Have a Wonderful Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!
lots of love from Nikky & Kris x

Kuretake Advent Calendar - Door 23

Zig Metallic Calligraphy pens

White Card

Wink of Stella Gold and Silver

Draw a circle onto card with a pencil (a CD is an ideal size).

Roughly sketch out your Merry Christmas text in pencil to ensure you get the layout right around the circle.

Then taking a gold and silver metallic Calligraphy pen and using the 3.5mm tip, add gold colour to the tip of the silver by gently pressing the gold halfway onto the tip.

Holding the silver pen at a 45 degree angle now trace over your text. Break down each letter into sections. Use the fantastic printable guides and tutorials on the Kuretake website to help you and refer to the A-Zig Calligraphy book.

 Don't worry too much if your spacing isn't correct as we can resolve this later. Now add some little swirls onto the ends of your letters to make it look fancy.

 Practice this "S" shape on some scrap paper. Once you can get the shape, draw a centre dot and starting from the centre point turn your paper each time to make a flower.

 Now add lots of flowers around the edge of the circle on your card. Once you're confident, change the tip size to make some smaller flowers and change colours. Try to make the positioning quite random.

 Keep going and build up the design, each time turning the paper as you create your petals. Finally, add some swirls to the circle to finish. You can add little berries to the flower centres. Add some sparkle with a Wink of Stella pen!

Merry Christmas!

Door 22 over at Kuretake - Magical Kurecolors

In December Kuretake are doing an advent calendar of tutorials, if you haven't seen them all you should check them out here. So today, Door 22 is ME!
I seem unable to escape from the adorable Neighbours stamp range a year on from when we launched them, no-one gets sick of seeing them which is amazing! I must admit even I still adore them each time I create a new scene, I really do think they are my fave stamps of all time ever. So below is a quickish tutorial on using Zig Kurecolors which are a totally awesome alcohol based marker. If you're wondering WTH is Nikky doing, has she given up Pro and Flexmarkers - the answer is no! but we all have to get a bit of variety and different markers have different properties and can give you different results. I love the Kurecolors because of their rich juicy pigments so when I want to produce something really vibrant I pick up these babies. The blender is awesome and guess what - it really does blend rather than bleach! You can use them with your other products anyway and as you know I'm a big believer in mixing your media and materials whenever you can.
I also tried out a new technique on this tutorial which turned out even better than I thought it would!
Enjoy, peepsicles...

You will need: (all products used are available from the website here)
Selection of Zig Kurecolors & blending pen, Clear Mushroom stamps from Polkadoodles, Wink of Stella Gold pen, White Zig Chalkwriter pen, Memento inkpad, Zig Alcohol inks - clear blending solution

Using the memento inkpad, stamp your images and create a little scene by adding lots of trees and bushes.

Kurecolor alcohol markers change colour as they dry so it's really useful to make and keep a colour swatch chart every time you buy new colours. The handy storage wallets are already in pre-selections of bright and muted tones. I store mine in colour families within the wallets in numerical order but if you struggle with putting colours together you will find the pre-selected colours really helpful as it makes selecting colours that work together really easy peasy.

 There is no right or wrong way on how to colour but with I tend to work light to dark depending on the image I'm colouring. For this image I will use a lot of the skintone colours to give me a nice soft look to my project but I try to restrict my colour palette to less than 10 colours as I find when too many are involved you can end up with a garish result with too many colours clashing. As you can layer Kurecolors you can achieve as many colours as you wish by simply mixing colours together and this means all the colours in the palette you use will work together well. The Kurecolor markers have a really precise point which is far more accurate than many other markers and means you can get right into fine details.

 The Kurecolor blender is an awesome tool for achieving soft blending techniques. If you find the colour you have is a shade too dark, add some of the colour onto the tip of the blending pen and then sweep across the image in small circles to spread and blend a more muted form of the colour.

 You can also use this technique to mix colours together - simply add 2 colours onto the blender to make a third variation and get a lovely smooth blend when you colour. The colour will simply flood out of the blender as you use it so you will never spoil the blending pen, you simply reload the colour again if you need more.

 Kurecolors have brilliantly strong pigments and give super-rich coverage but not all your projects have to be vibrant and strong. I want a more muted, softer look to my project so I decided to try out an idea I've had for a while...scribble some blue onto a piece of acetate or acrylic block (as a palette) and then add some clear blending solution, mixing with a paintbrush.

 You need to work quite quickly as alcohol ink does dry very fast, but take a paintbrush and swirl the colour across the sky to give a really soft look which looks a bit like watercolour! Great technique, it worked so well! If you run out of colour or it's a little patchy just add more blender and blend it around until you're happy. I ended up with a really soft wash which looked broken up by clouds. If I'd done this any other way it would have taken me ages and lots of blending!
Now start to add some more colour and foliage colour - don't forget you can mix your colours together which  I find handy when I'm trying to get the right tones for foliage.

