A New Paper a la Mode Challenge at The Outlawz

I'm so sorry to be posting this so much later than usual. It was my turn to post the Paper a la Mode challenge at The Outlawz and by the time I was finished with that at 1:30 this morning, I was really tired and not feeling great so I decided to turn in. I must have been REALLY tired because I didn't wake up until 10:35! Normally I would have typed this up ahead of time and had it scheduled to post at 3 AM. Anyway, enough of that drivel. I'm here now and I'll have this up in a few minutes.

This week our theme was Thanksgiving or Fall Harvest, but with a twist. We were to use a technique and tell what that technique was. I used this awesome image from Phee McFaddell and colored it with Copics.  It's not a traditional cornucopia in that it's all veggies instead of fruit and it's a basket instead of a horn of plenty.  If you'll look closely, you'll discover 4 tiny fairies too. My cornucopias never attracted fairies so I guess they prefer vegetables to fruits! If you click on the individual pictures, they will enlarge to show more of the detail.

The technique I used was to apply Diamond Glaze to some of the veggies to give them a sheen and also to add dimension and texture. The close up above shows the glaze on the Indian corn. This piece was the most difficult and took considerable time to achieve the appearance of individual kernels. First, I put a think coating of the glaze over the entire ear of corn. After that dried, I applied tiny droplets to the individual kernels but I could not apply it to adjacent kernels or the glaze just ran together to form more of a blob.  I had to let it dry thoroughly between each application until I had all the corn kernels applied. Then I went through the process again to build up the layers of glaze to make it more pronounced. I also used the glaze on the peas (but not the pods), the eggplant, bell pepper, tomato and yellow squash. All of these vegetables have a natural sheen to their outer skin so the glaze makes them look more realistic as well as dimensional. I also used a little bit of Stickles on the tiny fairy wings to draw attention to them.

I'm not going to list all of the products I used in creating this card but if you have any questions, please feel free to include them in a comment and I will be more than happy to respond. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I have 6 cards and two layouts to make this weekend so I'll be plenty busy with the crafting.  Look for these new projects to be posted here during the coming week. Until then...

Happy crafting!
Anniebee

The Outlawz Paper a la Mode Challenge

Good Saturday morning, everybody!  My goodness!  Do you realize that we are at the end of October already???  Monday is Halloween, then it's less than a month until Thanksgiving and I have not even started my Christmas cards yet!  I just can't get over how the second half of the year has flown by so quickly.  So much has happened this year and yet the most important thing of all still evades me... a job!  I can't fathom that I have been unemployed for 14 months.  I have not been without a job this long except after my son was born since I was 16 years old!  If it was by choice it would be different, but it's not.

Anyway, enough of the bad stuff.  Let's talk about the good stuff.  It's the weekend and therefore it's time for another new Paper a la Mode challenge at The Outlawz!  Woot woot!  This week, our fearless leader, Rona, has given us the challenge to use stitching on our projects.  It has to be real stitching too, either by hand or machine.... no faux stitching allowed.  Well, I have done plenty of faux stitching but I had yet to use a sewing machine on any of my projects.  One reason was that I was afraid I would mess it up and that my colored image would be trashed.  Well, this time, I decided to take that risk and I did some straight and zig zag stitching on my card.  I don't know how well it will show up in the photos but I used a copper metallic thread.

The image is, of course, Tilda by Magnolia Stamps.  This was another of the cute Tildas my friend, Tracy Valore sent me a few months ago.  She knew how much I loved Tilda but that I had none of the Magnolia stamps so she stamped off a bunch of them and mailed them to me.  I had so much fun coloring all those cute little sweeties. This version holds a basket full of some kind of flowers.  I wasn't sure what kind of flower they are supposed to be so I made them look like Delphinium by coloring them blue.  I stitched around the image, and both of the mats.

I used the Martha Stewart's small butterfly and rose leaf punches, a Sizzix leafy vine die and a Spellbinders Shapeability Fancy Label die.  The flowers are from Recollections as are the pearls.  The DP is from K and Company and the image is colored with Copics.

I am entering this card in the following challenges:

Card Makin' Mamas #32 - Cut It Out (the MS punches, Spellbinders and Sizzix dies were used to create my card elements)

I hope you'll visit The Outlawz and check out the great challenges we have going on every day of the week.    We always have some fabulous prizes donated by some totally awesome sponsors.  I'm going to try to be back tomorrow with another new project if I can get it finished in time.  If I don't, it will be the first part of the week.  Thanks for stopping by today.  Look for my first project for Joy's Life coming soon!  Until next time, have a blessed weekend and...

Happy crafting!
Anniebee