Hello...You make me Smile.

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! As promised here is the second card I've been working on this week.

This week's challenge over at Passion For Promarkers is 'make us smile'. Please click the link here to join in http://promarkerchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/week-361make-us-smile.html . Ladybirds always make me smile (I love them!) and when I saw the price of the Little Lady Bug stamp by Saturated Canary (£2.50 from Craft Stash - currently out of stock though) I certainly smiled because I've wanted a cute girl/ladybird stamp for ages and other places have had them on their website only for it to be out of stock after I've placed the order (I shall name no names but I've stopped buying stamps from one particular website after either having my order cancelled completely or having to order replacement stamps 4 times in a row!) This isn't a big stamp but it has quite a bit of detail and was a joy to colour in. As I usually do, I coloured it in with my Flexmarkers - I'm particularly pleased with how the hair came out as I used a colour combo that was new to me - Gold for the base of the highlighted area, Terracotta and Rosewood for the mid and dark tones - I think I used Spice as well to blend over the Gold into the Terracotta. The skin was coloured using Antique White and Tea Rose. The dress and wings were coloured using a variety of reds (Molton Red, Chilli Red and one other which I can't recall). The planet head things were coloured with Cloud Blue and Pastel Blue and I used the same colours to do her eyes. I added some Spectrum Noir Clear Overlay brush marker over her dress and went over the highlights in her eyes with a Signo Uniball white gel pen (a bit pricey but oh my goodness it's fantastic especially compared to my Inksentials white gel pen which stops working after a few letters!)

I die cut this out using the largest ticket frame in a set by Spellbinders and layered it onto a piece of matt black card. I die cut the hello tab twice out of red and black card and added the black letters to the negative space on the red piece using a bit of  tape behind it to stop the letters falling out. I added this to the side of the topper as shown then added a thin piece of Funky Foam a little bit smaller than the topper so it would be raised above the foiled piece. I put this aside while I made the rest of the card. I cut some red foil to fit my embossing folder and ran it through my Big Shot using a Darice Large Dots embossing folder - this is one of 17 new folders I got from Crafters' Companion during their Summer Sizzler sale a few weeks back. I deliberately put my card stock upside down so it de-bossed instead of embossing as I wanted the dots to be recessed instead of raised. Once it was de-bossed I added black Card Candi over some of the recessed dots using thin foam squares as shown. I added my topper to the left hand corner and added partial Card Candies as shown so it looks like they carry on under the topper. Adding the black dots to the foil piece took almost as long as colouring the image but I love how it turned out. I layered this onto a piece of silver foil card leaving a very thin strip of it showing before adding the finished topper to a black card blank.

Isn't she sweet?

Dotty debossed background

Hope she makes you smile :)

How can you resist those eyes???

I've thoroughly enjoyed this week's challenge and I love this image - I will have to see if I can get some similar stamps as they are very easy to colour (you may notice I accidentally coloured over one of her ears though - oops!) I'm the first to admit that I'm not brilliant at colouring (it's a work in progress) but by following the example on the packaging I found this quite easy to do and I had a lot of fun doing it. The finished card is probably my most favourite one of the year so far and I'm thinking about framing it and putting it over my desk so it can inspire me as I craft.

I hope you've enjoyed my latest creation, I appreciate you taking the time to read this (and other) blog post. If you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places as I love reading what people have to say (and learning handy tips etc). Don't forget to check out the challenge over at Passion for Promarkers - even if you don't take part it's always fun to see what other people make and it might spark off your own creativity. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx