rubeena's crafting blog hop

Good morning! I am taking part in a special blog hop today to help fellow crafty lady Rubeena Ianigro celebrate four years of crafting! Ruby and I met several years ago when we were both members of the same design team, which seems like a lifetime ago haha! But today, I and several incredibly talented crafters are helping her celebrate her milestone, as well as crafting in general!  You should have arrived here from Mayline’s blog, and your next stop is Kelly’s blog! There are some absolutely amazing prizes available, so make sure you read all the way to the end of the post!

For those who might not know my story, I started crafting after my wedding about 9 years ago. I had to make the perfect thank you notes, because of course none of the store-bought ones would do… plus, I thought I was being thrifty (joke was most definitely on me!). I got a Cricut for Christmas that year, and the rest is history. Initially, my crafting was a way to keep my creative mind entertained while finishing graduate school, but then it ended up being my lifeboat while my husband and I waited to become parents. Crafting kept my mind occupied for nearly three years while it seemed like every friend, relative, and acquaintance had children and we (inexplicably) did not. After carrying our twins and becoming a stay-at-home-mom, crafting became my lifeboat from the stresses of motherhood! I am lucky enough to have evolved from just crafting for my sanity to being on several design teams and doing guest work for my favorite companies, and I am currently on the Ellen Hutson, Hero Arts, HoneyBee Stamps, and Where Creativity Meets C9 design teams. Not only have I been granted some tremendous opportunities within this fantastic industry, I have made some absolutely wonderful friends, friends without whom I would be lost. I am so grateful for all of the dividends that this wonderful crafting world has sent to me!

For my project today, I wanted to do something extra special, because I am truly so grateful for this industry and the friends I have made because of it, so I pulled out my Polychromos pencils. Polychromos pencils are most certainly not the quickest medium to use, but it is impossible to argue with the results. The depth that you can achieve with pencils still blows me away more than any other medium, and you all know how I love my mediums. I don’t discriminate. 😉

I started with the absolutely stunning Grateful For Everything from the brand new Concord and 9th release. I knew that I wanted to do some no-line coloring, so I stamped the main floral image on some charcoal card stock using white pigment ink. I then used my Polychromos colored pencils to color the floral image. When coloring on very dark colored card stock, I first lay down a layer of white pencil on the petal I want to color, then add my colored pencil over the top, starting with the lightest and working my way up to the darkest colors. Part of my love affair with Polychromos pencils is due to the fact that I can add layer upon layer of color. Each layer adds more depth and dimension to my project. After adding the “color” from the colored pencil, I frequently will go back in with a dark gray or black and add some depth to the areas that I want to be darkest. That contrast between very light and very dark helps the image pop off of the page even more. 

I will be honest: I don’t care much for orange. But I saw this color combination on a dress that I was considering (I get SO much inspiration from fabrics and home decor!) that I just had to translate it into a card front. I wish I had been able to figure out a way to get another sprig of berries on there to have another pop of blue, but I ran out of time. To finish off the card, I used my T-square and a white pencil to create a frame around the edge of the card front. I also die cut the coordinating Grateful for Everything greeting twice from scrap card stock and once from some pale blue card stock (had to add in another little pop of blue!), which I adhered together to create a dimensional die cut for a simple greeting. The final touch was some gems that added the perfect amount of iridescence and texture to the card front.

Well, that’s all for me today! I hope you enjoyed my project. It was a labor of love, for sure! Pencils are so time consuming, but I think so worth it in the end!

Now, for the giveaway information: