I survived my 40th birthday! LOL

We celebrated my 40th birthday yesterday. Emma and Nolan presented me with this awesome card, both drew the pictures and Nolan inked and coloured it. It was so fun watching them in cahoots, heads together, drawing and collaborating.... freaking out when I would accidentally enter the room LOL! I received some lovely flowers and other things, and I didn't have to cook ( chinese food takout) and a Dairy Queen icecream cake that my hubby went 25 min. out of his way to get.

We do it all again tomorrow, Nolan turns 11! Tacos and video games, here we come.

Still sick and and I have this slimy goober floating around in my left eye, so I am one-eyed blurfing today!!!

Nolan's Monster Card - Round-up

Thanks to all who have shared their monster cards. Nolan has loved everyone of them :) He has also got a kick out of where you are all from in blogland! I am going to keep this post near the top for a bit and will add new cards to the slideshow as we see them. I will keep a tally at the bottom of the post. If your card is not in this slideshow please leave a comment on this post and we will go nab it ;) A few have asked what is this little guys name. Well it is ... Gregrrry! Gre-grrr-y get it!? ha ha ha ha. Gregrry also has a little friend and will show him next week. Nolan is off to eco-adventure day camp with his sister this week but will be back to monster making after its over.

Email and reader subscribers may need to head to my blog to see this slideshow:

CARD TALLY: Drum roll.... 26 (as of OCT 13 - If I have missed yours please let me know)

Monster Verses: 9
'I'm only Goopy 'cos you drive me Loopy'
'I'm only Mushy 'cos you send me Gushy'
'Roses are Red, Violets are blue, I've turned to mush because I love you'

from Celia


"Gooo-d evening my Dear"
"Gooo-d to see you're feeling better"

From Tonniece

"Slime" head over heels for you!
"Slime" wishing you a happy birthday!
"Slime" so happy for you!

from Monica-moenica37


"You make me melty!"

from mel m. m. m.

TOTAL ( will be tallied until SEPT 1 k I lied): 35 last edit OCT 13

CARD - Pastel Blue Flowers

Thought I went missing again didn't ya?! I've been icky sicky...now I have pink eye so please don't get too close to your monitor ... hahaha.

Another week sidelined from getting much done. But here is a card I managed in between naps on the couch.

Backing paper, a design I have doodled and have been playing with... ( I have oodles of colours and combos to decide on) that has been embossed with a grid pattern using the Scor-Pal. The scalloped frame I made digitally then was hand cut and cuttlebug embossed. The flowers were edged with Stickles glue ( waterfall) and leaves as well with lime-green. I punched some ash leaves, painted with a metallic paint then moulded. The Hello is a cuttlebug die ( Everyday Greetings). I completed the flowers with sticky backed pearls. There is so much silicone glue and foam dots on this card that it will never go flat LOL!

another CARD -Fred's Flowers v3 and some stamping

The background was made with the same defective photo paper LOL! 3 shades of Whispers ink were sponged on the paper... the ink takes a while to dry on this paper ( drying is usually quite speedy making this ink hard to work with on most paper I have tried) so the colours blended together very softly. After it dried enough ( this noob must remember to heat set!) I stamped over with a stamp I designed for Stamp Attack Art Stamps ( Doodles - TM Design).

The scalloped rectangle is made using the Fiskars Threading Water border punch but I covered up the holes with the white embossed CS. The flowers were coloured with the Magic Colored Pencil technique and were edged with sunburst Stickles glue.

I plan on putting a sentiment in the middle by printing the text to resemble a thin white strip of "ribbon" on a diagonal between the flower groupings.

******************************

I spent the day playing with my blog and learned alot about creating & adding backgrounds and playing with the margins ( wrappers in html lingo). I nearly gave up and still not sure if I like it but, now I have a very good idea how to tackle another design overhaul. If the design hurts your eyes, please let me know ROFL!

