James Bear – then and now.

It is great really, this 5 year birthday celebration Copic Marker Norge is having. It coincides pretty perfectly with my own 5 year of colouring and creating cards. I bought my first craft supplies in August 2011, set up my blog and made my first card in September the same year, and here I am five years later.

As a part of the celebrations the design team were challenged to re-colour one image to show our colouring progress over the years. I decided to go with an image for a card I put up in november 2011, which is labelled in my files as my card number 14. The new one I will post afterwards is over 400 cards later. That is a lot of cards, I admit. The image used to show said progression is by Lili of the Valley and here is my old card:

Christmas - Teddy with presents

As you can see I didn’t have a lot of crafting supplies, but at least I had a couple of shades to go together so that the image isn’t entirely flat. Since then the collection of most things craft related has grown immensely, and I use at least three shades per colour, sometimes more, and ideally going from very dark to reasonably light to get prominent shadows and more depth. Here is my new, re-coloured, version of this image.

card422_1

It does look like I fell into the contrast well, doesn’t it? Also it would appear that the shadows seem to, well.. make more sense and fall more naturally. Hahaha. I admit it was a lot of fun to view my own progression. We are all very good at viewing other people’s progression and comment and compliment it, while we completely ignore our own. That can be destructive. The past half a year I have struggled with both motivation and inspiration to colour and make cards. I have a feeling that this small challenge might just have made all the difference. All I needed was to take a step back and go “you know what, it’s pretty decent. Keep it up”. One day I’ll make another comparison and hopefully the progress will be equally visible then.

I suggest you all do the same. Pick one of the first images you coloured, re-colour it, and view your own progression. You have probably come a much longer way than you think you. Pat yourself on the back. Be pleased with your own efforts and progression. Because you did that. You. And no one else.

Some of the other bits I used on this card are by Noor Design, Live and Love Crafts as well as Wild Orchid Crafts. And if you haven’t spotted it yet, yes I have used the same snowflakes that I did five years ago, because why not?

Copics used: (bear) E000, E21, E42, E44, E47, E49, E95 (hat) R22, R27, R89, W1, W2, W3, W5, (presents) G82, G94, G99, Y00, Y04, Y17, R22, R24, R29, R89, (sky and ground) B0000, B000, B91, W1, W2, W3, W5, W7 and a white pen.

CMN 5 years – blog hop

Did Elin send you here? I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

One of the events we are hosting to celebrate Copic Marker Norge‘s 5th birthday is a blog hop. There will be prizes randomly drawn from those who follow the requirements listed below. Once the blog hop is closed I will also draw a random winner among the comments I have received. They will receive a small goody bag. I might update this post once I return from my holiday next weekend with a photo of the goody bag, and if I don’t have time I’ll add a photo when the winner is announced shortly afterwards. This also leaves me room to throw in a few more things!

The prizes for the main blog hop are as follows:

  • A Copic Marker Storage bag (without markers).
  • 3 digi stamps of your choice from Art By Miran.
  • An e-book of colouring tutorials of your choice from Make it Crafty.
  • 2 digi stamps from Wee Stamps

To win the main prize you need to do the following:
1. Follow the Copic Marker Norge blog
2. Copy the image of the main prize onto your own blog side bar and link it to CMN
3. Visit all our DT’s blogs and leave them a comment.
4. Return to the CMN blog and leave a comment on the blog hop article.

All of this must be done before 9pm CET on 25. September. More info, and some photos can be found on the main blog.

If you have followed the list, then you should indeed have arrived here from Elin‘s blog and end up back on the main blog once you are done here.

card421_1

My card has been made using a lovely stamp by Ching-Chou Kuik. I am quite pleased with how all that hair turned out this time! WOC and LLC flowers with some Noor Design butterflies and ribbon from a local shop make up most of the embellishments. The small transparent pearl things are from a local shop and I love them – I think I’ll throw a few into the goody bag, in fact.

card421_2

Copics used: (hair) E08, E18, E19, E97 + white pen, (skin) E000, E00, E04, E11, (dress) B000, B00, B02, B05, B29, (butterflies) Y04, Y08, YR04, R89, C05 (flowers) R81, R83, R85, (background) E50, E51, E53.

Here is the full list of our design team’s blogs for the blog hop. Make sure you have paid us all a visit:

CMN
Kjersti
Veronica
Kristina
Siv
Elizabeth
Elin
Lisabeth
CMN

There are also fun events in our Facebook group Copic Norge. We hope you have fun joining us for our birthday celebrations. Good luck with the draw!

CMNs 5th birthday

This month we are celebrating Copic Marker Norges fifth birthday! Happy Birthday to us. To kick off the month we have a new birthday challenge. There will be loads of fun things both on the blog and facebook page during the month, so be sure to keep an eye out as there are some great prizes to be won!

The card I made for the birthday is done with an image from Tiddly Inks that I absolutely adore. The image is obviously coloured with copics. Most of the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and lace and some flowers from Live and Love Crafts

LizlandCMN08

And a side on view, because why not?!

LizlandCMN08_2

Copics used: (skin) E000, E00, E04, E11, (hair) E08, E18, E19, E97, (dress and shoes) V04, V06, V09, (cupcake) BV23, BV25, BV29, G00, BG23, BG72, BG75