One More Sketch

At least it's not another body sketch.  Among the many hats I wear at work, I'm also yearbook adviser.  Although the 2012 yearbook hasn't arrived yet, I'm already in planning mode for the 2013 and one of the first things that needs to be done is the cover design.  I'm meeting with my brand new staff next week so I'm planning on showing them this sketch.  I try to incorporate what's popular into the yearbook cover as much as possible.  Our 2010 yearbook cover was in the style of the Twilight book cover, last year's had a Facebook theme, and this year's will look a poster for Glee.  The Hunger Games is the new flavor, so I want to bring that into next years book.  Instead of the mockingjay pin that features prominently in the trilogy, I used our mascot, the Indian, and turned him into the circle pin.  We'll see how my staff feels about it, what suggestions they have, and what the cover artist at the yearbook company says!

Big Feet

I promise this will be the last drawing of a person for awhile, mainly because tomorrow is the last day my students will be working on this unit, lol!  I know the feet are too big and out of proportion with her body, but I draw them in colored pencil and could only erase so much, so I just had to roll with it.  More importantly I really love the dress I drew her wearing...I wish I could sew because I'd totally make a dress like this for myself!

Christmas Lights

This is another one of those Pinterest ideas I've been meaning to try for awhile.  These little Christmas lights are nothing more than my son's fingerprints.  He's 3 and absolutely loved sticking his fingers on an ink pad and then tapping them on the white cardstock.  I let him make prints wherever he felt like and then added the cord later, instead of trying to get him to follow a line.  I think a lot of the family members will be getting these for Christmas!

Supply List
Stamps: Christmas Punch (retired hostess)
Cardstock: Whisper White, Real Red, Always Artichocke
Ink: Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise
Accessories: Scallop Oval punch, toddler

Two for Tuesday

First up is a quick MDS card.  This would be a simple card to make with supplies you have on hand.  Just two layers, a stamp set, and an ink pad.  This would also be pretty sas a diecut card with the Whisper White cut so the Island Indigo can peek through.

Also finished the drawing I posted last night.  I'm not crazy about the look of the right hand but I'm thrilled with how the jeans look! 

Unfinished was Good Enough for Picasso...

I have a chest cold and took some Mucinex this morning, which made me totally loopy for the rest of the day.  No matter what I did, I couldn't focus on anything big, but little things, like looking down at a drawing, I could seem to handle.  I'm about an hour and a half into this sketch and obviously I'm not finished yet but the whole problem of not being able to focus did me in.  Even writing this post has taken me way too long!  Hopefully, I'll get this finished in the next few days to post.

Family Photos

I'm one of those people who are notorious for taking tons of photos, and then never doing anything with them.  Fortunately, my mom gave me this lovely frame for my anniversary last year, so I finally did something about that.  Because of the colors of the frame, I decided I didn't want color photos, so I changed them all to a sepia tone before having them printed.  Not really a craft, but it's the only thing I actually accomplished today!

Buttons 'n' Brads

The main elements in this bracelet, the buttons and brads, are all Stampin' Up! products!  The brads are from the Antique Brads collection and the buttons are from the Button Bouquet collection.  Both have just been kind of lying around.  I'm not sure why I don't incorporate these things into my cards more often, but it was a lot of fun making the bracelet out of them.  Obviously, all I added were some gold jump rings and a clasp.  I did have to do a little work to the brads though.  The openings on the one side were too small for a jump ring.  Fortunately, I was able to use the small file from my SU! distressing kit to enlarge the opening enough for a medium jump ring.

Wand Bling

One of our vacation activities was playing MagiQuest for the first time.  If you've never played, it's almost like a cross between being Harry Potter and being in your own video game.  To play, you get a wand which is yours to keep and contains all your game data.  You use your wand to go on quests, collecting different runes and things like that.  As you travel through the various magical realms in the building, you can activate and collect different things just by pointing your wand at something with the flick of your wrist.  (The flick is important!)  We all played, from my three-year-old son to my sixty-five-year-old father, and everyone had a blast.  There's another MagiQuest in a Great Wolf Lodge not far from where we live so we hope to play again soon.

The only problem?  My son, husband, and I all wound up with the same wand.  Normally they have about six styles to choose from, but the Pigeon Forge one was out of most and only had two styles in stock.  I'm not really a gold person, I'd take silver any day, but the wand that had silver was also bright red and black with big lightning bolts on it - not my thing.  So I went with this one since it was a bit more subtle and I knew I could dress it up.  As fun as it is, MagiQuest is also a money sucker and they sell all kinds of decorative wand toppers and design kits so you can "customize" your wand.  I'll customize my way, thanks.  So I did some quick wire bead links, looped a band of gold wire around the wand, and attached my beads.  It's a start and I think I'll add more as we go along and complete different things, but I like it so far.