CARD - Fred's Flowers v2 - alcohol inks

I used Fred's Flowers v2 Pointy Petals pack. For the petals I used a deepish blue pencil and used a fairly strong outline of colour from the middle to top of each petal; you work the blending stump ( dipped in OMS) from the coloured outline to the middle in a streak back and forth until you get a faint line, I did streaks for each petal. Then blend the outline out to smooth out the colour. I did a faint ring of colour around flower center and blended a bit. ( NOTE: If you wanted, after blending you can gently shade the whole flower with a lighter colour if you want something other than the white in the flower, example, lightly shading with a pale yellow/cream or light blue. If you use a light touch you won't need to blend with OMS.)

The brad is a navy blue dollar store brad embellished with Stickles ( waterfall). The leaves are moulded by bending and working the center line of the leaf, so the bending follows the line and curves :). I adhered all with silicone glue to lift it off the card. The embossed white is embellished with Pebbles Shimmers chalk- a light blue.

The background is one of my first forrays into alcohol inks! I used Jacquard Pinata inks on this one, the colours are very vibrant and ethereal in real life. I bought the wooden pouncing tool with the velcro, felt pads and the Tim Holtz blending solution... love it! While it is not recommended to use photo paper, I had some defective photo paper with a smooth glossy finish which no longer works in my printer ( the ink starts cracking ewww) but it doesn't seem to buckle or get gooey with the alcohol inks! yey me. I have a box of it ( around 250 sheets) so I think I will run out of inks before I run out of paper LOL!

I will try and post another card tomorrow.

CARD - Fred's Flowers v1 and stamping

Hello peeps! I apologize for my absence. Having 2 lumpy kids home for the summer is like chinese water torture :P But I am now getting back in the swing, slowly but surely.

I have a few things almost ready to go in the store. Not sure yet when I will have them completed but it will be soon ;)

I finally made up some cards. Here is one using the v1 Flowers. I coloured with the magic colouring pencil technique ( pencils and OMS) and I am not exactly sure how I did the backing paper LOL! I know I crumpled some white copy paper... then the fun ensued. I used a combination of applying a purple whispers pad and antique linen distress inkpad using both color dusters and DTP to apply the ink; I also used an ink sweeper for the edging. I stamped one of my flower design stamps ( Stamp Attack Art Stamps - Butterfly Doodledallion sheet ) using Pearlescent Lavender Brilliance pad. The white is Cuttlebug embossed. The flower and leaves are raised with silicone glue. The yellow petals are outlined with yellow stickles and the center is a sugarcoated brad... yeah I found them! ( yes, they were lost for a bit - I blame failing eyesight and bad organizational skills LOL).



I will post another card tomorrow. Have a great day!

I am a bad blogger... Awards

I have received some lovely awards over the last few weeks. I am too ashamed to post them. It is not that I do not love receiving awards, it's the follow up that stresses me out. As you know, I have written before regarding rewards and tags. I really suck at it ( pardon the expression) LOL. I just can't pick the peeps I need to award. I'd love to award everyone I have met - and I hate imposing the choosing on anyone else. Honest, I was going to try it this time... sigh.

Thanks to all who have sent me awards but please next time, send me HUGS, k? I am sending all my awarders hugs ... I like hugging. grin.

I hope I didn't offend anybody... slunking off into the sunset. ....

:)

TUTORIAL: Colouring a Medallion with Gradients in Paint Shop Pro

I finally got the Gradient Flood-Fill Colouring in PSP Tutorial done. I hope it is understandable LOL! You can download it HERE . The tutorial is a PDF so you will need Adobe Reader or equivalent to read it. Sorry, it is on 4shared, I looked at my bandwidth allotment for my regular free file hosting and it was getting up there and may blow over if I use it, that means people are DOWNLOADING... happy dance! If you have any problems with 4shared, you can email me and request the file and I will email it to you. You will need a squarish medallion or flower image to complete this tutorial.

Purchaser's of the Stained Glass Floral Doodledallion outline sheet: please request the single doodledallion image via my email , have your purchasing email handy and/or transaction ID. I will gladly send you the file if you want to try out this tutorial. In the future, if I put up any more medallions, I will be adding a single image as well as the decoupage outline sheet automatically.

