Blog Candy Fun

I promised Cami over at Our Craft Lounge that I would play her stamping game, and you get to be the winner. Today Our Craft Lounge is releasing 28 new stamp sets. Want to see them all? Click here. My friends thought it would be fun to give away all 28 sets to celebrate our second release, one of EACH new set!

Today, leave me a comment, and I'll draw a winner on Sunday (approx. Noon Pacific Time) for this fabulous Irish Blessing Set that I drew for OCL. Want to see who else is playing the Our Craft Lounge game? Go bug Cami for a complete list.

Meanwhile, here is the card I made using the new Irish Blessing set. I'm not usually one for patterned paper (or papercrafting in general, but when you have peer pressure things change...), but I had this great piece of striped Pool Fun paper by Reminisce. Too bad it was mostly blue. So I took my G14 and G17 Copics and toned it down with some stripes of green. Perfect! Now it's St. Patrick's Day paper in colors that match the artwork. The ribbon is from Offray, and the white paper is Neenah Classic Crest with Memento ink.

My drawing style for this set
I drew this stamp set all in angles and loose chunks. Why? Because when I draw I get tired of drawing in the same style all the time. I encourage those of you who tend to draw all your stuff in one way, switch to a totally different style every now and then.

Add straight angles where you would usually have curves. Make some lines extra thick and some thin if you always draw with one line width. I love looking through old reference books and changing my style (like when I drew the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland). If you look through my sketchbooks you'll see a variety of styles. I see it as a challenge- have I drawn anything like this before? How can I push myself to be a better illustrator?

One nice thing about the sharp corners on this image- I can color in sharp edges and it looks good. My usual perfectly blended smooth objects would totally look out of place on this artwork. This totally works, and it is much easier to get it to look correct than if I had used perfect blends. Again, it forces me to change my mode of thinking and gets me to make different illustrations than usual.

When you get this stamp set it comes on a card just like you see here. I colored the examples on the set to help you get an idea of where to start your coloring process. I don't expect people to copy the artwork exactly, but know that I color all my examples with Copic markers.

Something special to me about St. Patrick's Day is that I have a hidden talent. I can spot a 4 or 5 leaf clover without even trying. I'll be going for a walk, look down, and pick one out without thinking. I have found thousands over my lifetime. I usually dry them and give them away (think of this set as my personal 4 leaf clover that I'm giving away today). Just a bit of something many of you don't know about me :)

atyou Spica Glitter Pens
The green and gold areas are atyou Spica pens. I haven't talked much about these pens, but now is a great time. Spica pens are micro glass-flake filled pigment pens. They're not gel pens and they're not multiliners. Their tip is actually firm plastic. You can never see the glitter on a computer, but they're really elegant and they're transparent. Right now they're available in 12 colors and a clear, but in April our 11 new colors should be coming in- they're gorgeous!

Unlike the markers, Spica need to be kept horizontal t0 even out the flakes. If they are dropped or shaken then the glitter inside gets unbalanced. Just store them point down for a while to encourage the glitter to flow correctly, then return them to the horizontal state. You don't want them to stay point down, or the glitter might overwhelm the tip.

I was informed by the Japanese manufacturer that the word "Atyou" is kind of like "Wow!" or "Oh!" it's a happy exclaimation. "Spica" is the name of one of the stars in the constellation Virgo. When you say "atyou Spica" don't think of it as the sound you make when you sneeze (even though it sounds that way) think of "Wow! Stars!". If you get a chance to see one in real life you'll agree that "Wow! Stars!" pretty much says it all.

On that note, I'd better get back to bed. Play along, leave a note, go visit the other designers for Our Craft Lounge and win a set of stamps. It's that easy. Happy Valentine's Day!

eta: Of the 28 new sets at OCL, I drew 24 of them. Can you guess which ones I did NOT draw?