Happy Birthday Simon

I made a card for Simon as it's his birthday today.

I made the card during the Jubilee weekend.

As Simon lives in London I thought he would appreciate this image.

This card was designed for the Penny Black Saturday Challenge - week 204 - and a CASE-IT CHALLENGE. Here is Kath's original:

I downloaded the union Jack from the Letraset website. There is a Promarker tutorial there by Jak Heath - for colouring the downloads to make a 'Queen for the Day' card. I decided to print it onto three different patterned papers, cut them out and piece them back together.

The papers and the greeting were all freebies from Simply Homemade Magazine- 'The Simply British Collection'.

The stamped image is Penny Black and I coloured it with my Promarkers.

The 8" x 8" scalloped card blank and silver Candi are both from Craftwork Cards.

The letter stickers are from Basic Grey's 'What's Up' collection.

The greeting was mounted onto a punched circle and then onto a scalloped circle using Stampin' Up and Woodware punches.

Happy Birthday Simon! xxx

Happy Birthday Hilary

Happy Birthday Hilary!  I hope you have a lovely day and that your card arrived safely.

This is the card I made for my friend's birthday and for this week's Kraftin' Kimmie Challenge Material Girl. The idea is to include fabric or material of some sort on the card. I used some cotton fabric which was backed with Bondaweb before I stamped the image onto it. I then cut out the garment being stitched and ironed it onto the image on the card.
Papers - Cosmo Cricket, Material Girl Collection
Pens - Letraset, Promarkers
Card - Smooth white digital cardstock, Craftwork Cards
Stamp - Kraftin' Kimmie - Mona the Seamstress

Letter and flag stickers - Echo Park, A Walk in the Park Collection
Other - flat backed pearls, decorative pins, chalk inks, button, thread, fabric.


Happy Birthday Hilary, see you soon. x

Promarker Preferences

The other day the lovely Jill asked me - where would I start if I could only have 20 Promarkers?

This took a little thinking about as now I have well over 100 and I didn't start by buying the ones that were most use to me. I had never heard of them when my daughter Emily asked if she could have some for Christmas a few years ago. She said they were made by Letraset who I had heard of from many years before, when we used to buy the rub down alphabet transfers - long before we heard of Rub-ons. The reason Emily wanted them was for her graphic art and her Manga illustrations. So we started off with a collection of bright primary colours. She had never been a child to ask for much, but when she did she went for quality!

When I discovered I wanted to use them myself, I had to add flesh colours and pastels and the rest as they say is history! Needless to say Em was thrilled to see I was happy to keep adding to the collection!

Back to the subject of choosing a starter collection of just 20 pens - It's hard to settle on just 20 but here goes - I think it is best to have several shades of a colour so you can do shading for a better effect, rather than harsh contrasts. If you are limited to one shade of each colour then pick a lighter shade as you can always layer the shading. It is best to colour the whole area and let this dry returning to add more layers as needed.

Skin tones - Ivory, blush, dusky pink, and tan.

Hair colours - blonds - vanilla, mustard, buttercup.

brunettes - sandstone, cinnamon, cocoa, umber.

Black and grey hair - I don't really use black at all as I find the darker shade of grey (5) dark enough. A full set of five greys is useful or at least 1, 3 and 5 and I use the cool greys (there are also warm and ice greys).

Blues - pearl blue or pale blue, denim and china.

Greens - meadow, apple, bright green and holly.

Reds and pinks - Red, ruby, baby pink and rose pink.

Yellows - gold, tulip, buttercup and mustard.

Oranges - Soft peach, peach and mango.

Purples - lilac, amethyst and plum.

OK so that's too many! If  I have to say 20 only, then it would have to be:

Ivory, blush, cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa, pale blue, denim, meadow green, bright green, red, rose pink, gold, tulip yellow, soft peach, mango, lilac, amethyst, cool grey 1, 3 and 5.

There are probably other colours which I would call favourites, but for the purpose of answering this question these are my suggestions. I would be surprised if you could stop at 20. I warn you they are addictive!

To go with the promarkers I use digital, ultra smooth premium cardstock from Craftwork Cards.    Most of my friends agree that the best ink to use is Memento Tuxedo Black. You get a clean, crisp impression and there is no bleeding. As this is a pigment ink it will not react with the alcohol based Promarkers. I also use a fine white gel pen for adding highlights.

Jill is now selling Promarkers in her shop - Cardinal Colours. HERE at just £1.69 each. You can also buy a set of  ten pens of your choice for just £15.00

The blender pen is always useful for blending shades together, lightening or highlighting a colour. However I rarely use this as I prefer to colour the area with my most pale shade of a colour, build up the shading with gradually darker shades then go over it all with the first palest shade again, blending them in that way.

