I hope you are well. I have a little ‘play time’ project to share with you today.

I have been picking my pencils up and down over the past few months and having a play with them here and there, but I would always give up too easy, find an excuse why they weren’t working for me and run straight back to my comfort zone – markers! hehe

BUT!!!  For the last couple of nights I gave myself a little talking to and sat down to colour with my Prisma pencils once again. This time I wasn’t allowed to throw away the image half way through, and had to complete it, just to finish it. So… I did!

The image I have been playing with is one of the new adorable Magnolia Stamps – Princess Welcome Tilda from the Princes & Princess collection.

Overall, it’s OK. I’m upset with how dark the legs got. I really wanted more highlight on the right hand side but it kept getting darker each time I tried to fix it, so I have decided to ignore them! lol

I’m reasonably happy with the choice in skin colours (you should have seen my experiments!!) and I love the colours of the dress.

I left the background ‘scratchy’ to show it was coloured in pencil. I guess it was my touch of ‘artistic flair’ – LOL

I didn’t use any solvent to blend – mainly using a lighter colour to blend and then blend with the white, and finally I smoothed it out a little using a paper stump.

A close up to prove it is pencil – but don’t look too closely!!  haha

The DP is also from Magnolia – Cloudy Purple Hearts – “Sweet Crazy Love collection”. I think it is one of my favourites actually. I don’t do very well with DP, but the nice small pattern and muted colour works nice!!

Thanks for popping by!! I hope you have a fabulous weekend.

Big Aussie Squeezes

Zoe xo

Wow! Thank you soooo much for all your wonderful and heartfelt comments. You have all been too kind with your praises. :)

And now today I will announce the random winner of a gift from Magnolia Sweden!

and that makes the winner

Hello Maggie Lovers!

I hope you have been enjoying the inspiration from the Magnolia Team throughout the special Magnolia Advent Calendar event. And lots and lotsof prizes will be given away this whole month so make sure you keep up with the action and comment along the way for your chance to win a special gift from magnolia Sweden.

So today is my turn to spread a little Christmas cheer and well let me just say my desk is COVERED IN GLITTER!! haha!

I decided to create a little Christmas scene on a step card using a bunch of different images and LOTS of fussy cutting!I had trouble working out how to photograph it so I just took a bunch of them!

Here is a close up of ‘Winter Tilda‘
She is standing in front of ‘Gift Way’ from Make it Crafty

Here is a close up of ‘Tilda with Christmas Baked’
She is sitting on the ‘Winter Seat’ from Make it Crafty

Here is a close up of ‘Tilda with Candycone‘
She is standing in front of ‘Winter Fence’ from Make it Crafty

I have a feeling that Tilda with Christmas Baked and Tilda with Candycone may be a little bit cold for this scene as they haven’t quite dressed for being outdoors but hopefully it wont take long for them to reach the little house in the distance! haha

I created the backdrop using a 6 x6 page from Websters Pages Christmas packs from last year.

Then I began working my way forward on the step card.

Once everything was securely in place I covered the bottoms of all the snow areas in the images in puff paint.

Then I added glue all over the pace and covered it all in glitter! So sad that the photos never do glitter any justice! haha

I added the finishing touch by adding the cute little postage stamp sentiment available from Whimsy Stamps.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Please leave a comment below for your chance to win a special gift from Magnolia Sweden.
I’ll be back tomorrow with the random winner!!

Big Aussie Squeezes!

Zoe xo

I hadn’t realised I hadn’t shared this card I made here on my Magnolia blog!! Better late than never I say!!

 I coloured up ‘Something for you Tilda‘ using my no lines technique. I am hoping to create a tutorial soon so keep your eyes peeled over the next few months.
I’ll give you more details later!! wink wink!

 I timed myself as to how long she took to colour and am ashamed to say over THREE hours!!
But the result is worth it. :)

Here is a close up of ‘Something for you Tilda‘

I really love the pose on this Tilda and the super cute Santa style dress!

I wanted to make something a little elegant and so I designed up the frame and laser cut it out and then coated it with gold embossing powder.
The papers are a mix of echo park and webster’s pages.
The gorgeous gems are from Kaisercraft.