Downloading, tutorial soon & Digi-Freebie

Happy Monday! Sorry no monster today and when I get a round tuit, I will tally up some more cards, verses and add some photos :)

But today was a tech support day!!!! LOL E-junkie DID have a hosting server issue yesterday so it was wonky for a bit but all is good now. PayPal... still wonky but won't bother you.... just ME. LOL I have email records of everything thank goodness. If you had issues with your download yesterday, please try again. If you have run out of tries, please email me and I'll fix you up.

I was asked how to colour the Doodledallion in PSP. So alas, a long overdue tutorial is in the works. I'll try to have it up this week. But here is a preview of what you can do by flood-filling with gradients in Paint Shop Pro. I expect you can do the same thing with other graphics editing software. Please feel free to use on your cards. I think you can get 4 to a sheet for printing.

Until we meet again..... :)

Paypal and download problems

PayPal has been acting wonky lately ( past few weeks). 50% of the time I can't log in and if I do, I can't access my account history or transaction details. This is not good for running a business. Also, I tried to do a download link test on a file I have for sale and I kept getting a "service unavailable" through my 5 download attempts. grr... It did eventually work. It might have been a temporary glitch. ... END of rant.

If you have any problems with the shopping cart or with your downloads please let me know, I will try to remedy ASAP.

Have a good day,
Fred, who's on her last frayed nerve with PayPal

Digi-Freebie: Pink & Mellow

Happy Friday! I have been flabbergasted at the goings on at Fred, She Said Designs. Thank you so much for your support. I am just so happy, I made a freebie for you :) To save space, the images are 100 ppi. Just click on each image to get the full size and save.

I threw the paper together as an afterthought, the background for it is a canned doodle pattern in PSP and a bitty doodled flower custom brush I drew many moons ago. This freebie just needed a backing paper to go with it :) Next week, I may continue this mellow flavour and make a set with a few of my favourite mellow colours and some more "thought out" papers LOL, it will also be a larger resolution than these.





If you have downloaded these, I would love it if you would leave a comment that you have "nabbed"! :)

Have a great day.

By Request : Plain Papers Digi-Freebie

A lovely person ( who enjoys Lace [lac-ay] cutting craft ... you know who you are :) ) emailed me and requested some plain papers to go with the Blossom Kits. She wanted to print them on the back-side of the patterned papers. You know, two-sided paper - so when you do your lace cutting, the color coordinates.

EDIT ( July 15 ) Janet Kay( bspruce on CoC ) made an exquisite example of Lace cutting. I am so glad you liked your plain papers, girlfriend (wink).



Anyhoo, maybe you all would like them. The colours coordinate with the Blue, Pink and Purple Fred's Flower v3 Blossom Kits for sale at the store. They are lightly textured and full sized 8.5x11" sheets 200 ppi resolution. Here are the swatches:


EDIT: Here is the new download link for these papers :) Have a lovely day, now get back to your crafting or blurfing!

Monday Monster 2 ( digi-freebie )

Please click image to enlarge and then save.


EDIT - the artist thought blacking out the mouth cavity was more aesthetically appealing ;)


( I don't have a card yet but will edit this post when I do ;) )

OK, peeps. This week's monster is a little gross-ning! ( That was the way us Canadian kids said gross back when I was Nolan's age LOL )

This is not the little friend monster I was refering to in a previous post, note to self - DO NOT ask a grumpy 10 soon to be 11 year old to redraw something he has ALREADY DRAWN bigger cuz it wouldn't scan well LOL!

This guy is "Goopy". He is so disgusting looking, he's cute! All I can think of is:

" When I am near you, I turn to a puddle of goo"

Same applies for this monster, email me or blog a card and Nolan gets 20 cents :) I will add them to the parade of cards at the top of my blog.

Or, if you can think of some witty verses to go with this one, please leave a comment. I will count it as a card ;) ( double cash points if witty saying is on a card LOL)

Thank you so much for all your comments, cards, and support! I am a puddle just like this guy (sniff)

Also, I hope to have something besides monsters to share, I promise. I've been drawing new stuff and colouring with my new Koh-I-Noor woodless pencils ; thanks Gina K!!! They rock. There will be new flowers, some revamped versions for stampers, a mermaid & friends, and some doodledallions I have been meaning to get ready since I started this wild ride!

