Friday, August 31, 2012

You Make Me Smile


You really do you know :)  

Playing along with the TCP Sketch for fun.  Of course when I go to blog it I realize it's LAST month's sketch.  Tells you how my day has gone!  The most dramatic thing...I almost "lost" my laptop.  My husband was updating it to a new operating system and then my hard drive stopped working, said it was corrupted and he had to take it to the Apple Store.  They just said they'd wipe the hard drive clean and restore it to the last backup, so he took it home to do that.  Gratefully it's backed up well and right now I'm writing this before he tries to update it again.  Hopefully it'll be ok!  All of my work, artistic and ministry is done on my laptop.  I'd be lost without it!

Alrighty the card...Mr. Bun Bun from Bloom is coloured with Copics and it's a fantastic sketch, even if I'm just getting to it now!  (here's the link to the thread on SCS where I found it).  Very fun to play with all kinds of paper.  This is old SU from my demo days.  


What a cute little bouquet right?  Hopefully it makes you smile today too.  

Copics:  R11, R12, R24, R22, R27, R29, E50, E51, E53, E80, E81, W2.  

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Birds and Vine Retiring


We have a beautiful and bittersweet treat for you today.  The Flourishes Design Team is showing off sets from the store that are saying good-bye.  That's right, we're retiring a number of our beautiful sets to make room in the store for what's new in 2012 and 2013.  So, these wonderful sets will only be available for a short time and when they're gone they're gone!  Some of them are amoung my all time favourites of Flourishes too.  

I pulled out a set you may not even be familiar with if you haven't been around Flourishes for a while, it's called Bird and Vine, and it's a beautiful large set that was introduced in the first year or so that Flourishes was in business.  It's a classically beautiful set that combines elegant images large and small - of beautifully detailed vines and silhouetted birds.  


I began by stamping the vine image onto Flourishes Classic White Cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and then roughly colouring in the leaves in the Pistachio Copic Collection.  I say roughly because you don't need to be too fussy with it because of the next step.  Then I took two inks Pool Party and Memento Teal Zeal and sponged over the image using the Ink Blending Tool.  Then adding some white opaque pen to the flowers.  



I stamped, cut out and sponged one of the silhouetted birds from the set and popped it up on the design, adding the Ornate Artisan frame and some Want To Scrap Nestabling to bling it up.  


On the inside I stamped another of the birds and a sentiment from another Flourishes Set Botanical Bookplates Volume 1 not retiring), and a sponged piece of designer paper (MME - Christmas).  

So join the rest of the team today to see some retiring goodness and visit the Flourishes Store to be sure you don't miss out on these sets!

Christine Okken (you are here)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

From the Heart

How are things in your neck of the woods?  We finished back to school - supply shopping yesterday.  Check!  I know many of you have had kids in school for a while here, but it's rare that we start before Labour Day.  


Had a little bit of a chance to play with some paper crafting goodness and thought it was high time I pulled out some There She Goes again.  I pulled out this fun set Fabulous, and played with the current TSG Sketch.  


I had a scrap of a Spellbinders shape (Ornate Artisan Dies) in just the right colour from another project so I used that as the sentiment shape, and then played with MME's Follow Your Heart - Be Amazing pack.  Very pretty papers, I always love that soft blue-green and yellow together.  The pretty flowers are popped up in layers and coloured with Copics.  Then the top horizontal strip is stamped with other elements from this set.  I love the little tiny touch of the punched border peeking out from the horizontal strip.  It's a heart punch, but I just let the eyelet portion pop out.  


Thanks for joining me today!  With the kids going back to school in less than a week, I hope to have a little more routine here, and more time to pop by to your places too.  I have some HUGE giveaways planned for the next weeks, so stay posted!  :)

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Menswear Birthday

Good Monday to you!  


Something about this card made me think of men's wear.  I think it's the deeper rich colours and the chevrons....plus those mustchios :)  It's not often I do a non-colouring card, but it's always good to have a masculine card on hand isn't it?  

I pulled out my "The Mustache Set" from the Cat's Pajamas and played a little with a clean design, yet with a scrappy feel.  The mustache's are stamped on the vanilla layer, then stamped again on the brown and trimmed out to accent the design.  I love the TCP Mustache border too, I slipped three strings of twine through to accent it further and then added some buttons for fun.  I also double stamped the top half of the "MUSTACHE"' word to give it a more Letter press/Type-ography feel.  

That's it for today!  Hope your Monday's filled with fun!

Paper:  Authentique - Free Bird - Nest/Comfort & Familiar, Ink:  Ranger Distress Brushed Corduroy, Memento Bamboo Leaves

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Project 365 - Week 33

It was a really busy week here, I didn't have time, or energy to take photos every day, but I have a few from a Family BD party celebrating with my brother and our youngest.  They're both August BD's.



The BD boy with his two sweet kids.  


I love the look of wonder on my nieces face when she watches the candles.  She's getting to be such a cutie pie and growing up so quickly.  


This is such a fun action shot of blowing out the candles.  And if you look to the left you can see the reflection in the mirror too.  Nice little detail I didn't plan.  


Just a glass of milk with cake.  I love how her eyes match her shirt.  They are blue but in this picture they look so green!



Our youngest received some Lego for his BD, so the boys have been playing a lot with it.  This was a scene they made today mixing Lego Avengers with Lego Star Wars.  Check out the look on the guys face being held up by Hulk :)  

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Poppy Gift Set


On today's Free for All Friday, the team is showing off some pretty creations with our lovely Poppy Patch Set.

I've got some pretty orange poppies at home, so I was inspired to create something with orange!  Actually this was a little card and gift card holder I made for our youngest son's teacher at the end of the school year.


This set was watercolored with our Letraset Aqua Markers on watercolor paper, it really gives you that vivid orange you're looking for which is fabulous.  


Card, using some accents with my Spellbinders and some seam binding.   


I created a little wrap for my gift card...inside pictures ahead...


Here it is open, with stamping of the poppies on the inside as well.  Sorry it was a wonky angle and my lamp was in the way :)  I always think that FUN reading is a good gift for a teacher in the summer, so a gift card to a bookstore was what it was this year.  


Folded up a little.... I believe the dimensions were 3 x 11, I just can't remember the score marks, sorry!  It MIGHT have been 3.5, 4, 7.5 and 8.  That made the cover just a wee bit shorter so that the oval could be attached and hang over.  

And a closeup of the coloring.  I just LOVE these Prima Monarch Flower Centers.  I think they add the perfect touch of bling to the closure!

Now what's really cool is that we're offering a new cut file for the Silhouette for the Poppy Set!  The link is located HERE.  

Letraset Aqua Markers used:  Spring Green, Citrus, Bamboo, Scarlet, Flame Red, Sunburst Yellow, Rose Carmine and Aquamarine.  

Check out what the rest of the Design Team has to show you with this lovely set today!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Yours Truly

Really busy week here on the homefront....we're in full-on preparation mode for the fall at Church and we have two full days of staff meetings this week.  And, just to throw something in there,  I decided early on in the week to undergo a organization project.  I was looking for 3 stamp sets I was missing and that rolled into stamp set organization which rolled into paper organization...you get the picture.   Suddenly two days were gone!  So no new creating for me here...but I thought I'd pull out something I created a while ago that you hadn't seen from me.


This sort of has a woodgrain theme...the background layer and sentiment flags are done with a wood embossing folder, the buttons are wood and you have a warm wicker basket full of flowers and a sweet note.  That would be a lovely and welcome gift for someone wouldn't it? 

I just pinned an idea on Pinterest yesterday about a woman who spent her 38th Birthday doing 38 Random Acts of Kindness for others.  (HERE'S the link)  It's really just a lovely story, and one I'd love to try as a way to spend my Birthday.  Then today one of my former students, now friend was celebrating her 24th Birthday and she was doing 24 random acts of kindness for others!  What timing hey?  Our Executive Pastor was celebrating his Birthday and she brought him a cake and a note.  So sweet.  It was one of her special things today for others, I bet she'll have some wonderful stories from her day today.  

The blogger that I read about wrote that outside of the day she was married and the days she had her children it was the next best day of her life.  So powerful doing something for others.  Just thought I'd share that little story with you today along with the card.  

Have a wonderful day!  

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Project 365 - Week 32

Hey there all of you :)  A good week at our place.  It was Vacation week for us - or as we referred to it - Staycation.  We didn't go anywhere because the thought of packing up again was just a little too much for me, so we did things with the kids around here.   I'll be honest, the hardest part of doing this 365 project some days is limiting myself to 1 photo a day.  When we do something fun how can I choose just one???? So, instead of 7 photos there are 9....and then a few extra at the end of some animals at the Zoo.  


Our youngest calls this his "comfy spot" in the tree.  He is just too cute some times.  



Caught this fly making a pit stop on my tomatillo plant.  



Some beautiful foamy feeling flowers - don't know what they're called though.  



Black-Eyed Susans that had taken a bit of a beating after a crazy hail storm.  


These next pictures are from our day at the zoo...we drove to Calgary and went to their really great zoo for the day.  They have a butterfly pavillion and a tropical plant pavillion so a number of these pics are of some of the exotic flowers we saw there.  



Yep I really took that picture.  I'm beyond happy with it.  The crispness to the flower with the faded leaves is so beautiful.  The light was really perfect.  



A little ice-cream cone for the heat.  



Thoughtfully waiting for our order at Peter's Drive In.  


We finally picked our cherry tree and got 50 lbs of cherries!  My mom and I (with a little help from the kids and my husband) made 10 pies, and 25  - 30 jars of cherry jam.  What a haul!  I'm feeling especially blessed by this.  It amazes me that a single tree can give that much bounty, when all we do is add a little water to it.  God is good :)

Alright  - to our little fieldtrip..


We had such a good day at the zoo, gorgeous weather, and it seemed that all the animals were out to visit.  We've never seen so many animals so close up.  



This is the boy elephant (obviously), he cracked one of his tusks, so the fashioned some caps for him to prevent any further damage.  They had to make 2 otherwise he'd have been side heavy :)










Check out this cool moth!  I LOVED the butterfly pavillion.  I was so fascinated by them and how they would lite on your hands or face.  They were gorgeous! 


Mama tiger, she has three new cubs too.  TOO cute!  They were hiding in the shade so I couldn't get a good shot of them.  





They have a brand new penguin pavillion that is spectacular!  I've never been that close to penguins before, and they had huge clear glass tanks and tunnels so you could watch them swim all over you.  The light was too dark inside the pavillion, so I didn't get any good shots inside, but this was fun to put the kids around.  


See you next week gang!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Muchas Gracias


As most of you know, not quite two weeks ago we returned from Mexico City, having taken our students and our family on a missions trip to a Church we've worked with for the past 6 years.  The week before we left I made a bunch of Thank You cards to take along.  A wee bit nutty to take on a big project with all the details that had to be done before we left, but I persevered and I love how they turned out.  I used last year's beautiful FLIP set With Gratitude set from Flourishes.  Which has been a favourite of mine all year long, and now it's available to everyone!  What a particularly love is the numerous sentiments in different languages you can use - perfect for this occasion!


Here are the 16 cards above....

I played around a little with using different types of ink for my images, Memento Tuxedo Black like usual, and then Memento Toffee Crunch as well both on Flourishes Classic White Cardstock.  I'm sure you've seen many people using this lighter type of ink with their images as it gives you an almost borderless image when coloured.  This was the first time I had tried it.  I did two images in each type of ink and thought I'd show you the comparison.

You can click on these photos to make them larger and see the differences in ink.


You can see each color/style compared to each other.  


On the left - Memento Toffee Crunch and on the right Memento Tuxedo Black.  You can see it looks more like a painted image and the detail lines of the stamp are not nearly as evident.  I found that it's really good to use a wide colour range of markers starting with a really light marker otherwise it's really hard to colour in details.  


On the left Toffee Crunch and on the right Tuxedo Black...I really like how the yellow ones turned out.  


And the bluebells done in Toffee left, Tuxedo Black right.  I think the purple colouring turned out better than the blue below.  


Here's the closeup of the cards. I inked just part of the sentiment strip using the Spanish much thanks on each one.  





Fireflies Embossing Folder above on the deep pink.  



Simple designs, each with their own embossed background layer, cuts in the Floral Ovals Spellbinders with Scalloped Ovals cut in to make a windowed design, and then the main image in Classic Ovals.  All of them were coloured with Copic Markers, but I'll be honest I didn't write down what I used, and now that it's a month later, I can't remember!  Sorry gang!  

Join the rest of the Design Team to see their Flourishes Friday creations with this month's New Releases!  Remember you only have one more day to redeem the New Release Bundle at a Discount!

Christine Okken (you are here)