 Once I'd built the colour up I decided to make my lanterns light up. Use yellow 106 in the centre of the lantern and then using the blender pen swirl round and round the head of the lantern in a circular motion to spread the light.  Then take the same colour and add touches of it where the glow would be picked up on the house and on the mice etc.

 Remember to add the casting shadows and glows too for added effect. Again I used the paintbrush to get the wash across the grass in the front of the picture.  Take a white chalkwriter pen and highlight along the lanterns and anywhere you feel you need to get a little contrast. Finally, take a yellow or gold Wink of Stella pen and add to the lanterns and windows and some of the flowers for a little sparkle.

 Finally make up into a project for any occasion.

A cute little sketcheroo...

Well, this is a little unusual for me, but this is a card I made for the Elisabeth Bells challenge for December. I don't do anywhere near enough crafting just for me and I am making a concerted effort to do so...didn't you know that crafting is good for the soul...
This is a fab digi available from Elisabeth who I have had the pleasure to meet across the email highway and she is so lovely...this month's challenge is to use a sketch and I am a sucker for a sketch you all know that, right...(I must apologise for poor pic quality on these, must go check settings as the res on these is pretty poor and washed out for some reason)...

The papers are all from my Pretty Sweet collection with the chunky gingham from Magical Winter - two of my favest paper collections ever! Spotty ribbon is East of India, the little pom poms are from my stash. Blingy leaves are also from the website and the little flowers I made with the use of Martha Stewart snowflake punches - those snowflakes make awesome flowers if you layer them up, the photo doesnt really do them justice here. 

 The image is coloured with Prisma pencils and I made the sentiment by cutting a couple of tabs and then just writing a little message by hand.

I just realised it's my sister's birthday next week so she may just receive this card I think, been ages since I got to give my family handmade ones, I really must make more effort! shocking!
I am also entering this card into the Digibells challenge too for the December blog hop - if  you haven't checked it out yet you must, both blogs have amazing inspiration and the DT's are wonderfully talented! Go soak up the creative talent over there now!

Oh my Word!

Look what the postie brought me today!

Absolutely beautiful!...

You can't really see on the pics but they're all glittered and gorgeous! Way way too nice to eat!
Big thankyou to all the lovely peeps at Kuretake, they have impeccable taste and clearly know the way to a girl's heart! However, the OCD in me has dictated I start small and work my way up. They DO taste as good as they look LOL!
x

Vader strikes again

So who is ready for Crimbo? You? How about You? ...no me neither!
I decided we're staying home alone for Crimbo day this year instead of having to drive the 80 mile round trip to my family (don't do OH's family for crimbo, don't even go there with that one). We havent had a tree or any decs up for the past few years as we've been too busy/too tired/too grumpy and the house has been a tip but over the past couple of weeks I think we both decided we need to reclaim the living room! I went to see my lovely friend for lunch on Saturday, opened the door when I got home and nearly fell over in shock - he had emptied all the old shop stuff out and was actually sorting stuff out! OMG! If you could see our back bedroom which is his "den" you would realise why this is shocking as it looks like Mr Trebus lives in there, tidying is not my OH's strong point. Give him his due, he did sort out a load of stuff the other week which was actually loads of my old stamps which my classes used and then we found more old stock too so I parceled it up and sent it off to 5 different charitable crafty causes. To be honest I could've sent it to about 20 people there was that much stuff but I had to think about the postage! So anyway he's earned serious brownie points for shelf moving and clearing out at last and going to the tip, after all I've only been waiting 2.5 years. So this meant it was time for a good clean and I do like a spring clean before crimbo. I was savage I tell you, SAVAGE! There was enough ginger ninja fluff under the sofa to knit an Axminster and I have to admit I was thoroughly ashamed at the state of the place. 5 hours later and it was done though (not the whole house, that would take another week!), and the downstairs is now looking almost the best it can. So long as you ignore the wildlife that is living between the cooker and tumble dryer.
Anyhoo, thought I would share this little gem with you...

Here is my Darth Vader impresh. I look well happy don't I! I apparently have sleep apnoea, something I suspected but it seems it is much worse than I thought and is partly responsible for why I wake my OH every night chuntering and shouting in my sleep and bashing him in the ribs all the time. So I got summoned for an appointment and had no idea this was going to happen...hopefully it won't be too long but I really feel sorry for people who do have to wear this every night for life. It's not as bad as it looks because it's very relaxing, sounds like waves lapping on a beach so it makes you nod off very quick but I do keep waking up in the middle of the night and I don't have it on. It's all very bizarre, I obviously rip it off at some point, put it away neat and tidy and go back to sleep LOL! Clearly I am as bad as the nurse said I was haha!
Definitely a pash killer though so if you value your marriage I suggest your partner puts up with being punched in the ribs as there'll be nothing else happening once this enters your life I can tell you! x