Vitamin ME!

We’ve got a new challenge going on at Power Poppy this month and it’s a bit of a refreshing break from what you’d expect!  Marcy’s calling it Vitamin ME!  This whole month we’re talking more about LIFE than solely cardmaking.  Marcy’s asking us some questions like, "what gives you joy, what feeds your soul?"  Answer those questions on THIS post at the Power Poppy blog and you could be in the running for a $50 Shopping Spree at the Power Poppy store!

Now, I actually DO have a card to show you today - but I will also show you something that feeds my soul later in the post...

My husband and I recently took a trip to Vancouver Island, just the two of us for a few days.  We LOVE the Island.  I’ve talked about that many times before.  This time we went to a new spot on the Island and had our first AirBnB experience at a gorgeous place in Sooke, BC.  The owner of this little spot has built some beautiful fairytale gardens all around the house.  BC has had quite a cold spring, and many things that normally bloom in early April,  weren’t blooming yet, but there were some lovely surprises; everything was beautifully green and some early flowers were popping up like forsythia, and another favourite of mine, lenten roses or hellebore.  

I coloured up this card using Power Poppy’s digital image - Hellebores inspired by some of the hellebores our AirBnB hostess had in her fairytale garden.  She even had a little vase of hellebores and forsythia sitting in a little vase on the counter to greet us when we arrived.  

This is the inspiration hellebore.  Isn’t that a gorgeous shade of deep purple - bordering on burgundy?  And noticed how the leaves have almost as much of that deep purple colour as they do green.  They were such a lovely find.  

I did a little out of the box cutting on the blooms to make it work in this stitched circle die.  I really tried to mimic as much of the colouring in the petals and leaves as I could.  I am actually missing the marker between RV93 and RV99 - so that makes blending with such deeply saturated colours a bit of a challenge.  But I used a tip from my Copic classes forever ago - I touched my RV93 marker to m RV99 marker - called tip to tip - and that blends the two shades a bit, so you get a bit of an inbetween blend of the two, so in a pinch it works!  The pretty sentiment is from Power Poppy’s set Vibrant Thanks, stamped in Memento Elderberry.  

Now for my Vitamin ME....I’ve hinted to quite a few things already that feed my spirit in this post.

• I get great joy from my time in creation.  Flowers, the mountains, the ocean - it all brings me life.  
• Since we live in in a very urban area in the middle of the prairie, sometimes that means we have to travel to get to some of those pretty places. We greatly value travelling because it never fails to give us renewed perspective and teach us new things, plus we get to enjoy the beauty of this amazing world.  
• I love capturing that beauty through photography, something I’m continuing to learn about.
• And this next photo is a former love of mine that feeds my soul - drawing!  This season I’ve decided to try some art/travel illustration in my journal to remember places we’ve been or experiences we’ve had in a symbolic way.  Now, I’m no Marcella Hawley, but it feels good - and it brings me joy to pick up a pencil and sketch again - then add colour with various mediums.  Here I’ve added Copic colouring to my inked illustrations from our trip to Sooke.  So there’s my Vitamin ME for this week!  

Here’s the rest of the crew with more Vitamin ME inspiration today....
Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence
Julie Koerber
Stacy Morgan
and Marcy at the Power Poppy Blog

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Vitamin ME!

Art Journal-y Baby

Hello Friday Friends!  Today I’m bringing you a sweet new image from A Day for Daisies and a fun new challenge!

This week it’s “Make it Art Journal-y”.

I began with this sweet little cat-fish princess called Cat Fish Kitty (on sale right now too!), printing her on XPress It Blending card-stock, colouring it up with Copic Markers.  

Now some of you might be wondering what it takes to make something “art journal-y”.  I’m not sure if I have a definitive answer, but her are some thoughts;   a lot of art journalling uses mixed-media methods to create ecclectic layers of colour, texture and shape.  Often you’ll see repeated themes or elements to make the design cohesive, and journalling or writing in the design.  If you google art journalling, or check it out on pinterest you’ll generate all sorts of inspiration to get you started.  

I’ll walk you through what I did for this design on the art journal layer.  I began by taking a 4 x 5 1/4 inch panel of thicker cardstock and using a Tim Holtz stencil, and some embossing paste to create the vertical lines.  After I allowed that to dry I took some re-inkers and a wet waterbrush and washed in some aqua in the background.    While that was drying I cut out some stars in this pretty amethyst colour, dribbled them with some purple copic solution randomly,  and then spritzed them with Mr. Huey’s spray in Shine.  I punched out some circles in Bermuda Bay cardstock, randomly scribbled some circles on them and did a little handwriting.  

Next I used another Tim Holtz stencil (Bubbles) and added more spritz overtop of the design in the aqua green colour and then again in the Shine colour.  I think in the end I dribbled some more reinkers over the design to continue that under the sea-circular theme I have going on.  It’s all a fun and rewarding way to get inky :)  

I added some letters along the bottom, because by that time it really took on a baby feel to me.  I layered the panels a bit wonky so it would have little less linear feel and add to the ecclectic style.  

Here’s the Copics I used on our lovely cat-fish princess :)

So please join us at A Day for Daisies for this fun challenge!  Here’s some more art journal-y inspiration!

Arielle

Broni

Christine (you are here)

Danielle

Juliana

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Art Journal-y Baby