Spring Cards with Watercolor Pencils

Lately, I have been playing with my set of Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils. I love my Copics, but I find they are not very portable (because I have lots of wonderful colors) and these days I spend more time driving my kids around than I do at home! So I thought I'd try to color my favorite stamped images with colored pencils instead of my copics.

I started with a simple graded wash over Tim Holtz backwards script...

Then I wanted to try some new shading techniques. I actually used the same blue to color the flower as I used for the shadows on the leaves!

Then I decided to play with Tricycle Marci. I used many of the same techniques to color her in watercolor as I do with my copics. I chose my main color, then used lighter and darker versions of that color. I also tried other techniques, like shading with analogous colors (e.g.-violet to shade the red trike).

I will be teaching these techniques and more at Memories Live On in Cupertino on April 15th at 2 pm. Hope to see you there!

Chocolate Box Album

Around Valentine's Day, it's very hard not to think about chocolate - actually, that's true any day! So when I walked into my LSS and saw the Best Creations Candy Shop 6 x 6 paper pad, I couldn't resist!! I knew that I had to make something fun with all of those goodies... a chocolate box album!

Of course, on Valentine's Day, my sweet husband gave me a beautiful box of chocolates. Their yummy goodness, and the box, inspired me to make the cover of my chocolate album...

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the chocolates and decorated them with Perfect Pearls "icing".

The donut is cut with the Silhouette. I decorated the frosting with Perfect Pearl "sprinkles". The donut frame lifts off of the doily with a hinge.