Autumn Harvest Ride

Hi Precious Peeps!

How are you enjoying fall these days?  I feel like I missed a lot of it because I was indoors recovering from pneumonia.  I am all done with that now, thank you Jesus.  And thank you to anyone who prayed for me! 

 I have also missed making cards and blogging though, and it is good to be back!

You may or may not have noticed that I draw a lot of horses (no duh).  I happen to be of the opinion that they are the most beautiful of all the animals God made.  I have always been fascinated with these creatures, and have been drawing them since I was a kid.   My favourite ride at the fair was the real pony ride, but the merry-go-round, aka carousel came in at a close second!   Here is another one of my carousel horses (a digital image I did for Whimsy sold here) to celebrate the fall harvest and Thanksgiving time.  Here in Canada, we already had our Thanksgiving weekend, but I know our neighbours to the south still have that weekend coming up in November.  

I enjoyed playing with shadows and light on the Clydesdale's body to make it resemble the true muscular form of a work horse!  I studied photographs of these beautiful creatures to suggest where the light and shadows would go. 

The blender pen came in handy in this case, to lighten up areas that needed to have that shiny appearance, suggesting areas that reflect a lot of sunlight.  I loooove my blender pen for that purpose!  Makes my job a lot easier!

I have coloured Autumn Harvest Ride with the following Copics (get ready, its a long list, lol!)

Horse's body: 

E07, 08, 09, 19, 49 plus blender pen to highlight

Horse's muzzle: 

E50, R00, R20, W1

Horse's fetters (fluffy white lower legs): E50, W00, 1, 3, 4

Pole, harness and bridle: 

I started off making it blue with B21 and 23, but decided to change it to more of a blue-green by adding Y11 all over it.

Green summer squash: 

G28, 29, 40, Y11

Pumpkin:

YR15, 16, 18, 00, 23, Y35, 38, E37 in the deepest shadows

Red apple: 

R35, 37, 89, blender pen in the highlight

Metallic buckles on the harness: 

Y11, YR21, 23, Y28

Mane:

W00, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10

I added some very thin lines with a Copic liner pen in the mane, plus in the fetters, just to add more of a texture to the hair. 

I used some B0000 around the horse, but also I added some blue, yellow and pink pencil crayon to the background, and blended it with Turpenoid (odorless mineral spirits).  I was careful to use them only after I was finished with the Copics.  Never use Copic markers on top of pencil crayon! The alcohol will melt the wax of the pencil crayon, and it will collect on the tip of your marker, eventually clogging it. 

I also used some Distress inks and sponged them on the background while it was still in the Spellbinder die. 

The sentiment is by Raindrop Echo Designs and it is also a digi, found here at Whimsy Stamps.

Here is the complete card:

I am entering this card into the following challenges:

Sundays With Crissy - buttons and bows (the wooden leaf is actually a button!)

Copic Creations - Colourless Blender Technique (used to get the highlights on the horse's muscular structure)

Paper Playtime - Pumpkins or spiders

Basic Grey - Autumn/Harvest Time (the orange bg layer and the distressed green mat layer are both Basic Grey papers)

Daring Card Makers - Autumn Leaves

Creative Belli Blog - Pumpkins and Fall Sketch

Stamp Something - Digi day

No Time To Stamp? - Count Your Blessings  (I am thankful to have my health back and for the harvest of blessings in my life - they are abundant for sure, too many to count!)

Paper Garden Projects - Holiday card.  This one is for Thanksgiving (no duh)

Thank you so much for stopping by for a visit!  I hope you come again.

God Bless!

Blog Hop Winner~

I have a winner from the Whimsy blog hop last week!  I included those who joined in by comment and numbered them after the ones who used inlinkz.  Here is the choice by Random.org:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

56

Timestamp: 2010-10-12 17:50:58 UTC

And that number is: 

 
56. Lisa T 

Congratulations Lisa T!  E-mail me with your snail mail addy and I'll get Denise of Whimsy Stamps to get the "Starry Night"stamp mailed to you!

I hope my Canadian friends had a good Thanksgiving weekend!

On Hearing God Speak

This is another post in which I share my heartfelt beliefs about God.  To me, this is an act of worship to my God.  You can choose to tune in or tune out.  I will not be offended either way.  Bless you!