The Passion for Promarkers blog is a great place to visit for challenges and prizes related to these fabulous pens. and the Promarker Weekend Workshops blog is also a very useful blog, for information about shading and other effects achievable with these pens. 

You can download a blank colour chart from the Weekend Workshop blog this is useful to print onto the paper or card you most like to use for your colouring, then to colour each square with your pens. This way you can see exactly what shade of colour you will get when you use them. You can also watch your collection grow. Pop it in your purse for when you are shopping and need to check which pens you already own.

 The photos on the right show how I have stored my Promarkers in four 1.6 litre Really Useful Boxes. I have cut up the colour chart and the pieces are taped to the lid of the appropriated box.

If you follow the fun scraplifting challenges on Scrapology, you will be in with a chance of winning a selection of Promarkers. Jill of Cardinal Colours has kindly provided ten promarkes for the winner of November's challenge. So pop over to the blog and find out how o be in with a chance of winning.

Colourful Critters

I decided to have a go at the Passion for Promarkers weekly challenge this week. The theme is 'All Creatures Great and Small' using any colours. I had to take a good look in my stamp store for creature stamps, not something I have a lot of considering the size of my stamp collection!!

I chose these fun bug stamps from Woodware and stamped then onto white card in black ink. I also found the tulips in the window box stamp, which I think is an old Penny Black stamp from when I first started stamping. Then coloured them with the Promarkers. I chose colours to go with the 'Oh Baby' line of papers from Basic Grey. These were cut and placed on the card with 3D foam pads. I added flower stamen for antenna . My large butterfly might have trouble taking off with the weight of his antenna ! There is lots of stickles on the wings and highlights in white gel pen.

Summer by the Sea

I am away on holiday in Suffolk and thought I would take some card making bits along with me, including some stamps I have been meaning to try out. Linda and I also swapped some of our stamps, we thought we could give each other some inspiration with our existing stamps if we tried out a few belonging to one another - that's our theory! So today I have been playing with these delightful Stampin' Up stamps.

The first two were made with Stampin' Up stamps from Linda's collection, I have stamped lots of images and coloured them with water colours, I have only made two of these into cards so far, but will add the others later when complete.

I also used scraps from the August Scrapholix kit both the Bazzill card stock and the Daisy Bucket papers. The blossoms are from a delightful little organza bag full of mixed blossoms given to me by Jilly Beans two years ago and still going strong (thanks Jill). The greeting stamp is an old, well used favourite from The Craft Barn, made by Fun Stamps.

For the next two I used a fish stamp (sorry I can't remember who made this one, please comment if you know). I used a Craftwork Cards frame and some garden twine for the first one. I also used lots of chalk ink. I coloured the fish with Letraset Promarkers. More left overs from the Daisy Bucket papers and Bazzill card stock were used here too. Some self adhesive metallic dots from Paperchase, and plenty of Liquid Pearls to add the finishing touches. The greeting is also from Stampin' Up.

Next I used an old stamp of beach huts, one of my favourite things, influenced by a trip to Felixstowe sea front today! The first uses water colours and some 'Phresh and Phunky' papers by Basic Grey. The second is a blast of colour using more Promarkers and Basic Grey's 'Colour Me Silly' range of papers.

Daisy Bucket

The August Scrapaholix kit includes some pretty feminine yet nautical papers from Daisy Bucket Designs – The Nantucket Island line. In the kit you get 2 sheets of double sided patterned paper, four sheets of Bazzill Card stock -1 sheet dark blue, 1 sheet turquoise and 2 sheets white and 2 pieces foil.




My first lay out is called 'Beside the Seaside' and includes a postcard and two photos of Southwold, Suffolk taken in 1999. I used a very small amount of the 'Beach House' paper for this page. The title was stamped with Making Memories foam stamps and their turquoise paint. The smaller words were cut using the ‘Playground’ Sizzlet font.



My second page is titled 'Something Blue' and is part of a series of layouts to go in a wedding album, so needed little journalling. It shows my daughter, Catherine when she was a bridesmaid for her cousin Heather two years ago. This layout was made with the ‘Harbour View’ paper and lots of tearing and inking. The title was cut on the Robo with white card and coloured with chalk inks. The flower is made using the Sizzix 'Pansy' die. The butterflies are made with foil and the Cuttlebug butterfly die and embossing folder set.


I made a card with the left over papers and a Kadoodle Pirate Dan stamp, coloured with Letraset Pro-marker pens. the greeting was printed using LDPirate font.