Copics and Rocks

You might be asking why Copic markers and rocks, well let me explain.  In case you have not heard rock painting is a thing.  There are groups of people all over the place that paint and hide rocks for other people to find.  They are meant to be inspirational and brighten someones day.  I'm part of a local group.

Here are some rocks from my last batch that I painted. These were done with acrylic paints and black markers.

I've even water colored some. But what I have never tried was Copic markers on a rock.  I saw in a group some where on Facebook that someone had used the Chameleon markers so I figured why not try Copics.

I started with my rock and a inked line drawing on my rock.  A simple fairy door.  The thicker lines were done using Staedtler Lumocolor and the thin lines in the door and window using a fountain pen.

I figured I would start with the wood texture on the door and try coloring that in.  I chose to use E31, E33, E35, E57 and E59.  I stated with the lightest color E31 but soon realized that the Lumocolor was not Copic friendly, it smudged.  I did my best to avoid touching any of the Lumocolor lines with the Copics.  The fountain pen was safe to color over.  I flicked in some of the E33, E35, E57 and shaded around the door.  I darkened the Lumocolor lines with the E59 to ad some depth.  I then went back over everything with my E31 to blend and then flicked and shaded some more.  The only thing I noticed was, at one time there seemed to be a build up of ink on the rock because after so many layers it didn't seem to be absorbing in.  So I figured I was done then. 

I went on to color in the window using Y15 and YR12, again avoiding the Lumocolor lines.

Next I colored in the stone around the door and at the bottom of the door using W2, W3 and W5.

For around the door I wanted a grown in flowery look so I opted to switch to acrylic paints and a sponge.  Sponged on a dark green for the base, then a light green for some highlights.  I then went in to a few spots with a dark purple and light purple to give the illusion of flowers.

I dry brushed some dark green and light green acrylic to the bottom of the rock for grass and called it a day.  All that is left is to seal it with a sealer.

Do Copics work on rock? Yes they absolutely do.  However I will use a liner pen that is Copic friendly next time.  I just did not think to test out the Lumocolor first so that was my fault for using it. 

From Trash to Treasure

From Trash to Treasure...I found a broken journal at one of my local Michael's and couldn't resist buying it.  I had to see what I could do.  Looking at it the only thing wrong was that the elastic closure was pulled out from where it should have been tucked into the book. That's a slightly easy fix if things go the way they should. 

I brought the journal home, repaired the elastic (thankfully everything did go the way it should,) and got to work on painting. I painted and painted and painstakingly painted with the tiniest brush I had. 

All in all it took me about four to five days of painting on and off.  The intricacy and the tiny details made my eyes go buggy.  I had to do it in sections and at intervals to give my eyes a break. 
Looking at the brown and the gold I immediately thought that this book was screaming to be a steampunk book. I set off to find a digital steampunk stamp that would be a perfect fit for this book.

I came across that stamp on StitchyBearStamps by a creator known as BB Kakes.

Steampunk - 3 pc set

I purchased it, read the TOU to make sure it I was within the right to use it for this project, and printed it out a few time on some Copic marker friendly paper.

Why a few times you might, well it's so I can use one test colors and play with, one to lay out my colors, figure out shading and how I'm going to finish it, and the last one to do my final colors on.

Here's my second one with my colors listed so I know which markers to use where on the final.

And here is the final all colored and fussy cut out.

 On the final image I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stains and Paints for the gears and metal. I used some Ranger Glossy Accents on the glasses and the face of the pocket watch after shading in the gray color to give them the glass look.

Then it was off to the book....

I used some Prima Marketing Engraver Collection "Cesello" (845315) paper as the back ground.  Glued my stamp just off center.  I placed the "Jouranl" sticker from Prima's Engraver collection (563479) so that the end of the sticker lined up with the edge of her shoulder.
I used some Prima flowers for embellishment (Black rose -552619, Small maroon roses - 553302.)  On one of the small roses I pulled out the center of the rose and added a button (550776.) The key paper clip (564681) I cut the clip part off of to make it look like just a key.  I then added miscellaneous mechanicals, gears from Tim Holtz and Bead Landing along with some clock hands and key hole from Bead Landing.

Here's the journal all finished:

 


 

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #10

Cutting it close with this one. Last day of the month posting....It's been a crazy month with the kiddos last few days of school just last week. I managed to squeeze in some time to do some coloring for the new Make-it-Crafty's  coloring challenge.  In case, you missed my posts for a few months you these coloring challenges are a fun way to challenge or work on your coloring skills.

So there are two different challenges, a hard and an easy one.  This month the hard is coloring curly hair and the easy is coloring with pink and brown.  Because I was on such a time crunch this month I opted for the easy one.

Lets see....I started with two different digital stamps from Make-it-Crafty.

Here's the first: 

 

Daffodil Swing Digi Stamp

And the second was:

Sitting Annalise Digi Stamp

I chose these two images because it was also "something girly" (the challenge's title, and the Facebook group challenge.)  As a little girl I loved to swing, and so do my daughters, so I thought this would be perfect to do as something girly.




To make the final image I took the two into Photoshop; flipped Annalise, rotated her a little to line her up with the swing and removed some of the daffodils to come up with my final image.  I held off coloring until my new favorite color pencils arrived, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. This was the first image I colored with them and I'm in love.  They blend beautifully and lay down easily, by far the best pencils I've used.  To top it off all of Faber-Castell's lines match so you can use markers, pencils and watercolors with ease. So excited to do more with their products.