Do you know the voice of God?  Do you know what He says to you every day?  Did you ever hear Him, not with your physical ears, but with the ears of your heart?  Have you sensed Him trying to communicate to you, somewhere on a deeper level within you, in your subconscious mind, also known as your heart?
  I listen to God talk to me daily.  I used to think that only really "spiritual people" could hear God speak.  Just those prophets in the Bible, or those who worked miracles on the earth.  I didn't know He spoke to regular every day people like me.
  And I certainly didn't know He would be talking to me all the time.  I never knew He had so much to say to me personally!  But He does!  In fact, every time I tune in to listen, He is speaking to me!
  And I am drawn to listen.  Why? Because whenever I do, I get encouraged.  I get uplifted.  I get told of my enormous worth to Him.  I hear Him say how special I am to Him.  How highly He thinks of me.  How affectionately He loves me.  I wish I could convey just how life giving it is to hear Him speak these things to me.  His thoughts towards me are always good and always uplifting.  Even when He corrects me, it is with gentleness, love and affection.  I never feel condemned when He speaks to me.  I always feel peace.
  Hearing Him say these things to me gives me a strength that I would not have otherwise.  It gives me a deep abiding peace and joy.  I revel in the love I hear!  It carries me through circumstances and makes everything easier to handle.
  And if this is what He does for me, then this is what He does for you too, because He doesn't play favourites.  He loves all His children with the same intensity and He wishes to have a close relationship with everyone He made.
  I haven't always been able to hear Him clearly.  One of the things that kept me from hearing Him was that I thought I had to do something to earn an audience with Him.  You know, like He was a really busy guy, running the world and all, and how important was I really, for Him to take time out of His busy schedule to come and talk to me.  And who was I, just a nobody, doing nothing significant for Him.   I had to see that that type of thinking kept me from hearing Him.  Because I could not believe I was important enough for Him to talk to.
  Another barrier I used to have was, I didn't know how truly GOOD He is.  I thought, God is good, but... maybe He is mad at me... or, maybe He is going to ask me to do something that will scare me to death...  Those thoughts came from the devil, to keep me from hearing God.  Once I recognized that, and changed my heart beliefs to better reflect the Truth, that God is good ALL the time, those fears just disappeared.  And then I was able to hear Him.
  God will not speak evil to you.  He is not mad at you.  He does not want you to be afraid of Him.  And He wants you to know, that you are the most important thing on His agenda for today and indeed for every day.  You are the apple of His eye.  The child born of His heart.  He can't help but love you!
  If hearing God's voice is new to you, one of the ways you can practice hearing God is by using music.  Put on a love song.  A song you really love.  It doesn't have to be a song of worship from church.  Any good love song will do.  Now as you listen to that song, close your eyes and imagine the face of God -- see Him looking intently into your eyes as He cups His hands around your face -- and hear Him sing that song TO YOU.  As if He was the lovesick poet who penned those words for you.  Just listen like that for the duration of the whole song and keep picturing Him singing it to you!  Tell me if you try this and tell me what your experience is!  I'm curious to know if anyone tries it!
  I look around at the beauty of the world He created, and think to myself, I know the Guy who created all this!  I hear Hims speak to me every day.  Wow.  Amazing, that we can be so intimately acquainted with the most powerful being who ever was or will be.  And even more amazing still that I am so important to Him that He WANTS to speak to me, and tell me how much He loves me, every single day.
You are that important to Him too!
I dare you to tune in to listen!!
Bless you big time!

Whimsy Blog Hop! New Rubber Stamps! Blog Candy!

Welcome! 

If you have landed here randomly, you are in the middle of a blog hop by Whimsy Stamps.  If you would like to start at the beginning, go to Bev's blog.  If you have come here from Elaine's blog, you are right on track!

This is a rather exciting blog hop, that will be running from today (Sunday at noon) until Thursday Oc 7th at noon.   So you have a few days to hop along and see all the DT and Guest DT's creations, and enter to win the many prizes up for grabs!  

And I happen to be one of the SIX blogs that is offering blog candy!  If you enter, you get a chance at this new  image I illustrated that I called, "Starry Night":

  It's made with deeply etched red rubber - top of the line quality.   It is in the style you are used to seeing from me.  But!

  I also branched out into a different style this time and did some more serious designs for Christmas.  I could hardly wait to show you! I did a poinsettia, a sprig of holly and some candy canes.  I wanted to do something a little different, because I love realistic images as well as fun whimisical ones.  It isn't the style of drawing you are used to seeing from me.  What do you think??

 It is quite a large set that includes these candy canes I used on my card (I used the large version) the poinsettia I used on the background paper in a large and small version (I used the small version) a sprig of holly and also 5 sentiments by Ann Vento of Raindropecho Designs.   Click on the following links to see the full VINTAGE CHRISTMAS SET

all of my new illustrated stamps

Ann's new Christmas sentiments and background stamps.

