloha! Over the last few weeks I've been coloring. Little by little, I put the pieces into cards. This is a Hero Arts stamp set filled with all kinds of succulent plants that I stamped and cut masks for, then piled them on top of each other to create a desert-type plant arrangement in a clay pot.

Coloring quiets the inner soul. (And in the loooong run, it's even cheaper than therapy! So COLOR ON, especially when life happens and you just have to turn off the news.)

While I cannot recall which pattern paper pack the background is from, it does have some brush strokes for a texture-like look, but quiet and simple.

I took a long time stamping, masking, cutting, stamping, masking, cutting, then coloring until my heart's content. I hoped this to be a masculine card to surprise a friend who is also a stamper at STV but his age and health are really restricting him and hope this will bring a smile to his heart. Cause that's why we make cards. We send smiles across the miles to all our buddies, connected by the invisible thread of cardmaking. It's a love that is real, palpable, and lessens the loneliness we all feel, especially after losing a mate like our stamping buddy this is going to.

Stamp Set: Hero Arts "Stamp Your Own Succulents" (yes, it's really called that)
Cardstock by GKD
Image and background colored with Copic markers (BGs and YGs, Gs, Es, Cool Grays and a couple Bs) (no, I don't keep track. it's a hobby, not a profession) Use the Blender Marker to create white swirlies or dots in your background for some interest.

Here is a link to see this ultra cool stamp set that you can combine any which way you want to: HA Stamp Your Own Succulents

With lots of aloha to each one of you. 

Spread the love and mail your cards to make hearts smile ♥

House Mouse Lilacs

Short post since this is on my phone. The background is just the chisel end of a pale Copic, I believe Y00. The lilacs have pinks, light blues and violet colors pointillism into the flowers, Each mouse has a bit of blush on cheeks and ears. The shadows are CG 1 and CG3. The sequins are glued with MMM (multi matte medium).

For the House Mouse Challenge this week.

Stamp: Fragrant Shower, Stampabilities
Copic Markers
Memento Black Marker
GKD card stock white, Bazzill Purple
Wink of Stella (WoS)
Pretty Pink Posh sequins

Aloha, thank you for

Visiting and leaving some love!!!

Copic Class Day 10 - Creating Backgrounds

Hi friends,

Today's try went better than yesterday's. I stayed away from the grays which I am still waiting for refills to arrive.  The colors are mostly within one family group - the browns. Even the pinks you see are from the E group in Copic markers (Earth tones). For the background, I used BG10, the lightest I have in that group. I then used the Blender or "0" pen to soften the outer edges. No bling, no Wink of Stella. The birds are only here because a deep smudge turned up. My hands are very clean, so it must have been from a marker tube or its lid.

It's a lovely stamp set, similar to yesterday's, both by Phyllis Harris. This one is called " ...and for a moment" -- I love it!!! It reminds me of when I was a teenager, taking care of horses at summer camp. I would get up very early each morning, and with another girlfriend, we would care for our horses, saddle up, and take off freely through the woods and pine trees of the Pacific Northwest. Ahhh, another lifetime ago.

GKD Ivory 80# cardstock, no layers. Signo Gel pen white -- dots on her little dress.

I am going to cry when this class is over. I have THOROUGHLY enjoyed each day. Highly recommend you take it, even if you want independent study because it's overflowing with video tutorials, overflowing!

Link to Online Card Classes

Again, thank you so VERY much for taking the

time to visit, to comment ♥