Time Flies when you are having Fun

I can't believe that I have already completed 38 days of the ICAD challenge. 

Then again I can't believe 2016 is more than half way over. My parents always said that time flies the older you get but this is just crazy.  And why does it happen???

Well, here are my cards from the past week. And let me tell you, some of these prompts did absolutely NOTHING for me!!!

Like this one...

Day 32: Zodiac

It took me most of the day to force myself to sit down and do something. (and I didn't do much lol)

The goat is drawn with pencil and colored Inktense pencil. 
Capricorn is stamped with black StazOn ink using the Close To My Heart Circus Alphabet set.


Day 33: Magic

The rabbit, hat, cards and wand were colored with Inktense pencils. The table and background were watercolor pencil.

I like this one. As soon as I saw the prompt I knew I wanted to draw a bunny. :-)


Day 34: Statue of Liberty

Since I am still trying to teach myself how to draw chibi characters Lady Liberty just came out that way lol

The outlines are Sharpie fine point pen (not the markers, these have a slim body and super fine point). 
Color was added with Inktense pencils.


Day 35: Sunflower

Drawn with Sharpie black pen. Colored with Inktense pencils. Sunflower was written with a Cricut calligraphy pen.


Day 36: Prism  (another boring prompt lol)

I had no idea what to do so went very literal (and boring). I have to say I do like the vibrant colors. I used Cray-Pas oil pastels and blended them with my fingers. Very messing, very pretty lol


Day 37: Meditation

I don't meditate and this card shows why. 
I start out with good intentions everything as it should be and soon my mood goes to black as the cat is howling out in the kitchen, I am thinking I need to get dinner on the stove or I start thinking about work....  I am much better off locking myself in my art room and grabbing a pencil or some paint! lol



Day 38: Folk Art

Wow! I thought I would just whip out a folk art flower in a couple minutes and be done. They used to take me no time at all. BUT that was over 30 years ago!

It is hard to believe that this was the craft painting style of the 80s. I don't think I have seen it since. But I still have a couple painting books on my shelf so I hauled one down and gave it a go. 

It isn't great (after 3 attempts! lol) but it will do.

Painted with acrylics (that I still have from the 80s lol)

So that covers all my cards for the week.

But I also did a vinyl project this week.  :-)

I love yard sales, You can find the oddest things. Like a couple months ago I scored a box of at least 50 glass baby food jars with metal lids for $1.

I had no use in mind other than maybe sorting and storing beads or something but everyone on the Let's Learn Cricut Explore facebook group has been making fairy jars.

I am not into fairies, although I do like Tinkerbell, so I hadn't jumped on that bandwagon.
Not until someone posted a Mermaid jar. Now there is something I can get into :-)

I cut the vinyl pieces with my Explore. A mermaid lounging on the sea floor, a couple fish, a sea shell and a sea star. They were applied to the inside of the jar.

I did not have any colored tissue paper so I made my own. I spritzed some tissue paper with water and then with Dylusions Ink spray. Voila! Colored tissue paper. I then dried with it my heat gun and then sprayed it with Krylon Workable Fixatif so the color wouldn't bleed when I glued the tissue to the jar.

I used Mod Podge to glue the tissue.
I then sprayed the metal lid with Rustoleum white metal primer, let it dry then dabbed on alcohol inks.

Just a piece of jute tied around the top and some sand glued to the bottom with Tacky glue.

I have a tiny battery tea light inside.  I think it turned out cute. 

That about covers it for this week.

Stay cool and dry. Happy Crafting!!!

More exploring with the Explore

Since I am still in my free trial period (you get 2 free weeks of access to over 25000+ Cricut images when you buy the Explore-after that time you can buy a subscription) I am playing with lots of images from cartridges that I don't own....so beware.....picture heavy post. :-)

I am still exploring uses for vinyl and am totally loving it! I put a couple dragonflies on our glass door and they look so cute (no picture). Minnie has swiped at them a couple times from her cat tower thinking they were something she could play with. So far they are still stuck tight. :-)

On Monday, after work, we went and got new cell phones. Am I the only one that finds this both fun and infuriating. It is fun to get new toys to play with and pick one that has all the features you like but at the same time you are then dickering over the price, the amount of data...the hidden charges. Ugh! Sometimes I just long for the days of the phone hanging on the wall. But then how could I check Twitter while I am at the grocery? (just kidding, I never check twitter from anyplace but home.....I just don't care THAT much lol)

But to get back on track.....I had that new phone in my hot little hands for about an hour when I pulled out the vinyl and prettied it up. :-)

This cat image if from the Chore Chart cartridge and is about 2 inches tall. Notice how precise the whiskers are cut.

Now, I am one that when I get a new device like a phone or tablet, one of the first things I do is go online and order a vinyl skin for it. So, this was so much fun to create my own vinyl and make my phone unique to me. But for some reason I never put a skin on my iPad mini that I got last summer. I loved how my phone turned out so I grabbed the iPad and vinyl'd it up too!

The doily is from Edge to Edge and the monogram is from Miss Kate's Cuttables. I am still in awe of how the Explore can cut these doilies! The entire thing is only about 4 inches across and yet all those teensy pieces are cut perfectly. (and a nightmare to weed lol)

And as I think I mentioned in another post, hubby wanted something on the dishwasher so that he could differentiate between clean and dirty so I made him these...

