Sort of an attempt at no-line coloring. Stamp image is by Crafter's Companion and colored with my Derwent Inktense pencils.

Day 6! Stamped a few pieces of paper ahead of time so I could take them to work and play during lunch. This cutie pear/pair stamp image from Sweet Stamp Shop gets me every time! They're so cute!

Doodled this funky little leafy/teardrop-y thing and colored it in with pastel Bic Markers.

Hello! It's day 3 of Kathy Racoosin's #TheDailyMarker30day Coloring challenge. I'm quote enjoying myself with this challenge. I've allowed myself time to color and doodle now! If only cleaning up the crafting stuff as as fun as using it. *sigh*

I used the teddy bear stamp from Technique Tuesday and colored it with my Derwent Inktense pencils. I LOVE those pencils. Super saturated and pigmented. Ridiculously awesome pencils. I went over the coloring with a small bit of water just to smooth it out.

I also doodled like I used to do in the old days! Back then, I doodled whatever was in front of me or around me. This time around (Since it's been so long), I went totally free. I stuck with teardrop, circle, and leaf shapes because that's what I gravitate towards. Used my Zig Millenium pen for the doodling.

It's day 2 of The Daily Marker's 30 day coloring challenge!

I'm so happy to see other artists participating in this challenge when I'm looking through the #thedailymarker30day hashtag on Instagram. It's very inspiring and encouraging to see so many people working on getting back to their coloring roots. I noticed that this whole challenge is a great way for me to practice my techniques and it's the perfect way for me to dig into my stamps to find images to color.

Today, I used a stamp set from Some Odd Girl called Owl Days and my Prismacolor pencils with Gamsol to color the stamp image. That little owl is so adorable!

I've seen plenty of people on Instagram do photo challenges for month and I've not gotten into that myself... but I always admired people with the discipline to stick to a goal for any length of time. I stumbled onto Kathy Racoosin's 30 Day Coloring Challenge over at her blog: The Daily Marker.

I will attempt to commit to coloring 1 thing a day.. for 30 days.. I can do this, right? We shall see...

Here are my efforts for Day 1.
In truth, I started coloring this over the weekend and didn't finish, but finishing my coloring still counts, right?

A thank you card for Grace! She's traveling on her own from Singapore and agreed to carry packages for me and my IG friend Trisha to swap. Isn't that so nice of her? I'm driving up to the city to meet with her briefly and swap the gifts. Trisha already treated her to dinner and I added a little Starbucks gift card in this handmade card. I was inspired by Simon Says Stamp's card kit last month. A lot of   Card makers seemed to make a design like this. It's so cute!

Happy World Card Making Day! 

A couple of weekends ago, I hosted my first card-making party at home! I don't have a lot of room at my house, but I have plenty of supplies. I figured it'd a good way to get together with my friends and use some supplies while having fun and eating food :D Teresa has made quite a few cards before, Lieh started making cards recently, and Alice had never made a card before! It was a great opportunity to try new things and work on whatever projects we had. I'm definitely looking forward to doing it again!

Straight up, I'm not so great about making baby cards. Last year I attended quite a few baby showers which was great fun minus rooms full of screaming children (lovely...). I am not in any way against children and I do love them I can't just be around a whole bunch of them for hours on end. lol. That being said, I love being an auntie! I have 8 nieces and nephews by blood and many more whom despite not being blood related, I'm close to and they still feel like family.

After I saw the release of Lawn Fawn's Hello Baby - I had to have it! I didn't care if I made cards for babies or for any other reason. I just LOVED the little animals!~ Google results have tons of adorable cards using this set.

Stamp: Lawn Fawn - Hello Baby
Dies: Lawn Fawn - Hello Baby lawn cuts, Impression Obsession - Spiral Flowers dies

I've been making cards for about a year now and my stamp collection has grown to crazy proportions! Some girls want handbags, some want shoes.. I LOVE stamps and other crafting things and I MUST HAVE them! I finally figured out how I can reference my stamps relatively quickly and it'll help me remember what I have in my stash. I made a sort of stamp dictionary. The closest example I've seen of this style is here on the sweet stamp shop blog in a post by Colie Kumar. I've come across quite a few examples of organizing but this project was more for my own ease of reference than full on organizing (because right now, most of my stamps are just in a bin ~ LOL).
I started by printing the stamp images on paper and cutting them out. Then adhering the printed images onto 4x6 journaling cards. I keep them all together with a binder ring in the upper left corner of the book. I have stamps from the same brand all together but not alphabetized or anything (maybe I should do that?).
I created a cover card with the list of categories I most likely would reference when digging through the book looking for just the right stamps for my project. I had a set of colored thin washi tapes from Michaels and used those as the reference colors for each topic. Every reference card has whatever colored washi tabs are related to the topics on that stamp set. This totally came in handy during my card party!


Stamp brands I have:
Paper Smooches, Stamps of Life, Avery Elle, Simon Says Stamp, Winnie & Walter, Papertrey Ink, Crafter's Companion, Hero Arts, Sweet Stamp Shop, Altenew, Wplus9, Penny Black, Some Odd Girl, Lawn Fawn, KaiserCraft, Technique Tuesday, Stampin' Up, Unity Stamp Co, Mama Elephant, Studio Calico, Studio L2e, Pink Paislee, Stampendous, Impression Obsession