Day 2 Blending Sets Giveaway

Today's card first - here's a pretty little image from the Work and Play collection by Polkadoodles. Coloured with ProMarkers of course! Look at the pretty background paper, all those tiny ballet shoes. There are a lot of super digi images and papers on this CD, and if you are in a hurry, you can print out the images already coloured as well.....

I love the little sentiment tickets....the border was done with a Martha Stewart punch, I layered it onto pink card and punched a few tiny pink stars to pop along the top with some sequins. There's a bit of Wink of Stella glitter here and there as well, but of course that doesn't show up in the photo

Okay, here we go. All the comments under this post will go into the draw to win the yellow blending set. The colours are:
Primrose, Soft Lime, Lemon, Canary, Sunflower and a blender

Just a reminder, if you don't have a blog or google account, I accept anonymous comments. Email subscribers, you need to click on the grey Going Buggy header on your email to come over here. Scroll to comments at the end of this post, write your comment, tick anonymous if necessary, and click on publish. If you click on the anonymous option, be sure to leave your name or some way I can identify you if you win.  Only comments under each of the posts will be entered into that day's draw

Be sure to drop by tomorrow to be in with another chance - this time the red blending set, and it's my turn to post over on the Letraset blog as well, so you can see my efforts for this week - see you then x

Mermaid

This lovely little mermaid image is by La La Land stamps, available from Scrappy-go-Lucky. I embossed the card front with the spots and dots folder (available in the UK, not sure about the USA), then added some Fiskars sheer blue raindrops to that. The sentiment is from Craftwork Cards

I did a step by step photo shoot of colouring her hair with Promarkers. I started with rich cocoa in the darkest areas....... 

blended that in with cinnamon, going over the area coloured with the rich cocoa, and extending the colour out a little.......

I moved on to Caramel, again going over the previously coloured parts, and extending it out a little more. I left some patches where I thought the light would be catching the hair.....

I went over the whole lot with Ivory, which added some light highlights...

I started the skin, by going around the darkest areas with soft peach, under the hairline, on the cheeks, you can see that I made a mistake and coloured in her bolero top, it made no difference to the end result. I then went over the whole of the skin area again with a Blush marker.....

and here she is finished. I used ice grey 1 & 2, duck egg, cool aqua, grey green, tea green, and cyan for the clothes and tail, and added a tiny bit of a turquoise Spica pen to add a bit of sparkle.....

The label shape was made by scribbling glossy paper with promarkers, and flicking with blender solution - the ink dissolved, and it looks just like bubbles in water (this was the technique I wanted to video until I lost my tripod!)

So there we are, I hope this has been useful

I had a phone call from two very excited little boys (Max and Milo) who had just helped Daddy decorate the Christmas tree. Apparently Max is opening his advent box in a very orderly way, counting the days and carefully removing the contents. Milo has developed a rather unusual method - he opens ALL the boxes every day, has a good look inside each one, then chooses which one he fancies. As my son said, this means that by Christmas week, he will be left with a load of rubbish that he didn't really fancy in the first place!! 

One stamp - 2 ways. Promarker draw still open......

All the comments on this post will be entered into the random draw for two of you to win ten promarkers of your choice. If you are commenting every day, your name will go in the hat seven times.

For full details, scroll down to Monday's post

I pulled out this Penny Black stamp for today's cards, and did it in two totally different ways as you will see.....

For the first one, I cut a 5 1/2" circle card using the Wildcard cartridge on my Cricut. I tied some of my favourite black and white gingham ribbon around the fold. I stamped the image onto white cardstock, and again onto some yellow cardstock. The image was coloured with Promarkers, leaving the bath uncoloured, then I cut out just the bath from the yellow paper, and stuck it on the image - I love paper piecing, it can make your stamps so versatile.

A quick tip, if you are using circle cards like this one, cut a sliver off the bottom of the back circle, this gives a stable base for the card to stand without wobbling over - having said that I popped the card on my little easel to photograph it and it looks a bit tipsy.

the clear acrylic dots that I put on some of the bubbles are Doodle Dewdrops from Polkadoodles, the sentiment is from MFT
Promarkers used:
Cool grey 3 & 4, blush and pastel pink for the cat
ivory and caramel for the mouse
pastel blue for the bubbles
primrose for the chanpagne

And here is the same stamp looking quite different. I coloured the bath in this time. The pattern paper is from a christmas pack by Papermania. I got the embossing folder in the UK as well, I can't remember who made it.
Some of you have said that they get streaky effects when colouring in large plain areas like the bath with alcohol markers. The trick is to use small circular strokes of the pen, this blends the ink as you go. If you go for broad straight strokes, then the ink is laid down unevenly, you get an overlap where the strokes meet, which is why you get a streaked effect.



Promarkers used:
Cat - warm grey 3 & 4, blush and dusky pink
mouse - ivory, blush and pastel pink
Bath - cool aqua, tea green and duck egg. I used warm grey 3 to shadow under the roll top edge of the bath


Some of you have asked me to repeat the list of Promarker stockists in the USA

Carpe Diem

Du-All

Ace

For stockists in your area, contact Macphersons www.info@macphersonart.com

You can also order direct from Letraset in the UK, their shipping costs are very reasonable

Right, I'm off to do some more packing - sigh
See you tomorrow