Copics (from memory)

E000, E21, E13

R35, R37, RV29, R89, W5, W7

W1, W3, W5

E74, 77, 79

I can’t recall the colours for the gift box sorry.

That’s all for today.

Big Aussie Squeezes!!

Zoe xo

It’s that time again where my group shares our creations on The Official Magnolia Inspriation Challenge Blog! This week we are playing with the Magnolia Animal stamps and also asking you to incorporate Magnolia Designer paper in your creations.

I admit I don’t have very many animal stamps sand don’t really think to use the ones I have that often, so it was a good opportunity to pull out what I do have an think up a scene!

I made this scene using 4 different stamps and I masked each step of the way before stamping my next stamp.

I started with ‘Small Butterfly‘ – Butterfly Dreams collection – , then I stamped Petals & Palings Fence from Make it Crafty, then I stamped ‘Tilda in Summer Rain‘ – Sweet Rainbow Collection – but before stamping her I wiped the ink off the rain drops so she was using the umbrella to protect her from the sun (not rain) – then finally I stamped the background – Butterfly Background – Butterfly Dreams Collection.

I always fall to pieces when it comes to making the card especially when my card will be placed beside the gorgeous creations the Magnolia Team create. I don’t know why, it just freaks me out and I go into a tizz!! hehe
So I ended up spending longer trying to make my card look pretty than the actual time it took to colour the image! haha  I kept going back to it to see if I could stuff anything else on there! haha serious!!

Ingredients

The gorgeous pink background paper is Fairy Tale Pink Rose from “Once Upon a Time” collection and the blue DP is Blue Foliage from “Sweet Rainbow” collection. I had originally tried to use a light purple DP for the background however it wasn’t offering enough contrast with the brightness of the image I had coloured.

I added some fancy lace from Webster’s Pages, doily, flowers, hat pins, leaves, lots of glitter around the edges, stickles on the flowers and charm.

I painted the flower leaf swirls chipboard with distressed white paint and then coated them in glitter and the sentiment is from Whimsy Stamps.

I think I ended up with more glitter on my table than on the card somehow!! haha

Copic Colours

I used lots of colours in this image so I’ll just run through the main ones (no chance of me remembering all the greens I used!! just mix em up! lol)

Skin: E000, E21, E11, E13 – R20 cheeks

Hair: Y11, Y13, Y17 (to help the sun not look so bold!!)

Purple: V000, V01, V06

Turquoise: G000, G00, BG13 & BG49 – I had run out of BG10 and substituted with G000 & G00 – worked well I thought!

Sky: B000 & B00 -
Refilled just prior so they were nice and juicy – I used the broad end to lay down the bulk of the colour.

Shading was achieved with the warm grays

So pull out your animal stamps and magnolia DP and come join us this week at TOMIC!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Big Aussie Squeezes

Zoe xxoo

So my new ‘thang’ is trying to get better at drawing grass. I created this one a while ago for a friend and now that she has it, I can share here. :)

I only recently got my hands on Tilda with Hawaii Flower and couldn’t wait to colour her up! She is certainly a very pretty Tilda. :)

A couple of things I am learning and this one isn’t a great example really:

Start building up the grass where the shadows will be.
Leave the grass at the back light and bring it darker towards the front
Flick grass in different directions ACROSS each other to make it look a little more natural
If you have pencils, you can finish off by coming in with some lighter colours to help define the grass a little more
Flick the grass over your subject so they are standing amongst the grass

I have done a couple more scenes since this image and I am getting better so with more practice I am hoping to get the grass to look a little more ‘real’. We’ll see how that pans out. hehe

I’m sorry I didn’t keep track of the colours and I’m having a little trouble remembering so would end up guessing in this instance sorry.

DP: lilbee design, memory box co, Sandylion
Flowers: WoC
Dragonfly chipboard (Make it Crafty)
Blue flower buds, Heart die and border – Magnolia
Wishing You Sentiment – Whimsy Stamps

Thanks for popping by! I’ll be back with my TOMIC project in the next day or so!!

