Tee-rific Birthday

My boyfriend's Dad is a big fan of golf. For his birthday this year, I wanted to create something a little extra special since he had gotten me the best Christmas present ever! Thanks to him, I got to see Billy Joel at the Barclays Center on New Years Eve. Billy Joel is my all time favorite musical artist, so I was totally stoked to ring in the new year with him! (and my boyfriend, of course)

The patterned background was taken from a My Mind's Eye paper pack and I went over it with some Vintage Photo distress ink. The golf clubs are from the Wrap it Up Cricut cartridge, which I realized I hadn't used in awhile. For the lettering, I wanted Tee-rific to stand out so I cut the letters out and embossed each of them with my Versamark ink pad before rubbing some gold powder on them. In retrospect, I'm sure there was an easier (and neater!) way of doing this. Now I know for next time.

Stay tuned for some Copic coloring cards that I have been working on! FYI: coloring has never been this difficult for me haha.

The Copic Craze of 2013

So for Christmas this year, my friends and family kept asking me, "What do you want?" Every year around this time, I never seem to know what to say! I usually get gift cards to the MAC store or Michael's. It's hard to ask for physical things because there isn't anything that I really need. (Which is totally a good thing!)

This year, I thought I would ask every person for a Dick Blick giftcard because I decided I wanted to learn how to color with Copics. I've dabbled a bit in the past with the limited supply that I have. (Those things are expensive, ya know!) But I really wanted to dive in because coloring is really relaxing. In fact, I used to buy Disney coloring books in college because it would relieve the stress from all the work I had to do.

Totally my favorite.

So thanks to my parents, my boyfriend (who also purchased two shelves for storage), my boyfriend's brother and his girlfriend as well as my boyfriend's sister and her boyfriend (are you tongue-tied yet?) I received over $300 for my Copics. Success!

My first order of business was to research!! What colors should I get? Which shades go well together? How am I going to figure out where my light source is coming from? I decided to ask someone who definitely knew what she was doing. Ashley from Made Especially For You is a certified Copic designer having taken both the standard and intermediate classes. She also teaches at local craft stores near her and I've been loving all the projects she's been posting on her Facebook. I decided to reach out and she was so nice! She gave me some really great tips and some addresses to blogs that were extremely helpful. Check out her projects below!

http://especiallymade.blogspot.com/

• Get It Scrapped is a site that helped me figure out colors for a starter set.  Michelle Houghton wrote a SUPER helpful article with color combos including some of her personal favs and examples of colors she uses regularly. 
• Scrap Girl is a site that has lots of great youtube tutorials and Angie shows you how to combine coloring Copics with distress inks.  
• Scrap Bitz : Suzanne Dean is a REALLY helpful resource when it comes to Copics. She not only has several tutorials, but offers a GREAT PDF of all kinds of color combos with helpful tips and tricks. She also shows you how to color with distress inks. She uses a lot of Magnolia stamps which I like because they are super cute and can surprisingly, be a bit challenging to color.

A few days later, I was on my way to the Dick Blick store on Long Island. I told myself it was strictly for research purposes only!

 But of course I could not resist buying a few.

However, I do recommend that if you are buying Copics from Dick Blick, buy them online. They are cheaper and if you order enough, shipping is free. #totallyworthit I ordered the rest online and last night I came home to a HUGE package.

Behold thy present from Father Christmas!

I am so excited to start practicing!

Do any of you use Copics? What color combos do you like? What stamps do you use?

Crafty Christmas 2013

As promised, here are the rest of the cards I made for 2013. Again, they were not nearly as many as I had wanted to make, but people were forgiving. I have decided to follow in the footsteps of my friend Amy from Scrap This, Save That. She had an idea for a Christmas Card Catch-Up where she made cards throughout the year and it was a pretty successful venture. I think I'm going to try that and create about 1-2 cards a month and see where I am next December.

This year, I focused on snowflakes. I recently got the Cricut cartridge, Winter Wonderland and there were so many nice die-cuts available.

Before adding this snowflake with 3D zots, I embossed some smaller snowflakes on the card. I ended it with the sentiment, "Let it Snow" which I got from Michael's for a dollar.

For this card, I embossed the writing on the card first and went over it with Antique Linen and Vintage Photo distress ink. The Believe sentiment also came from the Winter Wonderland cartridge along with the snowflake. This had to be my favorite card of the season.

This next card, I embossed a stocking stamp I had with green glitter powder. I used a Martha Stewart paper puncher for the bottom and I added peppermint twine to the top. The sentiment came from this adorable stamp I found at Paper Presentation which is this wicked store in NYC that sells every type of paper you can imagine.

For this card, I wanted to emboss using two different colors so I used a small paint brush to apply the gold on the antlers and red on the body of the reindeer. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. (Or as messy!)

This last card was made with the Winter Frolic cartridge. The snowman's face was made with a Peachy Keen stamp and I added some peppermint twine to the base of the snow globe.

That's All, Folks. Until next year! (or next month!)