Aurora Wings Guest Designer

Big News!! I was asked to be a guest designer at Aurora Wings this month for the Anything Goes Challenge, and as you can guess, I was beyond flattered (and excited)!! Mitzi Sato-Wiuff, the artist behind Aurora Wings, is celebrating the two year anniversary of the Aurora Wings Challenge Blog this month, so things are going to run a little differently for this challenge. The ATG challenge that starts today is going to have TWICE as many winners as usual. That means that there will be 2 ACA winners, 2 random winners, and 6 DT's picks!! How awesome is that?

Before I get to my project, I want to tell you about some "crafting for a cause" going on in the Aurora Wings Facebook group HERE. Mitzi is sponsoring a fundraiser until April 3, 2016, on YouCaring to help with conservation of the Slow Loris. As a thank you for donating any amount to her YouCaring fundraiser she is offering a gift of a digital stamp drawn specifically for this event, "Slow Loris Sprite". If you donate a minimum of $10 you also receive a "Slow Loris in Leaves" digital stamp. Both of these images are Special Edition and will not be offered in her store at a later date.

With these Special Edition stamps you can enter the Slow Loris colouring contest in the Facebook group until April 10, 2016. The prizes are as follows: One Artist's Choice Winner ($30 USD in digis + blog badge), one random winner ($30 USD in digis), top 5 (2 digis per person + blog badge), honorable mention (blog badge). All participates in this contest will also receive a 'special mention' blog badge for supporting the cause. All of the details about the fundraising and some awesome Design Team inspiration pieces can be found on the Showcase blog HERE.

And now to my project!! I created a little canvas with Orchid Fairy with detailed Butterfly Wings - Shades of Blue. I coloured the image with Prismacolor pencils.

To create the canvas I put down a layer of black gesso on a 5"x7" canvas. After the gesso dried, I used Faber Castell Gel Medium and a Tim Holtz Doily stencil to create some texture. Before the gel dried, I added little metal beads hoping they would adhere and dry in the gel (which they did!). After the gel was dry, I used Lindy Stamp Gang sprays in Hydrangea Blue and Lucky Shamrock Green, to add some shimmer and subtle colour to the canvas. I tried to stay in the same colour families that I used on my image so as not to distract from that.

Texture from stencil and the metal beads

I added two small silver metal filigree corner embellishments before affixing the image on the canvas. I almost always like to go a little crooked and off center when placing my image on a project. Maybe because I'm a little off center. haha!! I can hardly help myself. It just looks too neat and tidy to me otherwise.

Texture from stencil using gel medium

As a final touch, I added some mulberry paper flowers to the corners of the image, again staying in the same colour family as my image.

Paper flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts

So that's my turn as a Guest Designer at Aurora Wings. It was a fun little project to do. I hope you like it and I hope you'll leave a little love below in the comments! xoxoxo

Memento Mori

Hello! I coloured this image by Aurora Wings just for fun. They are having a Day of the Dead contest on their challenge blog and I thought I might as well enter it. I have so many AW images and I need to start colouring them up! This is called "Memento Mori", which means "Remember that you can die" in Latin. I think of what has happened in France in the last 24 hours, how we can lose someone we love with no warning, and I think we should all make sure we take time during our day to disconnect and focus on our loved ones because life is unpredictable and uncertain.

Memento Mori

I coloured this with Prismacolor pencils. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts, and the DP is DCWV.

I am entering this into the AW Day of the Dead challenge HERE! Check out Mitzi's Etsy shop too, if you like fantasy art, because she has some of the best I've seen!

You can also check out my work on my Facebook page HERE!! Thanks for visiting! xx

Flower Ballerina

There is an ATG challenge at Aurora Wings and I have been working on this ballerina digi for a couple of weeks now with my Prismacolor pencils. It has been a slow and arduous process, as I'm not usually one to use pencils, so there is a learning curve, plus there is a lot of work with pencils. It's not quite as easy as markers, I'm finding. It is a lot of fun and relaxing for my mind, although I think I am going to end up with carpal tunnel syndrome soon. I am being a bad student and skipping around the Kit & Clowder Perfecting Pencils class, and not doing the actual projects in the class, but watching the videos for "how to" advice. I think Alyce will just be glad I'm using the classes to learn, however I'm choosing to do it. 

The image I used for this is Flower Ballerina. It is very intricate, which is why I wanted to use pencils versus Copics. I thought it would give me a better chance of shading without the ink moving into places I didn't want it to. I printed it at 3.75" tall, so that is really not very big. I had to have very sharp pencils.

The colours I used for her tutu are: Black Cherry, Pomegranate, Pink, and Deco Pink.
I kept the layout simple. I feel like Mitzi's images are so beautiful and detailed, it can be a real disservice to add too much bling to the card itself.

I am entering this into the ATG challenge on the Aurora Wings blog. If you love Aurora Wings, you should head over there and check it out!

Well I hope you like how it turned out! It was a labor of love. Thanks for stopping by!! xx

Make It Krafty at The East Wind

We have a new challenge in The East Wind's Facebook group and the theme is "Make It Krafty" by colouring on kraft paper. I have never coloured on kraft paper before, so this was a challenge for me too. I had no idea how I was going to colour her skin. I had to do some Googling and some practicing because I colored with Prismacolor pencils this time, a huge jump from my normal Copics, and totally out of my comfort zone. I've signed up for the Perfecting Pencils class on Kit and Clowder, but haven't had time to do any lessons yet. I really wish I had completed a lesson or two before tackling this! I definitely have some motivation to get in the classroom now, because I really liked this project and the look of stamping an image on kraft. 

The East Wind image I've used is Aurora'Maple'. I have been wanting to colour this image for the longest time and I thought it went perfectly with the kraft challenge.

I stamped a Heidi Swapp wood grain stamp with pigment ink on kraft paper and heat embossed it with Aged Gold Frantage. I tied brown raffia around that. I used By DIEzyne stitched bracket dies to cut out my image and mounted it on red paper. I mounted that on the gold embossed kraft. I wish I could tell you all the pencil colours I used, but it was a lot of layering and adding a colour here and there. It was not as straightforward as colouring with Copics. 

I hope you like my first attempt at colouring on kraft and only my second time ever colouring an entire image with pencils. It was definitely a step out of my comfort zone!

Make sure you check out our group on Facebook and the blog! The blog has two challenges every month, in addition to the Facebook challenge, so there are a lot of opportunities to participate and win! And sign up for the newsletter (look for the bright pink box at the top of the page)!! The free image from Unky for April is SO beautiful!! You're going to be kicking yourself if you don't get her. And one of the challenges on the blog is to colour up the freebie, so GO SIGN UP!! And while you're there check out the new DT page! It's been updated and you can find out a little about myself and all our other fabulous designers! 

Thanks for stopping by!