Big Aussie Squeezes

Zoe

The latest Magnolia Ink Magazine – Sweet Christmas Dreams – is incredible! With so much inspiration from the team you’ll be sure to be running off to the craft room to play with your Maggies!! If you haven’t got your hands on a copy yet, I highly recommend hunting one down! :)

I was very honoured to have been featured this issue but taking that photo to share was a nightmare!! haha! I usually prefer to be behind the camera!

For those of you who have already received the latest Magnolia Ink Magazine, you would have seen some photos of my project already, however the photos don’t quite share the whole story. :)

So I received permission to share with you, a video of my creation. (CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON ON IMAGE ABOVE)

I have two colouring tutorials in the magazine showing how I coloured some of the characters in this scene.

List of Characters used in scene

Tilda in Winter Light, Alf with Bell, Alva with flower, Gingerbread Tilda, Tilda with Small Gift, Sneaky Tilda, Rufus the Dog, Tilda with Gingerbread, Sitting Tilda (Bon Voyage Collection), mini Tilda with Many Hearts.

I also turned the Gingerbread house into a kit available at Make it Crafty. :)

———————————————

Please also note that I am taking requests for Magnolia Stamps you would like to see coloured in upcoming magazines.
You can leave a comment below OR contact Magnolia with details in the magazine.

Thanks for popping by!

Big Aussie Squeezes!

Zoe xo

It has been a while since I have had a chance to post here but I have been quite busy and just haven’t had the luxury to play as much as I would have liked.

I hope you can grab yourself the new magazine coming out as it is going to be another fantastic issue!!

I am away at the moment so this is a sheduled post and I am keeping my fingers crossed it goes as planned! haha!

The challenge this week at TOMIC is to play along with our sketch using a sporting theme!

I have coloured up Cheerleader Tilda who came in the last stampclub kit. I think she is pretty cute!

I used the following colours:

BG13, 15, 45 – colorless blender
E71, 74, 77, 79
E000, E01, E13, R20

Thanks for popping by!

Big Squeezes

Zoe xo

Well as you may know I am definitely one to love creating a scene and so the challenge of Masking Stamps at TOMIC this week is right up my alley! I decided to go hybrid and so I have masked my traditional rubber stamps with digital stamps. :)

Also just to make things extra challenging I decided to take my new obsession of ‘no black lines’ to the extreme and colour a WHOLE scene. Crazy is definitely the way to describe it. :D

But here is the result. Not bad for my first attempt and colouring a scene. I didn’t do any practice or throw anything away in the bin – I just hoped that I would be able to hide any mistakes. I guess the one good thing about having no lines is that you can hide your mistakes easier, you just pretend it wasn’t there! hahaa

So here is the result

It looks a bit bright in the photo but I often have trouble trying to get the colours adjusted just right. Try and imagine it slightly more muted. Haha

To create this scene I started by arranging my digital stamps for the background. I used Petals & Palings, Snap Dragon Garden and Pebblestone Patch from Make it Crafty. I changed the transparency of the digital image so there would be no black lines and tried to match the darkness of the lines to the ink I was stamping with. I set mine to 10% but your printer may be different so you will need to experiment with what works best for you. I suggest going as light as you can before you have trouble seeing the lines.

After deciding on my background digital scene, I stamped Tilda with Watering Can using Adirondack Cloudy Blue ink. Then I masked her by stamping her onto some scrap and cutting her out and adding low tack glue to the back.

I lined up the digital stamp with Tilda to ensure it would print in the correct spot.

Finally I then masked the fence and Tilda and then stamped the magnolia Blooming Spring Tree in the background.

The image took hours to colour. I decided to start with the background and move towards the front. I had trouble with the greenery and just kept my fingers crossed that it would work out in the end when I added the prisma pencils. It is better but I certainly need a lot more practice.

If you look carefully I attempted to make the white areas on Tilda’s top ‘see-through’. It’s something I am still experimenting with having been challenged by Michelle in my FB group.

I have been having some trouble figuring out how to colour the hair on this Tilda and I am quite a bit happier with this attempt. I have another idea up my sleeve that I may try when I get a chance. :)

I highly recommend popping over to see the other fabulous creations made by the Magnolia team and I do hope you will be able to join us this week!

I hope you like my masked creation and I hope you like the idea of stamping with no black lines. I really feel like it is more like painting an image than colouring a ‘colouring book’ so to speak. I had to look the image in a whole new light and try and work out how I would break up all the elements only using my shading skills. It was definitely worth the challenge!