Any who....I used my finial colored image to alter a medium sized Moleskin lined journal.  Added some new Prima Marketing Inc. flowers to it.  Throw in some papers, Tim Holtz Distress Stickles, glitter, metal frame, Silks paints, leaves and a fun inspiring saying and you get the finished journal.  By the way the cute little saying is "In a sky full of stars it's amazing to find that each is one-of-a-kind."

I hope you like it...

 

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #8

I'm running so far behind this month it's not even funny.  I actually managed to create something earlier in the month but just have not gotten around to actually writing in my blog.  So here it is.

This months Make it Colourful challenge:  Easy - Purple and Turquoise and Hard - Color on something other than your standard white papers.

While I love the color purple and it is by far one of my favorites I just couldn't come up with anything that I would have liked in that color scheme quickly.  (I'm sure I could have come up with something if I could squeeze an extra hour out of a day and an extra arm out of my body. Yeah, it's been one of those months.)   Anyway, I decided to forgo the easy challenge and create for the hard challenge. 

I love steampunk so I went and chose the Metal Flowers digi stamp from Make it Crafty.

Metal Flowers Digi Stamp

I wanted to use in the creation a mixed media altered Molekine cahier journal.  It took me a few print outs to figure out the size and placement of the image.  Once I figured that all out I cut a piece of Recollecions Clocks paper and ran it though the printer.  With all the text and images on the paper I had to often refer back to one of my scrap print outs to know where to color.  It definately was not easy but I am happy with the end result.

To color the paper I used:  Tim Holtz Distress Stain - Antique Linen,  Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Twinkling H2Os - Ginger Peach, Golden Fluid Acrylic - Iridescent Silver, Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous "Artist" Stamp, and Judi Kins Gold Detail Embossing Powder. 



  

Make It Crafty March Challenges

I've been working really hard on this months challenges and it has been loads of fun.  This months  Make it Colourful Challenge #7 is "Spring is in the Air."  The easy this month is to color flowers and trees, while the hard challenge is to color wood to look realistic.

While they do the site challenges Make it Craft also has a wonder Facebook group. Here there is tons of inspiration and wonderful crafty people.  I highly recommend checking it out.  Each month the Facebook group has it's own challenge.  This months challenge is to create a card in a box. Now I'm not much of a card person but this looked like loads of fun so I figured I'd give it a go.

The tutorial for this card in a box is found at My Many Passions blog.  This tutorial is in metrics and I did use a converter tool to approximate my measurements before someone pointed out Splitcoaststampers tutorial in inches.  Both have excellent videos and Splitcoaststampers has a great step by step written and picture part as well.

So now we have flowers and trees, wood and a card in a box....hmm....How to combine all of these? I know it can be done.

So here's the stamps from Make It Crafty I started with:

In the Garden Digi Stamp

Cynthia Digi Stamp

I broke out the cardstock piles and decided on a brown kraft box.  I made my box, which I found easy enough to do with the tutorials.  I then mixed some of the garden stamps in Photoshop.  Took all my the digital stamps I wanted to use into my Silhouette Cameo resized them, printed them, and cut them out.  I was shocked at just how tiny I needed these stamps to be to fit with my box 2.75" max either way.

Then it was time for the fun part....coloring!  I was not sure how to tackle coloring the tiny very detailed stamps I printed but I was determined.  I started out with Copic Markers B0000 for the sky,  and YG03, YG67, and YG63 for the stems on the sunflowers.  But I soon realized that I was going to have some trouble trying to color in such tiny lines with the markers so I switched over to watercolor paints and a #1 Round brush.  I just use whatever was already on my pallets, Windsor Newton, SoHo, Van Gogh and Koi among them.

This made it so much easier, at least for me, to color.  Once colored I attached the figures in my box to create a three dimensional scene.  I added some colored cardstock to the flaps of the box.  Embellished the closed box with some jolee's by you flowers, Prima Marketing pearls and a stamp that I made in Photoshop.

I also made a envelope out of complimenting paper that I  had.  I found that with the thickness of the card a 9" x 9" piece of paper was big enough to make the envelope.  After much trial and error, a few scrap pieces of scrapbook paper, I figured it out.  Using my score board and envelope triangle I scored the paper at 3" and 3.5" made the envelope so that the card would fit.

This was a fun little project and I hope you all like it. :)

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #6

I love coloring, ever have since I was little. My husband being an artist means that I have a wide variety of media to play with; markers, paints, inks and all of my crafting goodies.  Armed with all of these at my disposal I still don't have a lot to color or practice with.  

I recently found, and I do not quite remember how, Make it Colourful coloring challenge from Make it Crafty.  Each month they have a new coloring challenge.  I found this to close to the end of the last challenge so I figured I would wait.  Well this months challenge was just that a BIG challenge. 

Browns.  Easy right...not so much.  They have two different challenges with in the theme, Easy and Hard. Easy challenge is to incorporate brown into your image. Hard challenge all brown, no other colors allowed.  Well I just could not resit that challenge, use nothing but brown on a picture.  I've never colored a picture before in monochrome. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I set off to decide on my image.  Rule is that one image must be from Make it Crafty.  It took me forever to decide just what image from them to pick.  All of the images are wonderful and detailed. 
I ended up deciding on something that I could frame and put in my kids hang out room if it came out good once I colored it.  So the image I chose was their "Alice with Cards Digi Stamp".

 

And so I set out to color it.....

All done in brown watercolor and inks.

Here's what I used:

Derwent watercolor pencils - Bronze and Raw Umber.
Windsor Newton watercolor pan - Burnt Umber
Tim Holtz Distress Stains - Vintage Photo and Antique Linen (shading and background)
Pebeo Drawing Gum (used to mask off edges of image to color the background)

Let me know what you think.