Fond Christmas Memories...

It's time for Magnolia-Licious Christmas All Year Long Blog Hop and this month, I decided to focus on my favorite Christmas memories. One of my most favorite things to do over the holiday season is to enjoy a performance of the Nutcracker ballet. I rememeber the first time I went to a Nutcracker ballet performance, I think I was about 8. It was a school field trip and I was living in Charleston, SC. I loved sitting and watching in awe as the mice fought with the nutcrackers, as the tree magically grew to fill the stage and underneath, hundreds of tiny dancers pranced around in a snowstorm.

Now that I'm an adult, I celebrate the spirit of Christmas with my family and try to share my experiences. This year, I hope to attend a Nutcracker performance with my nieces...It is so heartwarming to see the wonder in a little ones eyes.

This month, I created a card for the blog hop that brought me back to the Nutcracker, and all the while I was coloring this adorable maggie, I was thinking of the show. So, for this months card, I present to you....The dance of the....Well, maybe not so much a sugar plum fairy....but heck, why not!

Copic Details:

Hair E53, 33, 35, 57

Skin E000, 01, 02

Dress: G0000, B000, 01, BV 20, 0000

Crown: R32, BV20

Background created by painting with acrylic inks, heat embossing stamped image (Fiskars) with clear embossing powder, painting again with acrylic inks, rubbing ink to reveal embossed image.

I took the photos at an inopportune time so I'll repost better pictures later. Sorry, they'll just have to do.

Thanks for visiting and please continue your Christmas All Year Long Blog hop by heading over to Lauren's blog.

Kerry

Busy week...

This week has been pretty busy...crafty busy and a little extra work for the school system evaluating some lesson plans in the foreign language department to see how well they aligned with curriculum and state standards...I thought I'd pop on to post some of my crafty creations for this week as well as remind you of two things:

My color challenge will end soon so make sure to post a link to your creation before Monday when I will be asking inlinks to select a winner...

I'll will be participating in the Christmas All Year Long Blog hop for Magnolia-Licious again this month, please stop by on Sunday and check out my Christmas Maggie...I LOVE it...and hope you will too.

OK, so back to showing you my creations for this week:

The first few projects were created for a couple ATC swaps I'm participating in at the Stamp Shack. I used to create tons of swap ATCs but these days, I usually create an ATC to attach to a card I'm making. I don't swap them much anymore. I thought I would participate in a few more just for the fun of it...Anyway, here they are:

This swap ATC was created for the "Christmas in July" swap. I used my copics of course!

I used three stamp sets for this card. A Heidi Swap set, The penguins are from a set by MSE (I think) and the sentiment is from TAC. Added some ribbon from Ribbons and Bows Oh My!, a MS snowflake punch, Fiskars Threading water punch, and a little button from some shop at the GASC convention...I need to figure out who they were because I WILL definitely be ordering more buttons from them.

The next set of 10 ATC's were made for the "Try a new Coloring Technique" challenge. I saw this video a few months back where the person was painting with Liquid Pearls and thought it was an awesome way to use the medium in a non-traditional way. I knew this was the technique I was going to use for this swap so I had to hunt for a great stamp set that would allow me to display the technique...SO I pulled out my Fiskars Cupcake set that I hadn't used yet and whipped up some images, colored them with my copics then used Liquid Pearls like a watercolor wash over the top...WOW...It reminded me of Perfect Pearls or the Opalite Ink I used to use long ago, but oh how easy!!! This technique is a keeper! I added the traditional Liquid Pearl Drops to the edge to give the viewer two ways to see how this medium can be used...in it's traditional form, or as a watercolor wash...NEAT!

So, you may be wondering why I haven't posted a sample or a creation to my own color challenge right??? Well, I haven't been slacking, no, I decided to use the colors in the challenge on another project...The Thinking Inking classes I've been refreshing myself with on Twopeasinabucket. This weeks episodes challenged me to take out my acrylic paint, clear embossing powder and paper and create some lucious backgrounds...Here's what I created:

Isn't it just elegant? I loved how it turned out and didn't want to cover up the background with other stuff so I kept the tag pretty plain other than to layer with all the colors in the color challenge, add a little ribbon and a colored flower, and then to top it all off, added a little spritz of dazzle with my Shimmerz...love the sparkle! Here are the other sample swatches I created and you'll find one show up this Sunday in my Christmas Card Post!!!

Watch for a photo journaling in the next few weeks of this technique....I took step by step photos for my art journal.