Thanks so much for popping by.

Big Aussie Squeezes

Zoe xxoo

This is just a quick post to share with you something new I have tried. I have been playing around with the idea of colouring stamps without stamping with black ink. I absolutely love the result and this is definitely something I will be continuing to do.

I stamped Tilda with ‘Cloudy Blue’ Adirondack ink and coloured her with copic markers and then finished her off using prismacolor pencils to define the edges and add some extra depth in the shadows.

I have now attempted a whole scene which you will see shortly! :)

Thanks so much for popping by.

Big Aussie Squeezes!

Zoe xxoo

I have been so busy this month that I haven’t really had much time for me so I decided this week that I would begin colouring Rocking Tilda. (I was having Magnolia withdrawal symptoms… hehe)

I began colouring her outfit with markers, but in the end ended up going over most of it with prismacolor pencils to make it a bit richer. I wasn’t too happy with how I had formed the folds and was trying hard to fix them. They are better. Passable. :)

I used papers from lilybeedesign – Picket Fence, flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts, Sentiment from Whimsy Stamps and the little dragonflies from Make it Crafty.

I used copic markers and Prismacolor pencils this time. The paper I used is the Make it Colour blending card.

Outfit: BV000, BV00, BV02, BV04 – PC932, PC933, PC1079, PC934, PC938

Skin: E000, E01, E11, E25 – R20 cheeks

Hair: E50, E53, E55, E57, E29

Thanks for popping by!!

Big Aussie Squeezes!!

Zoe xxoo

Well the challenge over at TOMIC this week is to make an Easel Card. Boy you should have seen my face when I saw that was the challenge. Had my grandmother been around she would have warned me “If the wind changes your face will stay like that!” Needless to say, I wasn’t too excited. hahaa

I have only ever made a couple in the past and there is just something about them that just doesn’t do it for me!

So just because I enjoy embarassing myself, I’ll let you know what happened. I of course had my image all coloured (more about that later) and it came time when I was preparing the base. I was being stubborn and was just going by memory of how they work. AND of course I got it COMPLETELY wrong. I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t look right and why the image didn’t seem to fold the right way. So I had to find some directions. HAHA Yes I could have likely figured it out but it was faster to google it.

So with that out of the way I spent a whole day on and off trying to decorate a couple of pieces of card folded in an awkward fashion. You do realise that if you send these cards to NON crafty people that they need directions right??? I actually drew directions on a separate piece of paper the last time I sent one to my cousin and she phoned me to not only thank me for the card but to thank me for the directions!!! HAhaha

Ok so warning…. there are lots of photos. This style is far from my norm. I always freak out when any of my work will be positioned closely beside the incredible talent on the Magnolia team and couple that with an easel card and you have a woman ripping her hair out fretting about every element!!!

OK OK – I’m hurrying up with the photos.

Da daaa…. It is an easel card. :)

I sprinkled on a bunch of micro beads. Not sure why. Possibly because I had ran out of them ages ago and just stocked up on them and needed to use them on something. haha

How cool does the distress crackle paint look on the chippies?? They look so rustic. :)

You can get these gorgeous swirls in two different packs

Love Heart Swirls & Swirly Corners

And the base. I added another chippie from the flower leaf frames set to help tie the base in with the front.

So this is Water Can Tilda and she is from the ‘Sweet Rainbow’ collection. Most often my images end up being coloured qith dark shadows and rich colours, however I really need to practice using lighter colours which is what I was working on here. I was also trying to make the ‘purple’ section of her dress look see-through. I really still need some practice in that area and probably need to do some research. :)

The colours I used are:

Skin: E0000, E000, E21
Dress: B000, B00, BV000 & BV00
Hair: Was just a mix of random browns – E27,E30, E44 what ever I had close. haha!

I added in some grass and drew in some flowers and there is a faint sky in the background too.

You’ll defintiely want to stop by the The Official Magnolia Inspiration Challenge blog,
as I can assure you that the wonderful team has created some stunning projects. :)

Thanks so much for popping by!

Big Aussie Squeezes

Zoe xxoo