Lightening Struck This Time!

Happy Monday Evening!! While cooking dinner tonight I pictured a brayered background with Stampscapes stamps. It seems that I get all these ideas when I'm doing something else, (that I should really be paying attention to), and have to race off to my little piece of heaven (disaster) room to try and make my idea come to life. I'm pleased with what I came up with tonight. The image is the same but the layout is different than I had pictured! Are there boo-boo's?? You bet! When I sprayed the spray laquer, some of the black ink ran. Thank goodness for bows! There isn't really a recipe for what I've done. I brayer'd glossy cardstock with Adirondack Dye Inks in: Willow, Citrus & Meadow. There is only one Stampscapes scene stamp used and it's Prickly Branch. This is one stamp that I use quite regularily in my scenes but you would only recognize the tips used as filler in the foreground. The other Stampscapes stamp is the sentiment. Kevin has sheets of wonderful earthy sentiments that I'll be using more often. The dragonfly is from Gellatins and I've used Lime Green Stickles to make it look a little more lively! It's too bad that it doesn't really show. The branches have been accented with a Jelly Roll 'Star' pen. If it's tilted it shows the platinum accents. The wide satin ribbon is from WalMart and I used my 'Bow Easy' to tie it. That little piece of plastic makes it so much easier for arthritic hands. Background papers are from my stash but if I remember correctly, the mottled green is from a huge package I bought at Costco one year ago.

I tried to show you the Lime Green Stickles and the Platinum Jelly Roll pen highlights.  Some of the stickles show but I don't think you can see the others.  

Thanks for looking!

Crafty Purple Frog Challenge - Going Green

Happy Easter

Hi Everyone!
Gee, here it is Friday night once again and it's looking like I don't have a life! Au Contrair (sp?)... I've got all my Blogland friends!!

This card is my entry into the Sketches With Heart #2 challenge at Heart Song Inspirations. I apologize to all the lovely girls there that I'm not using one of their digi images for my card!! I'm new to digi's and although I could download the file there was no way I was able to open it....so... When I have a few minutes this weekend I'll do some researching on the net as to what program I should use, etc. Until then.... I'm so sorry!

The stamp used was from Elzybells Art Stamps #E0085 Chick Trio. The dp's are from SEI and Keepin' It Real by Amy Hurley. I've been trying to use bits and pieces of my stash to fill in the rest. Ribbon is from WalMart and I made the glue dots myself in two sizes.  The circle and circle border were cut on the Cricut.

Yes, the image is kind of small for the sketch but I went through everything I had that was Easterish and it was either too big, or too small. Now it sounds like I'm talking about the three bears! I started putting it together last Sunday after seeing what our sketch for the week was.  This was one of those cards where you put it in a spot you'll see it a lot and you keep thinking... It's okay, It looks like heck, It looks spectacular, It needs a whole lot of something! These were only thoughts as I knew if I were to say them outloud for a few days people would wonder if I'm on 'crack!' The finished product was acheived after dinner tonight. I kept adding glue dots to fill in and make up for the small image. It's not my favourite but I made the deadline!

I can hardly wait to see the sketch for next week so I can find my mojo and brain cells that seemed to get away from me for the last 10 days.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

I'm Still Here!

Hello to all my new friends in Blogland!  Just a quick note to let you know that I'm still here but this has been a long, busy week which is why I haven't posted in a couple of days!  The shop is finally busy with the warmer weather!
I have a challenge card I'll be posting later on and have also played with my Stampscapes and a monochromatic scheme.  It's in purples with white highlights.  The scene is sitting on the table by my chair and I'm still deciding if I like it or not.  Maybe I should just post it and see what you think!  I'm my own worst critic no matter what I do.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  Spring is finally here and I'm loving it!!
Hugs,
Sheree 
p.s.  I'm so thankful to have you all!  I don't have a lot of free time and that makes it hard to do anything outside of home and work... with women my age.  With a blog I can sign in and visit my friends and see who has visited me!  I'm able to see what you've been up to without having a two hour coffee out.  With everyone's hectic lifestyles this is the perfect medium to keep in touch!  ;o)

Meeting New Friends!!

What a beautiful weekend we finally had here on the west coast!  I couldn't believe that I went from wearing a turtleneck at work on Saturday morning to wearing a t-shirt outside on Sunday!  Yessssssss!!!
On Saturday morning I was able to finally meet a new friend I've made from Blogland!  Her name is Nancy and she's from Courtenay which is approximately 1/2 hour south of Campbell River on Vancouver Island.  We met at one of my favourite shops, She Runs With Scissors in Campbell River!
First off, I'd like to say that Nancy is such a beautiful person, inside and out!  Not only is she extremely talented...she's a real gem and I am so lucky to have met her!
Nancy brought me a present made up of hand made flowers, which you can see a photo of on her blog,!  They are sooooo beautiful!  One is quilled and it turns out she is a quilling instructor!
I enjoyed our visit which lasted over an hour!  Nancy is going to keep me posted on classes in Courtenay so that we'll be able to visit again soon!  I can hardly wait!
Have a great week Nancy ... I'm looking forward to keeping in touch!
Hugs,
Sheree
Check out Nancy's blog: Crafting Passions  Her creations are gorgeous!!