 I used beige card stock; a light beige for the candy canes, and a medium beige for the poinsettias. Before I started stamping, I sprayed on Coffee Shop Glimmer Mist and gold Smooch Spritz.  The Smooch gives it a really subtle and beautiful golden sparkle that the photo would not convey.  

I used the watercolour stamping technique.  I coloured the actual rubber stamp with Tombow pens, water based markers, and then spritzed the stamp with water a few times before stamping the image.  As with real water colouring, the outcome is never predictable!  Some of them pooled a lot while others, with less water, remained an outline.

For the candy canes, I went back in after stamping and picked up some more ink colour with a very wet water colour brush and washed some more colour onto the leaves, the red stripes of the candy cane and also the berries.  Then I painted Copic White onto the white of the candy canes. 

 When all was dry, I painted Smooch Pearlized Top Coat all over the candy canes.  They really do sparkle!   

I put two coats of Ultra Thick Embossing Powder on the main image panel to give it even more of a glow.   I tried to capture the sparkle and glow in this photo, but still, it didn't translate well.

Now here is an example of one of the sentiments in the set that Ann designed (with my holly sprig on either side).  It is a part of the Vintage Christmas set AND it is also being sold on its own.  I just love the font Ann used!  Keep in mind the extra dots are from the Glimmer Mist.  I put this panel on the inside of the card:

I painted the panel edges and the Tim Holtz grungeboard with a gold craft paint found at Michael's. 

There are so many more stamps being released today; some super cool newsprint stamps that Ann designed as well as a cute Santa AND a new Christmas carousel horse from me!  I hope you will do the whole hop to see what the DT did with them.  AND we have some uber talented guests on board for this hop too, you won't want to miss seeing what they did as well!

If you want a chance to win this Vintage Christmas set, you need to use the inlinkz option below.  Just link up your blog or online gallery so we'll know how to contact you, and your name will be entered into the draw!  You have until Th Oc 7 at noon cuz that's when I'll pick a winner!

Next stop on the hop: 

Suzanne

If you do not have a blog or online gallery to link to and you wish to enter for the draw, please let me know in your comment and you will be included! 

Sundays With Crissy Challenge #10, "Buttons and Bows"

Hi Peeps!

I have another challenge happening all month long at Sundays With Crissy!  Its an easy peasy theme: Buttons and Bows.  I hope you will hop over to my challenge blog and take a look.  As always I am offering blog candy!

  I used "Trimming the Tree", one of my digital images I did for Whimsy Stamps. 

White fur, or white anything can be tricky to capture.  Some stampers prefer to just not colour something that is white.  But the realist in me can't leave white alone!  White does have shadows.  So you do have to colour it with something!  The thing to remember is to use the lighter shades.  I didn't use anything over a 3.  White shadows are rarely very dark.  I used a variety of colour families as well, which seems to have worked well.  You can use your grey shades.  However, my personal preference is to use a variety of colours.  I find it is more vibrant and life-like that way.  Greys can be kind of flat and boring, but that's just my opinion. 

Here is the list of Copics I used:

Polar Bear Fur:

E70, 50, BV20, 23, B63, 91, R20 (for the blush) and 0 blender all over.

Penguin hat and candy canes:

R12, 14, 17, 27

Tree branches: 

G20, 24, 28 29, YG21

Blue balls:

B12, 14, 18

Red balls:

R12, 14, 17

Star: 

Y21, 23, 28, E99

Penguin:

T1, 3, 5, 8, 10

Beak:

Y38, E99

Scarf:

YG21, 23, 25, 17 B000

Background:

R000, 11, blender

Ground:

C0, 2, 4

I'd also like to announce that I have another set of four new digital images released today in the Whimsy store!  Two digital carousel horses, and two kids dressed up to trick or treat.  I hope you'll check them out!

And on Sunday, Whimsy is releasing my new set of rubber stamps, and there will be a blog hop, so stay tuned for that too!  Some of them are in a style you may not have seen me do before, so I am excited to see your reaction. :-)

Here is my full card:

I also wanted you to see the stamp I now have to put on the back of all my cards.  It was a custom design made by Ann Vento of Raindrop Echo Designs.  She is a talented graphic artist and she has a huge variety of templates to choose from.  They are priced very affordably too.  Check them out at the Whimsy Store!

Hope to see you back for the Whimsy hop in a couple of days! Thanks for coming by today. 

Blessings!