Color me Inspired

Hey! Yet another day of sunshine and heat when we were promised thunderstorms and scattered showers today so the family and I spent a good amount of time outside. My hubby's excuse for keeping me away from my craft room and outside for most of his four day weekend is that we only have another month of warmth before we'll be forced to stay inside anyway as it gets colder and colder here. Personally even thought people keep telling me it won't be that bad, I'm terrified. In the part of Texas I came from, winter only lasted about a week and if it got down below 20 degrees, we just about hibernated till the heat came back! I look forward to mid 50's but anything less than that and I am plain ol' grouchy lol. Anyway, since I was able to get back into my craft room I decided to work on a masterpiece of organization...pictures coming soon (a.k.a. when I finish) which I hope will be by the end of the week. I made quite a bit of progress and I am very excited about how its turning out so far but I can hardly wait to be done so I can share it with you guys! In the mean time, I have a cute little project for this week's FFF over at The Greeting Farm, following this lovely color palette that I simply adore!

Gorgeous isn't it??! I couldn't wait to try out this palette considering it is very similar to the one I've been using for decor in my craft room! SO without further ado:

(From L to R)

Magical Bean, Shiny Bean, Up Up Bean

I created this sign using another of the blank ceramic bisque signs I love so much, multiple beans stamped in tuxedo black memento ink and masking them to make a group scene, and coloring with my copic markers. I think this color palette is so beautiful and happy, it reminds me of my favorite flower, the Stargazer Lilly, so this color inspiration challenge came naturally to me. What a perfect word for a sign hanging in a craft room! And these little beans do just that, out of all the beans, they are 3 of my absolute favorite. They make me happy and happiness inspires creativity for me. Two of the 3 can be found as part of the Magical Kit, available now at The Greeting Farm's shop. What words, stamps, pictures etc. (if any) do you have around your craft room? How do they inspire you?

-Krys

Happy Birthday

Just thought I'd do a quick post and share this card for my little sister's birthday

Up Up Bean

25 years may not be little but she will always be the baby of the family. We may not always get along, but she's never far from my thoughts and she's always in my heart so I just wanted to tell her have a Happy Birthday and I love her. I made this card using TGF's Up Up Bean, colored with prisma colored pencils and OMS to blend the colors, per The Greeting Farm's FFF challenge, Use Pencils to Color. The DP is from Bo Bunny Enchanted Garden and the ribbon and flower are from my stash. The layout of the card was for the Retro Sketches Challenge #119

Coast to Coasters

Hey!
Extra excited as usual to share my latest project with you guys, but first, a backstory! Well a month or so ago I saw a project on TGF's Blog about making coasters out of stone tiles and it got the gears turning in my head. I decided to give it a try myself so off to home depot I went to buy a couple of travertine tiles. I only wanted one or two just for fun but Home Depot only sells them by the pack. I wasn't too disapointed though because a pack of 9 only cost about $4.30ish after taxes. I figured I could make 2 sets of 4 with one extra to practice/ruin/drop (whichever came first ^.^). In the tutorial, Melissa O used 4x4 tumbled marble tiles and stamped with Brilliance ink. Brilliance is actually a water based ink so I decided to try something different since I was planning to use these as coasters. After wiping down my tiles with a damp towel to remove excess dust and allowing it to dry, I then stamped with my Versamark pad and sprinkled Ranger's Ultra Fine black embossing powder and dumped off the, gently tapping it on the table to remove any extra powder clinging to random spots on the tile. Step 3 was interesting because I've never tried to heat emboss anything but paper so who knew how that would turn out LOL! Quick science lesson, natural stone actually holds and distributes heat really well and evenly...eventually...which is why baking stones work so awesome for cookies and especially pizza! AKA, heat embossing travertine, SUCCESS! I was incredibly proud of myself for this awesome discovery because as you know, copics and embossing powder work just fine together...unless its on travertine apparently o_O. Unfortunately my nibs are stained now but as long as they still come out the color they're supposed to I'm not too sad but fair warning, be careful not to color over the EP if you can avoid it, kinda like if you were using stazon. They came out great!

Up Up Bean (TL) C.C. Harlow (TR)

Flutter Anya (BL) Skyward Anya (BR)

Frappy Anya (TL) Birthday Anya I (TR)

Birthday Anya II (BL) Lolli Anya (BR)

I colored them all with my copic markers. For Skyward Anya I created a kind of halo/aura with my copics while I tried more of an inked border also using copics which was a little harder and didn't turn out as well, not so sure copics were meant to be blendable on tile. For the other two, I inked around the edges with stampin up Real Red and Tim Holtz Spun Sugar and it turned out much better. After coloring I added stickles here and there and glossy accents to the lenses of the girls' goggles and gave them a couple of coats of the same spray acrylic sealer I used for the Magnets I made a while back, to make them water proof! Hope you guys give it a try, for the bottom set I was going for a sweet treats pastel kind of look and I plan to enter these in the Use Pastel Colors Farm Fresh Friday challenge over at The Greeting Farm. Honestly mine were supposed to be gifts but they're so cute I'm not sure I can part with them now! I even went out and bought another pack of tiles to make a few more, I'm addicted! See you guys around!

-Krys

Party Palette

Hi guys, still feeling a bit under the weather but TGF has such a fun Color Challenge for this week's FFF that I couldn't resist inking up one of my newest edition, Up Up Bean. Normally I have a very difficult time making pinks and purples look good together but I gave it a shot and I'm pretty pleased with the results

Up Up Bean

I've been looking for an excuse to use this birthday balloons embossing folder for a while now as well as this chevron paper from my LCS's open stock so this seemed like the perfect little stamp to use it with. Hope I start feeling better soon enough to enjoy this awesome springy weather before the big move to the cold north. Wish me luck guys!
-Krys

In Stitches

Hi guys as you know I've been experimenting with other uses for my adorable TGF stamps. Od course they look darling on cards but the wheels in my head have been in overdrive coming up with/ trying out ideas. I'm a bit under the weather so I won't ramble on today either. I found that you can create adorable little shirts using stazon ink, copic markers and rubber stamps and here are a couple of my finished projects so far:

Birthday Anya 2 (left) Easter Anya (right)

Skyward Anya (left) Up Up Bean (right)

Since stazon has a tendency to bleed into copics and vice versa, I highly recommend drying or ironing your shirt on high heat after stamping but before coloring with copics. If you are not careful to color inside the lines you will not only ruin your nib, but also cause the black stazon to "reactivated" so to speak, and run into your colored sections so be very careful. Another idea for coloring where images would be a permanent or fabric paint but I've yet to find a bottle of fabric paint with a thin enough spout for fine detail.  Well this is my two cent for today I'm going to lay down and try to feel better. Hopefully you guys will be feeling adventurous and will try and perfect this technique, if you do, I'd love feedback on how it can be improved!
-Krys