Stampin Sketch Book pt 2

To continue on with my little Bloom Mae stamp, that I had colored in the previous post, I decided to use her on a book cover. I wanted something cute to go along with her. I chose out a section of paper from BoBunny's Back To Backs 12" Sophie Cut Outs.  The section that I chose was the section that says "Beautiful Inside & Out."  I figured that with this the book would have to be coptic stitched because the cut out that I chose would loose to much if I wrapped it around the book board.

I took my book board, cut to 6" x 6", and glued a glue piece of coordinating blue scrapbook paper down to it for both the back and the front covers, inside and out.  I waxed up some cotton hot pink thread with some locally sourced bees wax and placed a few stitches on the BoBunny cut out, one in the upper right and two in the lower left corners.  Then I glued this one down to one the now blue book board that will become the front cover.  I wanted to give the covers a sort of aged look so I took some really fine grit sand paper and sanded all around the edges.  Then I used some Distress Stain, antique linen, to give it an aged look.

Once that was all done I worked on the signatures. For the signatures, or sections of folded paper that make up the book, I used  Canson 90lb drawing paper.  To dress up the book a little bit more I decided to use a bright pink card stock to go over the spine edge of the signatures.  The sewing thread is the same hot pink cotton one that I used to stitch in the cut out.   I decided where my holes were going to be for stitching and drilled/punched those in the cover and signatures. Then I stitched the book together and finally attached Mae to the cover with some double sided sticky foam.

Here is the finished book:

Stampin Sketch Book

I was following someone on Facebook who happened to post a link to a wonderfully fun stamping site called Some Odd Girl.  I decided to check them out.

It turns out that they have some really awesome digital stamp and clear stamps. I've always loved the idea of digital stamps since I heard about them in my Copic certification class but I've never actually bought or used one...until now.  I found this really cute stamp that I just had to have called Bloom Mae.

Isn't she the cutest thing?  I think she's just fabulous.  The digi stamps come with both a JPEG and a PNG file.  I used Photoshop to downsize the stamp to the size that I wanted to use.  I printed her out and let the ink set over night.  Then I colored her using Copic sketch markers and cut her out.

Here's the list of what I used:

Skin - E000, E01, E11

Hair - E51, E35, E25, E29

Dress - BG11, BG13, BG34

Flower and Trim on Dress - RV11, RV19, RV34

Flower stem - G21, G24

Eyes - BG11, BG13

On a side note; I have found out that HAMMERMILL Color Copy Digital Cover 60lb is very Copic marker friendly.  I think that it colors very similar to the actual Copic paper. That is if you can find it.  I have a very hard time finding the paper where I live and often times have to order it.

What does this little stamp have to do with a sketch book or my love of making books? Well stay tuned my next post will show you just exactly what I was able to do with little miss Mae.

Copic markers color anything?!

So in the Copic marker certification classes we talked about how Copic markers will color anything.  I had to wonder if this was true. I mean a marker that will color anything. That would be completely awesome.   I had to test this...

Enter my problem...I was working on beading some of my new wine glass charms and I wanted some crystal bicones to match the purple skull that was the main focus. 

I took the Copic markers and tested them on paper to find the color that matched. This is the one I chose.

I took the brush side of this Copic sketch marker, V09, and used it to color a clear crystal bicone (and some of my fingers which got in the way.)  So, do Copic markers color crystal bicones? Yep they sure do.

I polished them up with a soft dry cloth and used them on my wine charms. Check it out:

So now if you want custom color crystal bicones just have some clear ones on hand and all you have to do is find a matching Copic marker and color away. :)

Copic Certifications

I figured it's about time that I post about my experience going though with the Copic standard and intermediate certification classes.  I took the standard and the intermediate back to back, so the standard class was on Saturday followed by the intermediate on Sunday.  These are not short classes  and made for a long weekend when I had to drive about an hour to get to them. The standard class is 7 hours and the intermediate class was a 9 hour day, with breaks of course, but when you add on 2 hours for driving it was just long days.

Let me say that it was fun as heck though. Both of my classes were nice and small, no more than 20 people there. This was great. We had time to share some stories, talk, get to know one another better than if there was a larger group. As a small group it also meant that we got tons of instruction and question time. Our instructor Cindy Lawarence was wonderful. She answered all our questions and gave us plenty of individual time pointing out when we should try something different or encouraging us to be brave and try colors we didn't think would work together.  I learned so much and had so much fun.

I won't deny that part of the joy of taking the classes is receiving goodie bags for each one. I love goodies. The standard class gave us this wonderful little Copic zip pouch, a sketch colorless blender 0, a refill for the colorless blender, and 4 standard non-refillable multi liners ( black 0.3 & 0.5, sepia 0.5, and grey 0.3)

Would you know it...I made the mistake of having the 0.3 multi liner sitting on my desk when the kid asked to borrow a pen and I handed it to her. She broke it....before I even had a chance to use it. She presses to hard on her writing instruments so I should have known better.  :(  So now I make sure they don't get put in with all my other pens on my desk and the kids don't use them.

The second day with the intermediate class we got a roll of x-press it double sided tape. I didn't realize Copic made such a wide range of products.  I must say that I love this tape and it's been a life saver for some of the kids school projects, much easier and less messy than glue. We also got a 72 marker travel case. <3

Then on both of the days we also go a cute little portfolio to put some of our works in.

Getting Crafty

So ArtFire.com is running this cool contest. It's your chance to win the supplies to try a new craft.
You can check out the post on their blog, Nosh, for all the details on how to enter this cool contest.

I thought I'd share my pin board on Pinterest with you all so you could see what my Get Crafty board looks like. It's full of fun things. Lots of Tim Holtz Distress Stains, some punches and Sizzix dies, a few stencils, and some essentials (cutting mat, scoring board, and table protector.)  I just got my Sizzix machine and I have not even taken it out of the box yet. I'd love to try to create some three dimensional paper collages all the goodies on my board. I'd like to learn more about the Distress Stains and the way they work with paper (so may ideas....)  I'd take everything and make something awesome!!!

Be sure to check out the contest and enter if you already haven't!