Stampscape Tutorial - Rocky Mountain Foothills

Good Evening!

It's Friday night and there's a hockey game on so I headed off to my little corner of sanity to play with Stampscape stamps and colour!

I've been asked a few times how I colour different scenes so here's another one we'll play with.  I started out stamping the mountains and then added the pine tree in the foreground stamping it at varying heights.  I have more stamps on order but wanted some trees just a bit smaller to fill in the center of the image so used pines and rocks but used tape to mask off the rocks, ink the stamp, remove the tape and stamp the trees twice at different heights to show depth of field.  The last stamp I used was of the tree cluster and masked off the bottom of that stamp as well.  Once the trees were in order I needed a filler for all the gaps!  My most used and favourite stamp of the set is sedge filler.  This was stamped everywhere there was a space and also behind the trees to make it look like there was even more depth.

 First off I used my clouds stamp and Adirondack Aqua to do the sky. This is the first thing I do for all of my scapes.  For me, starting the sky seems to ground everything I'm doing when colouring the rest of the scene.

This third photo shows where I usually start when colouring.  Everyone has their own way of doing things but I always like to start light and gradually go darker.

I started with Lemonade and using the stylus I tapped it onto the trees, grass and gently tapped a bit in the sky above the mountains.  If you look closely you'll see where I've lightly tapped a tad of Lemonade on the Mountains as well.  Next time you look at the horizon you will see that it's always (from what I've seen) lighter.

The next colour to be added is Willow.  This is a lovely colour for lighter trees.  Once again I tapped it on the trees and on the grasses.  Try and keep the tips of the grass lighter but it you can't... we can lighten that up later on!

Now comes the fun part!  We're going to create our forest!  Using Adirondack Meadow you can tap in colour on the trees.  For the fir trees I load my stylus with colour and tilt the stylus so I'm only lightly tapping on the edge of the foam pad.  doing it this way keeps you from having trees look 18 feet wide!  Once you've given the trees some colour you can gently tap in some colour on the grass as well.  Don't add meadow to everything.  Look for the spaces between the grass tips.  These spaces are the lower end of the grass.  Grass is always a deeper shade closer to the ground (unless you live on the prairies or the desert... then the grass would be shades of brown!).

I love using Distress Ink in Burlap.  Using the edge of the stylus pad again, tap touches of colour onto the mountains.  During late spring, summer and early fall there is definitely snow on the mountains but... enough has melted so you'll see rock faces and greenery.  You can tap touches of Burlap in the grass here and there and especially in the foreground.  Forest grass is very sparse.

 Now we are going to refine everything and work on depth of field along with adding more colour to everything ...

Starting with the Cantelope, Tap in a bit of colour here and there on the grass tips.  Add a touch to the deciduous tree.  The Potter's Clay can be added to the tree, touches on the mountain...lower down, and touches on the grass.  The Cottage Ivy (green) will darken your forest.  Gently tap some on the fir trees, between the trees and on the darker deciduous tree.  On my sample I overdid the darker colours a bit so brought out my Adirondack Lemonade and tapped it over places where I wanted it lightened up a bit.

Alrighty... Now comes the sky and shadows!  Using a Q-tip or pointed sponge nibs you can start adding a little bit of Adirondack Aqua to the sky.  Follow the Aqua that is already on the sky from stamping and just deepen the colour between the clouds.  Once you're finished doing that you can lightly load a stylus with Aqua and gently tap in colour from the top edge downwards to just above the mountains.  I was in a hurry to finish this last night so my sky isn't exactly the way I wanted it.  Sometimes it's a hit and miss until I perfect my colouring!

Lightly load a stylus pad with Pitch Black and lightly tap in some shade around the base of the fir trees.  If your sunshine is coming from the left, then your tree shadow will start at the tree base towards the right side of your scene.  If your sun comes from the right, your shadows will go from right to left.  Depending on the time of day and how high your sun is above the horizon dictates how long your shadow will be.  Add some birds in the sky and voila!

Now, I'm going to show you my MISTAKE!!  I have seen highlights done with a white ink craft pen as dots on objects in the scene.  I was questioning myself prior to adding them and should have stopped there.  I'm going to show you my mistake and you can be the judge.  Myself, I won't use it again unless I'm doing a night or winter scene.  What I do use is... a jellyroll star pen in platinum.  When you look at the scene dead on, you don't really see the highlights.  When you tilt the scene, which is what people do when they open cards, you can see the subtle highlights.

Now you can see what I'm talking about!  Ewwwwww!  I'm not happy with this at all!  Hindsight is 20/20... How true!  Always go with your gut feeling!

One other thing I'd like to mention is... Adirondack inks will fade a bit if not sprayed with a laquer finish.  I let this scene sit overnight and it lightened up to where I really like it!  Too bad about the white dots!!

So, I hope I was able to give you some tips with this post.  If there's something you'd like me to do next just leave a comment!  This is also a learning process for me as well.  I've only been doing Stampscapes since January.

Stamps used in this scene:

023A  Duck trio in flight

267E  Pine & roscks small

196F  Pine tree

188F  Rocky Peaks

244E  Tree cluster

251C  Sidge filler

Thanks for looking!!

It would be greatly appreciated if you leave a comment to let me know how I'm doing on these tutorials.  I'm a newbie!