CAROUSELS

Well, I'm late this week as usual - I should have had this posted on Saturday, but now it's Monday and just getting to it.

This week I made a birthday card using a carousel horse digi that I got from Little Scrap of Heaven Designs - there are a lot of nice freebies on that site.  I was googling looking for a carousel design, and found this one for free - can't get any better than that!

I colored it using my Prismacolor pencils.  Sometimes I just have a hard time using my Copics for some reason - I find using Prismacolors is much less stressful, there's no need to rush to get the colors blended, and there's just a lot more freedom when using the pencils as opposed to markers.  I use odorless mineral spirits with one of those paper stumps for blending purposes.  Speaking of OMS, I am about out - I have had this same bottle for several years now, so I need to pick up some more.  I'll just refill the bottle I have though, because it has this nice top that allows you to get your paper stump damp with a little sponge type thingy (I should probably put a picture on here so you can see what I mean).

I tend to go with a "less is more" look when I color with pencils.  I picked that up somewhere along the line from someone else in the crafty world, but unfortunately I can't recall her name at the moment - I want to say her first name is Darcy.  I like the soft feel of coloring around the edges and leaving a lot of highlight space.

Thank you for stopping by to check out my carousel horse.  Hopefully you'll find time to leave me some love in the comments section.

Have a wonderfully blessed day!  Big hugs!

A MOM AND HER SOLDIER

Okay, more scrapbooking this week.  I can't remember the last time I made two scrapbook pages in a row - probably not in years.  But this week's challenge theme over at The Outlawz Saturday Paper a la Mode is MONOCHROMATIC.  I actually chose that theme, because I tend to go monochromatic a lot anyway.

I had this photo of me and my son at his recent Basic Training graduation at Fort Benning, Georgia - this was 2 days before he had to be back to college for the fall semester.  He's enlisted in the National Guard while he's going through Army ROTC at college.  Anyway, I love this picture of Chris, so decided to use it for my challenge project.

It didn't turn out strictly monochromatic, since I used a bit of blue border for the photo to match the blue on his beret, and the background paper has a hint of blue in it, but I like it a lot.  I have quite a few scrapbook frames that I've purchased from Target over the years, and I put some of my scrapbook pages in them for display.  Since I've been doing some new pages lately, I've decided it's time to replace some of the older layouts with some of the newer ones - this is definitely one I will put on display.

I chose the title "Like Mother Like Son" because I was also an Army officer.  So proud of my boy!

Thank you for stopping by!  Big hugs and showers of blessings to you!

BACK TO SCHOOL

Oh yes, it's that time of year again.  Of course, my kiddos are all grown up now - Michelle's been graduated from medical school over 2 years now, and Chris is a sophomore at Virginia Tech.  No little ones running around for chalkboards and pencils and rulers and such.  But I did happen to get a couple of pics of Chris moving back into his dorm on August 24th, so I decided to use one of those for my project for this week's Saturday Paper a la Mode Challenge over at The Outlawz.

Virginia Tech's colors are maroon and orange, so I went with that idea as I was building this scrapbook page.  It's been a while since I've done any scrapbook pages (I think this time last year was the last one I made), but I really need to get back into it and do something with the gazillion photos I have!

Love that young man!  Gotta make some time to get down to Blacksburg (a 4 hour drive) to see him, because I don't want to wait until his Thanksgiving break.

Thanks for stopping by to visit!  Big hugs and showers of blessings to you!