Woodlands

So, it’s December. Apparently. Whatever happened to the rest of the year? hmm…

In December we host an Advent Calendar at Copic Marker Norge lasting up until 24th of December which is the main day for Christmas celebrations in Norway. Every day there’ll be a new inspirational coloured craft, a Christmas song and some tips or a recipe or other fun things.

Two days ago I kicked it all off with my card. I felt Christmas was still a while away so I decided to keep it more winter and woodland themed using an adorable image by Ching-Chou Kuik. I bought it before Christmas last year, but never got around to using it. I’m quite pleased how it turned out both colouring and card wise!

The dies are from Noor Design, I used distress ink and acrylic paint, as well as some lace from Live and Love Crafts.

card427_1

I thought I’d share an angled photo as well so you can see the layers a bit better.

card427_2

Copic used: (skin) E000, E00, E04, E11, R20, R22, (hair) E53, E55, E57, (hat) E42, E43, E44, E47, R20, R22, W1, W3, W5, (trees) YG03, G82, G94, G99, E42, E44, E47

Christmas is only a month away

It is time for a new challenge over at Copic Marker Norge, and scary enough the new theme is Christmas. That’s come around fast, hasn’t it?! Anyway, it is definitely my favourite theme and I love making Christmas cards.

I decided to go for a purple card, with a Tiddly Inks image, one of my favourites. Isn’t it adorable? I coloured it up with copics (colours below), distressed the image for a purple hue and added liquid pearls for a snow effect.

lizlandcmn13

Copics used: (skin) E000, E00, E04, E11, (hair) BV20, BV23, BV25, BV29, (clothes) W1, W3, W5, BV08, V12, V15, V17, (hat) 100, W1, W3, W5, W7, (snow) C1, C3, C5

Lucy Loo

Apparently it is already mid-October! That went fast, didn’t it? I really need to get cracking on my Christmas cards methinks.

Copic Marker Norge is hosting a new challenge, rough and tough. Not my cup of tea, to be honest, but when you’re on the design team it’s a bit hard to get out of it hahaha. So, I went out of my comfort zone and coloured up a cool girl in a larger format than usual and made a CAS card out of it. Predominately it was the size of the image and the close up that is a new adventure. I haven’t coloured so much hair on one image before, at least not of this size. It was fun though, you should try also if you haven’t!

I played around more with my copics for the background and made some pink splashes using a lot of the colourless blender. And the image? That’s Lucy Loo from The East Wind.

card424_1

Copics used: (skin:) E000, E00, E04, E11, R20, R22, (hair) E08, E18, E19, E95, E97 (lips) R22, R24, R29, R89 (eyes) YG03, G82, G94, G99, YR16 + white pen (background) R89 (edge), RV00, RV04 + blender.

Rosa sløyfe hos CMN

Copic Marker Norge has made an annual event of contributing to the breast cancer awareness month of October. The DT have all made cards to sell for this event, and this post is for my contribution. The rest of the text on the page will be in Norwegian, but if you are interested in purchasing the card by contributing to this great cause, contact me and I shall provide the required information in English for you.

Da er det atter oktober og Rosa Sløyfe aksjon til inntekt for brystkreftforskning. Hos CMN ønsker vi også i år å markere dette ved å selge kortene våre til 100kr – og oppfordre alle til å gjøre det samme. Pengene kan settes inn på CMN Designteam sin innsamlingsside. Her finner du også informasjonen om hvordan du går frem for å kjøpe et eller flere av kortene vi har for salg.

Vi tar selvfølgelig også imot donasjoner fra de som ønsker å delta uten å lage/kjøpe kort.

I 2015 var det Nina som sto for innsamlingen hos oss, og hun fikk inn 1500kr! Denne gangen er det Kjersti som ordner i stand. Det er mange kort og vi håper dere har lyst til å være med også i 2016!

Kortet jeg selger som er et nytt prosjekt til akkurat denne begivenheten:

card423_1

Jeg har farget et Tiddly Inks motiv, ellers har jeg brukt tekst fra Make It Crafty, blomster fra Wild Orchid Crafts og Live and Love Crafts. Blondene er også fra LLC.

Copics jeg har brukt er: (hud) E000, E00, E04, E11, (hår) E42, E44, E47, E49, (kjole) R22, R24, R27, R29, R89, (gulv) W1, W3, W5, W7.

card423_2

og hos Copic Marker Norge kan dere linke opp egne kort dere lager til inntekt for denne gode saken. Hver dag i 15 dager vil vi trekke ett bidrag som får litt ekstra publisitet i CMN bloggen og på FB – så bli med, lag kort og last opp i linken ♥

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.