So in Love with Birthday Hogs and Kisses

I absolutely love this Birthday Farm Animals set from Simon Says Stamp designed by the talented Sandy Allnock.  I just had to order it (in fact, I mistaken ordered two to my mother's benefit).  When it came in the mail, I had to get inky.  I had been playing with copics that day but had switched to colored pencils and decided that the colored pencils would be perfect for this cute little hog. 

I picked out the pretty chevron type paper from the Pebbles Sunnyside 6x6 paper pad for this card and used the colors to help in my decision making for the balloon and hat.  I, of course, added a bit of Wink of Stella to the hat and the balloon and topped the balloon with Glossy Accents.  I used the Lawn Fawn Stitched Journaling Card to cut out my panel and finished the card off with some Doodlebug sequins in Swimming Pool.  In retrospect, I would have left of a lot of the sequins.

 

Fun with Sandy Allnock at Impress

I'm a big believer in education.  As people close to me know, I spent a long time in school and I really loved it.  Even though I've been out of school for nearly 20 years (so hard to believe it's been that long already), I've never really stopped learning.  I've taken community college classes on everything from landscape maintenance to stained glass.  It's not been any different since getting into scrapbooking, Project Life and card making, I've watched a lot of You Tube videos by talented artists and have taken a number of classes, mostly online since there's not a lot of live offerings near us.

I've been following Sandy Allnock for quite some time.  Her talent to make beautiful things with copic markers is amazing.  I found out a few months ago that she teaches classes at a rubber stamp store called Impress in Tukwila, Washington and I really wanted to take a class.  It's about a four to five hour drive from here (depending on traffic) so the time and day of the week of the class became a very important consideration.  Then I saw that she was teaching an introductory class to copics using Lawn Fawn images and it was on a Saturday morning!  Well, it was time to bite the bullet, but what people who know me might be surprised about is that I actually get a little nervous about doing things like going someplace I've never been before and don't know anyone.  I'll do it, but it's not my first choice.  So I was delighted when my mom and sister agreed to go with me.

We turned into it a great overnight girls' trip by driving up Friday afternoon after Mom got back from her casino trip and I finished up a conference call at work.  We picked up Michele and spent a lot time in traffic (when did it get that bad) heading up to the big city.  After a wrong turn and night with horrible Wi-Fi, we packed off to class. 

Oh my goodness, it was so much fun. Sandy is as much fun in person as she is on her YouTube videos!  If you don't already watch her, go check out her channel here (or https://www.youtube.com/user/colourfulvideo).  You won't regret it. 

So there was an extra special surprise during the class.  Sandy got a text from none other than the amazing Jennifer McGuire (another of my absolute favorite people to watch).  See her videos here (or https://www.youtube.com/user/jennifermcguireink).  Sandy took a picture of us and sent it to Jennifer who sent back a picture of her waving to back to us.  What an absolutely surprising extra!

Also it was so much fun because Sandy got to share with us the next onlinecardclasses.com class subject (but they still have many classes available at a work at your own pace right now).  Now, I already knew what it was going to be because I took Stretch Your Stamps 2 and they announced it as a surprise at the end of the class, so if you took that class too, you already know, but what you might not know is how absolutely excited Sandy is for it.  It was so neat to see how excited she is.  I just love her positive, cheery personality. 

I also got the opportunity to talk briefly with a couple of the other women in the class.  They were really nice and I'm even following a couple of them on Instagram so I can see what beautiful work they do.  It made me comfortable that I could even go by myself if I had to next time.

I had a fabulous time and, even though it's a really long drive, I know I'm going to do it again and hopefully soon.  If you get the opportunity to take a class with Sandy or at Impress, do it.  You can find Sandy's online and in-person class schedule here (or http://sandyallnock.com/icse/) So go get your class on!

Miyako and Kate Take Two

Since I wasn't happy with some of my choices on my first attempt with the Miyako and Kate stamp from Whimsy Stamps designed by the amazing Sandy Allnock, I immediately decided to start a second one so I could leave the shoes a lighter color.  I changed up a few things, such as the colors, but followed quite a bit of the same technique.  I even built the card the same way, but this time used a piece of paper from the Maggie Holmes for Crate Paper Flea Market 6x6 paper pad.  I like the overall look of the coloring of this one better, but I like the cat on the first one better (it looks more like my beautiful Smoke). 

Miyako and Kate

While at my conference, I saw a notation on Sandy Allnock's blog about a sale on her stamps at Whimsy Stamps so I quickly snapped up a Miyako and Kate stamp before it was gone for good.  I cannot believe how incredibly fast it got here.  I think I ordered it on Wednesday morning and it was here when I got home on Thursday.  Lightning fast!  So I had to ink it up.  I'm not ready to do something quite so detailed with copics yet, but I was willing to give watercolor a try.  So I pulled out my Distress Ink markers and did a little coloring.  I even posted a sneak peak on social media.  Once it was done, I didn't like the shoes.  I had these glossy black mary jane's in my head, but they seemed too dark for the rest of the image.  I added some Glossy Accents, but I still don't like how they turned out.  It was good enough that wasn't willing to scrap it altogether, so I cut it out using the Femme Frames dies from Mama Elephant.  Then I used a piece of the 6x6 Kate & Co. paper from My Mind's Eye for the larger frame and mounted it on a white card base.  Super simple and cute, but it means the sentiment has to be on the inside because I totally wasn't thinking about what I was going to do for that.