Adventures in Kraft

Firstly, I must apologise to regular viewers for the excessive use of Mo Manning digis, I admit to being deeply obsessed with her Christmas images, and have coloured them in in virtually every colour combination known to man/woman.
It occurred to me yesterday that although I have seen it numerous times in blogland, I have never attempted colouring in an image printed/stamped onto brown Kraft card. So in an effort to make my growing pile of Mo Manning Christmas cards look slightly different from each other, I gung-ho-flung myself into printing and then colouring on, let's face it, dull and drab card.
I tried with pencils first and got fairly good coverage, but not sure if it's me not blending the pencils properly or if that's just the way it is, but I found the black lines of the image went a bit "foggy".

Next, I tried colouring with my trusty Promarkers, I'd already decided that reds and browns would probably look pretty good on drab brown, but wasn't sure about the rest of the rainbow. Skin tones were also a concern, would the paler colours cover the cardstock? Must admit I still can't decide the answer to that one! For the record, yellow and pale blue virtually disappear, as does grey....

The Joy of Pythagoras
On a side note, since my Saturday Sketch palaver the other day, I have now fully embraced the joy of triangulation - it uses less of my hoarded backing papers, and I don't need to measure anything! Just cut of a couple of corners from complimentary papers, stick them on a piece of plain cardstock and it's good to go! I have absolutely no doubt that "Mo Manning and the Triangles" will feature heavily from now until Christmas. Sorry!

Challenges to enter today:
Make it Monday #60 - Anything Goes
Totall Gorjuss - Pastel Christmas

Secret Pal Stories....

Many of you will already know, but for those that don't, from October 2010 to October 2011 I took part in a Secret Pal exchange on Papercraft Planet, set up through the group "Anything Goes". I stumbled across it completely by accident about a month before it started, and as I was fairly new to cardmaking and very new to blogging and online forums, I thought it would be fun to give it a go.
I have to say it's probably one of the best things I've ever done! I was truly sorry when it came to an end, however, all is not lost because it's starting up again on 1st Jan 2012 and runs for another year! Sign ups are taking place until 31st October and all the information you need is here. New pals will be assigned in the next month or so - in the last round I received mail from a lovely lady in California, and I sent mail to sunny Florida. The requirement is to send 6 cards in a year - one every two months. Not hard for card-making fanatics, is it?
The icing on the cake for me was all the smashing ladies I got to know through participating, and I received a whole raft of cards from various people taking part......

Just because....

Sending a card "just because" has got to be the best reason to send a card in my most humble opinion, so as I haven't sent one in a while, I thought I should.

There is a slight problem - I am rubbish at using embellishments and I am also pretty rubbish at following sketches, however when the lovely and exceedingly talented Anne told me that Mo Manning was sponsoring the Sketch Saturday Challenge, I pretty much gritted my teeth and got down to business. Probably not the right attitude for successful crafting but hey ho....

 Here is aforementioned sketch:

To console myself, I worked out I can not only enter the Sketch Saturday Challenge 178, but also the following too:
I Love Promarkers - Cute
DP2 Challenge - fave Mo image and sentiment

Ooops forgot to mention, she is coloured with Promarkers, and the digi is called "Bunches" and is available from Mo Manning's shop.

Anything but a card?

How about a work in progress? Here's what I did this afternoon, whilst supposedly playing/potty training/feeding/entertaining a certain small person....

Well, I do find colouring very soothing, and Mo Manning does make it so easy.....

Hurry hurry quick quick

Late post, need to get to bed, work tomorrow! Did some colouring, made a card, blah blah blah. Lovely Mo Manning again, lovely Promarkers again, freebie magazine papers again. You get the gist? Ok.....

Challenges, please?
One Stitch At A Time - Anything Goes
Make it Monday - Always Anything Goes
Passion for Promarkers - Christmas Critters

Christmas, here I come!

It has been nagging me for a while that I should have made a start on my Christmas cards by now, and while I have made 3 so far, I have not been inspired by any of them to make more. After a long and hard ponderage on my lack of Christmas crafting, I came to the startling conclusion that I didn't have any Christmas images I wanted to colour/play with. Now, in that situation what would you do? Yes! Go shopping!

First and only stop was the awe inspiring Mo Manning's Digital Pencil store where I found her Ragged Angel. During my hours of ponderage, I also discovered I seem to be in a "place" where I can only colour and craft with cute, girlie images (I know it makes me shudder too, but you just have to go with the flow). I find Mo's drawings to be a happy medium - yes they are cute, but they do have character and are so very well drawn that they can be forgiven for any suggestion of cute-ness.

So here's what I did:

She's coloured in with Promarkers and the backing papers were magazine freebies froma month or two ago. The sentiment stamp is a rubber stamp from Polka Doodles. I did use pretty much the same colour combination as the pre-coloured example on Mo's site, but I'm sure I'll play about with that on later cards - I did print off another 5 of them, so it may become a regular feature ;)

I also found out if I iron my digis between two sheets of copy paper, the lines don't bleed with the Promarkers. I've noticed this can happen sometimes when using the lighter colours and the blending pen. Obviously, make sure you don't use the steam setting as I'm sure that would be really messy.

Not many Christmas challenges to be found - everything is Fall/Halloween at the moment, which is fair enough I suppose, but I did find one at OSAAT - use a digi, so I'm good to go....

Colouring up a Storm

Contrary to popular belief, the weather has not been balmy and summery throughout the whole of the UK, and whilst we did hit the highs of 23C on Friday, it plummeted back down to 14C by Saturday. Followed by fairly continual rain. So, what do I do when I can't work on my tan? I colour :)

I have made a few cards over the weekend, all slightly random and haven't a clue who they will end up going to, but today's card does have a home to go to. My niece turns 5 in a week or so, so this little lady will be winging her way over to Ireland, where hopefully it won't rain quite so much. Hmmm, why is it called the Emerald Isle again?

The image is called "Coriander" and is by Sweet November Stamps, and she's been coloured in with Promarkers, and has some heavy handed application of glitter on her wings. The sentiment is by Lili of the Valley, and my circle wasn't quite big enough....

I would like to enter into the following challenges:
Make it Monday #57
For Fun Challenges - Warmth (well she is basking in sunshine!)
Crafty Catz - Things with Wings
Crafty Cardmakers - Anything Goes