Racing with Grandpa

One of our favorite activites while in the Pigeon Forge area is visiting The Track, a recreation center with multiple go-kart tracks, kids rides, arcade games, mini golf, and more.  My son adores riding in the go-karts with my husband.  On this trip, my dad came along too, so he got to ride with Grandpa, which he told us afterwards was "Awesome!"

Another MDS project, using square punches to create a checkered flag border.

Love my boys

Using some more vacation pictures and MDS for some fast scrapbooking spreads. Actually, both this and the project from yesterday are 5x7 postcards. So I could stick them in frames or put them on a bigger piece of cardstock if I want to put them in a scrapbook.

Moms and their boys

A little MDS collage with a couple of pictures from vacation last week. I always love browns and blues mixed together and the digital tape is such a fun enhancement to play with!

Baby Book

One of the things you can create in MDS is a journal. You design the covers and the inside is filled with lined pages if you have it printed through SU!'s printing place. I designed this to be a baby journal for a new mother - a perfect place to jot down all those milestones.

Vacation!

Hey all, sorry I didn't post anything last night. It's early Saturday morning and my family and I are getting ready to head out on vacation for the week. I was so busy packing last night that I didn't get to do any crafting! We will be staying in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the cabin we rented does not have internet, so the blog will be on hiatus this week. I still hope to do some crafting (or some MDS-ing, at least!) while we're gone, so I plan to come back with stuff to post and will do some doubling up until I'm back where I'm supposed to be. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and I will see you in a week!

MDS Quickie

This is a quick one, because I spent most of the evening uninstalling and reinstalling my MDS on my laptop since I had a bunch of stamps go missing on it. The content on the discs didn't take that long, but I had to re-download updates, plus all of my purchased MDS stamps to get my laptop version matching my desktop version.

Pretty simple stuff here - Island Indigo, Pool Party, and Whisper White.

Stamp Club Bookmark

I actually took a couple projects from last week and combined them to to come up with these bookmarks for tonight's stamp club project. I swapped out a true violet for Rich Razzleberry which is a bit more red-violet.

Supply List
Stamps: Gently Falling (Holiday Mini 2011), Perfect Pennants
Cardstock: Whisper White, Rich Razzleberry
Ink: Certainly Celery, Rich Razzleberry
Accessories: Decorative Label punch, 5/8" Rich Razzleberry ribbon, 5/8" Certainly Celery ribbon

Finally

Been trying to make this necklace for awhile. I love the way these green stones look with the small purple ones. I wanted to do a necklace in my typical style, using wire to string a few beads, make a loop at each end and loop it through the next piece. Unfortunately, the only wire I had that would fit through the purple beads was so thin that the loops wouldn't support each other. The easy solution to this would be wire wrapping, which is what I ended up doing at each end of the long strand by the clasp, but I'm not that good at wire wrapping yet. Hopefully I can get better with some more practice!

All of these stones came from the Smoky Mountains and I'm very excited to be going back there next week. We're not sure if the cabin we've rented has internet access, so the blog may be going on hiatus next week. Hopefully I'll get some crafting done on my vacation, but if not, I'll double up on posts and projects until I catch up.

Down the Bunny Hole

I totally cannot take credit for this card, I've seen several examples of it all over the net. The problem is that it requires multiple oval punches that I don't have. So once again, I turn to MDS, where I can resize a punch as much as I need to!

To make the tree, I made the entire background Early Espresso, then I added an oval punch in Baja Breeze and sized it up so it would go off the edge. The hole in the tree and the bunny's butt are both circles, as are the toes which I had to size way down. Finally the tail is a scallop circle. If I made this card traditionally, I'd probably pull the end off a q-tip to make the tail so it would have a 3D element.

No foolin', just Bliss

I will start off by saying that I don't like how these circles look. I wanted to use some of my other circle punches but I loaned them and haven't gotten them back yet, which keeps throwing me off as I get deep into a card, reach for a punch and it's not there! LOL

This was inspired by a card I saw on Stampin' Connection, the only difference is the other card was squares instead of circles.

Supply List

Stamps: Bliss (SAB 2011)

Cardstock: Whisper White, Island Indigo

Ink: Island Indigo

Accessories: 1" circle punch, 1-1/4" circle punch