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

New Release at The East Wind

Hello Tuesday!! It`s New Release day over at The East Wind, and today is a fantastic one! (Well, every new release is fantastic, but this one is extra fantastic!) It`s called Marvelous Spatuletail and it is beautiful!

I coloured this with Copic markers, and did a watercolour background. The background didn't come out quite like I hoped, but I wasn't fussy cutting the image out to put it on a different background, so next time I will do the background FIRST. ;-) I printed it out at 5"x5.5" because I wanted to have a lot of space to get in and do her wings. I usually print out at 3.5" (no bigger than 4") for images I'm going to put on a card, but I knew I was going to need a bigger image with this one. 

Pop on over to the Facebook group and join us for contests, and also on the BLOG because they have twice monthly challenges over there! And if you sign up for the newsletter, Unky will send you a sweet freebie on the 1st of every month! On top of that, The East Wind just became a sponsor of Kit and Clowder, so you can see some collaboration between us and Alyce in the near future! See you around crafty land!

Thanks for stopping by!! 

Fab Friday at Tiddly Inks

It's another Fab Friday at Tiddly Inks, and my DT term with them is coming to an end at the end of August. It's a sad thing, to be sure. I'm going to take a little break this fall as I get my twins into pre-school, and will be hauling them to the University of Alberta on the weekdays. I'm going to focus on only a couple of DT's until I see how my days are going to go, so I won't be putting my hat in the ring for another term with Tiddly Inks until I see how my schedule is going to look.

Today I'm using "Fairy Tenderhearted" for my make.

The papers are from Bo Bunny and Kaisercraft. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts, the lace from Live & Love Crafts, and the dies are from La La Land Crafts. I coloured this with Copics, and a little Clear Star Gelly roll pen on her wings and shoes.

I hope you like how it turned out! Thanks so much for stopping by and visiting! xx