Superhero Mum

I’ve spent the last few days trying to sort out an idea in my head. I wanted to create a special Mothers’ Day card for a very special person. Nothing short of giving it my all would do. I had an idea for a superhero theme because I wanted the card to look fun and make her smile. Cos knowing me, the inside is gonna be soppy! 🙂

I wanted to use my favourite superhero digital stamp because my auntie is totally badass and is a superhero in every way, but I was worried that it might unintentionally offend due to its sassy (and sexy!) nature. I thoroughly enjoyed colouring the image, but then when I was done, I stared at it blankly for hours. A few panic attacks later, I realized that she knows that I have my cheeky moments and will take it the way it’s meant to be – cheeky.

I still didn’t have any ideas for the layout of the card, so I went looking for sketches. I couldn’t find anything that appealed in this instance, so I finally decided on a comic book (ish) layout. Unfortunately, the brain fog was bad. Creating the digital elements took me hours because my brain just couldn’t remember simple processes that I had done a gazillion times before and I had to consult my trusted friend, Google!

Finally at about 4 o’clock in the morning, it all came together and here it is!

Image: Super Spandex by Illustrations by T
Papers: Superhero Digital Paper Pack by LaLavanderiaDigital

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Cardz TV – Anything Goes Challenge #87

Colour Crazy Craft Challenge – Week 15 – Anything Goes

Festive Friday Challenge – #FF0032 – Mother’s Day And/Or Pink

Outlawz Festive Friday Challenge – Apr 19 – May 2

Scrapper’s Delight – April 2019 – Anything Goes

Penny’s Paper-Crafty Challenge – #426 – Anything Goes

Outlawz Twisted Thursday – Anything Goes / Fleur de Lis – Apr 11 – Apr 24

Crafting With An Attitude – #50 – Anything Goes

A Place to Start – Mid-Month Anything Goes with Optional Twist

Colouring in Scrapland – April 2019 – Anything Goes

Until my next project! 🙂

Baby in a Blue Dress

Sometimes things just work out and an idea in my head actually translates onto my project. That is what happened with my latest project which I named Baby in a Blue Dress.

Baby in a Blue Dress
Image: Big Eye Girl Sorry Sally Image No. 205 by Oddball Art Co
Papers: Celebration in Pink Champagne by AMB Illustrations

For this card, I used Sketch Saturday’s Sketch #245.

I would like to enter this project into these challenges:

Outlawz Progressive Challenge – April 2019

Di’s Digi Designs Challenge – Make It Girly

Digi Choosday Craft Challenge – Anything Goes Challenge

As You Like It Challenge – Favourite Colouring Medium (Copic markers because they are easy to blend seamlessly and faster to colour than coloured pencils)

Oddball Challenge – April Oddball Challenge

Outlawz Saturday Paper A La Mode – March 30 to April 12

Outlawz Festive Friday – April 5 – April 18 – Birthday

It’s a great feeling when everything comes together.

Till my next project! 🙂

When the Mojo Takes a Hiatus

Misha Collins recently posted that it was the first day of his last hiatus from filming Supernatural – my absolute favourite show. However, it seems that my creative mojo has decided that he needed some company!

I think most people who create encounter dry spells in some form or other (I truly envy you if you don’t!) I’ve always been an extremist, being at either one end of a spectrum or the other, and rarely in between (although I am trying to learn to step into the grey). My creativity – sadly – isn’t an exception. Some nights my brain is bombarded with a myriad of ideas, like an overflowing river – so fast that my hand can’t keep up with it as I scramble to grab my pencil and paper and scribble furiously, trying my best to write my ideas down in a manner that will still make sense come morning.

Then there are times like now – when ideas are like the smattering of trees in an otherwise dry and barren region of the Australian outback in the height of summer. I have discovered that very often, these times usually coincide with having a lot on at the time. My theory is that my left brain goes into overdrive (think Turbo after NOS) and my poor right brain is left in the dust (Turbo before NOS). However, extended periods spent not creating and crafting puts me on edge and makes me really restless, some might even say irritable *coughs and splutters*. It’s at times like these that I look for some NOS for poor Turbo stuck at the starting line, and I find it in the form of card sketches.

Card sketches are like blueprints for cardmaking. It shows the layout of the card and where elements such as card, mats (if any), patterned paper, ribbon and borders go. I find that breaking down a card to its bare bones helps me a lot because I only make one decision at a time and then further build on the selected option. Some days I still struggle with this thanks to the brain fog that most of us receive as a free gift with compliments from fibromyalgia (we’d absolutely love to return it if we could), so breaking decisions to chihuahua-sized bite pieces such as, “square card or rectangle card?”, “embossed or not?”, “this paper or that?” helps me tremendously as I feel like I am moving forward, even if it’s only by a fraction of an inch.

There are many blogs already devoted to card sketches. A simple search in a search engine or on Pinterest would bring up a host of possibilities, but these are the ones I keep coming back to. I’ll try to remember amidst the brain fog to update this list if I find more that I use.

• The Outlawz Challenges
• My Favorite Things
• I Need a Sketch
• Sketch Saturday
• Operation Write Home

The past week has been really hectic in my head, and although I got a lot of colouring done and created toppers for cards, my list of cards to make for family for Easter, Mother’s Day and other occasions wasn’t getting any shorter. I flipped through some sketches and found one that spoke to me at the time. And what do you know? I’ve struck my auntie’s birthday card off my list and this is the end result.

Birthday Bear
Bear Digi Stamp – Teddy Bear Picking Flowers by The Paper Shelter, coloured with Copics
Patterned Papers – Echo Park Springtime Paper/Elements Pack 1 and Pack 2

I’d like to enter this project for the following challenges:

Use Your Stuff Challenge #353 – Fuzzy Wuzzy

Papercraft Challenges #34 – Polka Dots

Papercraft Challenge #17 – Anything Goes

Outlawz Saturday Paper A La Mode (Mar 30 – Apr 12) – Non-rectangle Card

That old adage – “Fake it till you make it”? Sometimes that is exactly what I do. Guess some old wives were wise after all, and no, I didn’t mean me! 🙂

Till my next project!