We can move a magnet between the 2 of them.  :-)

Here is a closer look. The he is from the Barnyard Babies cartridge. I flipped one of them and I hand-cut the mud. 

But I cut paper and cardstock this week too lol

Because my free period is almost up, I cut out several images that I know I will use in the near future. I will doctor them up and assemble them later but here is one I completed yesterday. He is a puffin from the Seabirds and Shells cartridge. I colored on his details with Prismacolor pencils. I probably should have painted the white on his face but too late now lol  He is just a little guy, about 1 1/2 inches tall.

And finally, the Explore can cut SVG files. Yes, I know if you have the SureCutsALot program you could already do that. But I didn't. And I don't own a Silhouette so I have never played with SVGs before. I am finding tons of free images online and I love freebies!

Miss Kate's offers a freebie of the day so you have to go check every day but it is totally worth it!

This is her Pretty Bug from earlier this week. But don't worry, if you miss out on the freebie, you can still buy it from her for a very small price. 

I used a printed cardstock for the body (it was some sort of peeling paint looking thing lol) in what I think is a nice bug green. The wings were embossed with the Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder and then I rubbed ink over them to highlight the dots. The base is another doily, from Edge to Edge this time cut at about 5 inches.  Isn't she cute? I was going to put her on a card but instead she now hangs over my work computer because she makes me smile.

But Miss's Kate's isn't the only place I find freebies.

Check out this adorable Pot Belly Bunny. He is the freebie of the week over at Little Scraps of Heaven.

The background paper was just hand cut in a rectangle and I used a corner punch to perk up the corners (nothing like doing it old school lol)
The text box was cut from.....hmmm.....hard to say, there are tons of rectangles out there but probably from George and Basic Shapes. I let the Explore do the writing for me. :-)

And one last picture. Hey, I warned you up front that I was bombarding you this week! lol

This was not a freebie but I still found him online from a site that does offer a freebie of the week. This is from the Cats Collection at Treasure Box Designs.

Sometimes I have a hard time resisting cats. Especially when they look at you like this! lol

All the shading was done with Prismacolor pencils. And her designs already have the 'cute' eyes cut-out, all you need to do is add the details. I liked that as I was assembling this on my lapdesk in front of the TV and really couldn't be messing with paint and water lol

My free trial period is almost up and I do not plan on subscribing (not when I own so many cartridges) so we shall see how it goes. It has been fun browsing the entire Cricut library thought! There are sooooo many images I never imaged they had. But I found myself drawn to things I already own so I think that is a good thing. But, if I do need something I don't already have it is nice to have the option of buying just that one image.

Until next time, have a wonderful week!

A Baby is Born

I can't even begin to describe how happy needle felting makes me. I have been an artist my whole life and will admit that '3D' mediums always left me feeling..well...lacking.

I had issues with proportion and the front might look fine but the back would look like a disaster!

To finally, after all these many years, to find a medium where I have no problems creating in a totally 3D format just makes me giggly lol

Here is my first new friend of 2012. He is a little "chubby' bunny. The core is made of merino wool then covered with gray alpaca (I love how soft the alpaca fleece feels!)

I gave him oversized eyes and nose to increase the cute factor. :-)

He stands about 3" tall to the tip of his ears.

And now for the baby. This took me 2 weeks to complete, not because he was difficult but because my neck issues have decided to flare up in a huge way so looking down for long periods of time sends me into horrible neck muscle spasms (trust me, it is not as fun as it sounds!)

I would like to introduce Seymore. He is a baby monster. He seems to have lost his mama (which I think is probably a good thing for me) but managed to keep a grip on his trusty teddy.

He also has a merino wool core and was then covered with a varigated baby blue. I am not sure what type of wool because I got this HUGE ball (at least 8-10 ounces) of it for free because an online vendor messed up my order and tossed in the blue as a thank you because I was patient and didn't complain. It is super soft! (some times it pays to be a patient customer) :-)

As you can see, he has a tight grip on teddy and is also sucking his thumb.

And, of course, a pic from 'behind'.

Seymore is about 3 1/2" tall.

He definitely strays from my normal bunnies and sheep but he came to me one day while I was day dreaming so I had to bring him to life. Now I have a gorilla floating in my head! We'll see if he appears any time soon lol

The fun just never stops!

I am having so much needle felting! I just can't stop!!!

Hubby requested a jack o'lantern and a Frankenstein. I thought I had some pics of the jack o'lantern but I can't find them so I will have to show him at a later date.

Here is Frankenstein. I used pipe cleaners in his legs for stability and he can stand on his own. He is about 6 inches tall and has a very Elvis quality about him lol.
I then I got hooked on sheep. My college roommate, Helen, says they are so adorable that she demanded I sell her one. She says....poofiness creates a major cute factor lol

So, I made one for her....but the poor guy missed the photo shoot. He is carefully packed in his box and waiting to be shipped to his new home.

These guys are 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 inches tall.
I got the idea that I wanted to create a koi....bad idea! He is so bad that it really had me wondering if it was just a fluke that I had made anything worth looking at before.

I had to really force myself to sit and concentrate today....this was the result. :-)

He stands about 3 1/2 inches to the tip of his ears. I was so thrilled because every part of him turned out just like I wanted (a first in felting for me).

I think he is my favorite so far. :-)

I have no idea what is coming next, I do know that there is a Santa on the horizon...he has been showing glimpses to my brain so he may be making an appearance soon. lol