Practice Makes Perfect

Happy Thursday Farmer friends, Farmer Krys here! If you tuned in on Monday, Marie shared a few of her new year's resolutions with you guys and I thought it was a wonderful idea. So in keeping with her theme, I thought I'd share some of my crafty resolutions with you guys too! Now I don't know about you but I just couldn't get enough of those adorable New Releases from The Greeting Farm so I whipped up something quickly to share with you guys using the comfy chic Day Off Anya

Day off Anya

This year, one of my new years resolutions was to get outside my comfort zone more often as well as practice techniques I struggle with. You can't really tell from the picture (but boy did I try!) that this image was paper pieced using the technique I've been practicing, adding dimension to a normally flat image by use of 3d glue and embossing. I've also been practicing my CAS cards because I am horrible at scaling back my embellishing and layering to the point of one card taking hours to complete! Sometimes, a quick card is a stress reliever, especially when you are already taking so much time to create a 3d paper pieced image. This card was all around practice for me, CAS, 3D paper piecing, and hair coloring. Do you guys have any techniques you try out that could use a little practice? We'd love to hear. Don't forget to join us tomorrow at The Greeting Farm for a new Farm Fresh Friday Challenge where we'll announce the winner from the last Farm Fresh Friday and show off some awesome inspiring projects from the DT!

Lots-O-Love,

-Krys

Clean and Simple...Sort Of

Are there certain types of cards or projects that no matter how hard you try you just can't seem to wrap your brain around them? With me, CAS cards are my worst nightmare because no matter what I do I can't make them look good without looking too plain or more often than not, clean and simple becomes cluttered and over the top. It feels like forever since I inked up any of my TGF stamps so I attempted to force myself out of my comfort zone and participate in this week's FFF Challenge Clean and Simple over at The Greeting Farm. Since I adore stamps that don't have a specific theme, I loved the idea of using Maria from the Roll Call kit (retired sorry!) to make this quick card

Maria (TGF Roll Call Kit) 

I colored up little Maria using my TH distress markers and added a bit of shimmer with my wink of stella brush pen. The sentiment I used is also from The Greeting Farm from the Cheeky X-mas set (also retired) stamped in the same distress marker I used to color Maria's little dress. I know I need to practice my CAS cards, but they're just soooo hard. I'm addicted to bling and embellishments, is there a meeting for that sort of thing???? What about you ladies out there, any specific type of card, project, or medium you struggle with? I'd love to know! By the way, there's a new release preview blog hop going on over at The Greeting Farm and I can't wait to see what the creative ladies on the DT have come up with so I'm headed over to hop around, come with me for a chance to win the new release and thanks for stopping by

-Krys

We Go Together Like...

Hi guys! Feeling great on this gorgeous Saturday morning and I realized I hadn't participated at all this month in the Some Odd Girl Linky party for October! Honestly, I think I have birthday brain, this is the first birthday of mine I've been excited about in years so it's kind of taking over my thoughts the entire month! I also began getting presents early (hubby found a great deal on something I've wanted for forever!) so that didn't help the birthday brain! What was this dream gift you ask? TA-DA

The entire 49 piece set of Tim Holtz Distress markers!!!!  I've been practicing with them since they came in the mail and OMG *swoon* Now don't get me wrong, they can't replace my first love, copic markers, but they definitely run a close second! I struggled with the right about of water and ruining a few pieces of paper but I'm learning fast. I would like to try a few different types of paper, so far I seem to get the best results on bazzill heavy weight card shoppe cardstock in the color marshmallow as long as I don't over saturate the paper. Now what goes together better than distress markers and water? SOG stamps and me? Milk and cookies? How about all of the above, in a cute quick CAS card using the SOG clear stamp set Milk n Cookies, water colored with my distress markers and all ready to join in the October Linky party

SOG Milk n Cookies

I tried to keep this card simple, using only a few enamel dots and some doodling around the edges with a white gel pen. Normally I hate doing CAS cards but the milk n cookie are so adorable, they don't really need much embellishment or DP. Love how this turned out and I can't wait to use my markers on more of my SOG clear stamps. Ugh I wish I had a laser printer so that I could also color my digis as well but all I have is an inkjet for now, *sigh* dare to dream right? See you guys around

-Krys

Princesses, Pencils, and Kraft, Oh My!

Hi guys! Hope you had an awesome father's day weekend and all got a chance to do something special for the men-folk in your lives, be they Father, Son, Brother, Grandfather, Uncle, or just a good friend! My hubby defanitly got more than a little appreciation shown. In fact it was downright good ol' fashioned spoilery! Our living room now hosts a 60" flatscreen tv which he is quite proud to say, may be too heavy for the floating shelf it sits on... Men. I just hope it doesn't fall. I won't complain though, a complete surprise to me, he was kind enough to replenish my cardstock supply out of the kindness of his heart, lucky me, don't I have a sweetie?! Anyway I digress, what better activity is there than bonding with the kiddos on Father's Day right? Well he thought so and I didn't argue so off to the park they went and up to the craft room I went, where I came up with my card for this week's FFF Challenge over at The Greeting Farm, Use Pencils to Color.

SSSC Tress

I colored up the lovely Tress from TGF's Super Secret Stamp Club with my Prisma Color pencils on kraft cardstock. Whenever I use Prismas, I usually opt for kraft over white cardstock because there's no need to use an OMS (odorless mineral spirit) to blend the colors. With kraft its all about layering and patience. After all the hard work it took to get this image just the way I wanted, I decided to go with a CAS layout and let the image shine without any embellishments (which was incredibly tough for me!) I doodled a border around the edge and used a few of my small stamps to add a little umph but other than that I left Ms Tress as the focal point. I was so pleased with my restraint that I'm considering making another one using another one of the SSSC exclusives tomorrow! How do you guys prefer to use your pencils? What type of paper works best?

-Krys

Red White and Blue Through and Through

Hi guys! Not a lot going on the last few days, still working on more V Day cards and gifts with occasional breaks to change it up a bit. This helps so that I don't get burned out before I finish, and what better way to do that than practicing my CAS card technique? I have a confession...Sometimes I can be a bit of an over embellisher and there have been a few times where making a card has taken several hours just for one card because I simply could not decide on what papers to use. By the time I'm done, I'm mentally exhausted so I end up not making a card for several days or worse, forcing a card that ends up taking ANOTHER several hours and repeating the cycle lol! Well to prevent this from happening I started making simple but elegant cards that only take about 10 minutes to assemble, using only a few embellishments and an image I already had colored up ( I have TONS). They come out great and look like they've taken hours. Today I have one of my finished 'stress relief cards' using another awesome TGF image:

C.C. Dante



Over at Splendid Stamping, the Farm Fresh Friday Challenge was Red White and Blue and since I already had this little guy colored up in those colors he was perfect for a quickie card. I ran a piece of cardstock through a Tim Holtz brick wall embossing folder and since my Stampin Up Real Red ink pad will be permanently stuck to my craft table until after V Day, I inked the top corner red, left the center white and used a memento tear drop ink on the bottom corner to give me a nice and simple red white and blue background. A few buttons, some Bakers Twine, and a sentiment from TGF's Creepin Kit (retired sorry!) and this card was a done deal! I plan to enter this card in the above mentioned challenge, Red, White and Blue over at Splendid Stamping, if you have the time, pop over and see the gorgeous projects the DT has come up with. Until next time!

-Krys