Have a great day all!

Monday Monster - digi-freebie & challenge

Isn't he cute?!!! This little monster was drawn by Fred Jr., yes, my 10 year old son Nolan has inherited the drawing bug as well, so much so, I have run out of places to keep all his cartoons/drawings/comic books LOL! To avoid boredom ( day 2 into the Summer Holidays) I asked Nolan to draw me stuff - " Like what, Mom?" - " I don't know, maybe a cute creature or monster holding a flower - so I can put my flowers on it". Ten minutes later, he came back with this cute little monster AND completely inked - with a stem and leaf so you can add your own flower. The kid amazes me.

Like all kids, especially ones with expensive tastes ( cough Wii, cough Nintendo DS) he was thinking dollar signs LOL! So I told him, "how about if the Peeps out in blog land email me or link up cards they have made using this monster, "I" will give you 20 cents for each card made?"

Sound like a challenge? LOL! Maybe we can entice him to make more ;)

Card Details:
-DollarStore dotty paper
-Monster coloured with prismacolor pencils and OMS
-I added stickles to the purple spots ( please NOTE: I was told the spot between the eyes is NOT his nose -- but please use your artistic license ;) LOL
-I used pop dots on the flower ( 2 small flowers from Fred's Flowers v2 Pointy Petals Pack)
-white glaze pen on teeth and eye highlights
- scalloped circle is hand punched with my corner rounder - don't look too close! LOL

Here is the monster:


Please click on him to enlarge, then right-click on him and save the image to your harddrive.

If anything, please comment on this post and tell Nolan what you think of his monster. He would love to read your comments :))

Blog Candy Winner!

Thank you for all the great comments :) We had 53 comments altogether; I put numbers on bits of paper and Emma drew out of a bowl. I'd show you a photo, but Emma came down with a tummy bug last night and she doesn't look so hot! But she was glad to do the honours. Drum roll please....

The winner of the 3 Fred's Flower Blossom Kits is Debra Dukes ( comment #49). Congratulations! Debra has a wonderful crafty card blog called Creative Heart Designs. Debra, I will send you an email, please get back to me and I'll hook you up :)


Have a great day, everyone.

Announcement - 3 Blossom Kits are ready

I have finally finished the Fred's Flower Blossom Kits. I added 5 more papers to make it a total of 8 patterned papers per kit. Colours available are Blue, Pink and Purple. Details at the STORE. I am also making the flower sheets available individually for those who don't want the papers, but if purchasers change their minds and then want the full kit, there will be important info in the download email ;)

The blog candy is still open until Wednesday midnight... who am I kidding... you will have until Thursday morning I am not staying up till midnight ;) (and the kits will have the extra papers) wink wink.

I spent all day getting these ready, Blogger was quite flaky today!!!! So I am done in and going to bed :) If you notice anything odd/wrong with anything, I lost my marbles at about 3pm! Please let me know and I will fix whatever it is as soon as I can.

As you were! Fred says night night.

Blue Blossoms & Allison's Girls & Blog Candy!

Please make sure you scroll down to the end for info on BLOG CANDY!

Hello Peeps! I have been busy making and painting stuff for y'all to play with :) I made this card from a digital patterned paper and flower kit I will be offering very soon! I am packing them up and hopefully will have them up by the end of the weekend. I coloured the flowers and leaves from the Fred's Flowers v3 - Whirly Flowers outline kit. So far I have 3 flavours of blossoms - Blue, HotPink, and, of course, Purple! I will have previews and info soon. I will be devoting time now to making coloured flowers and designs for my colouring challenged friends ;)

I nabbed this cute girl from Allison and her Girls of the World post. Allison has also posted boys and everyday girls as well to download. She also shows you where she found them, how she made them black and white, and how to get the most wonderful clipart for your projects - link here. These girls have been up for awhile, I have finally got around to playing with them, delightful!

I coloured this cutie with colored pencils and OMS and outlined the dark flowers with blue stardust pen, and little flowers with clear stardust pen, centers are lime-green Stickles glue.

NOW THE BLOG CANDY: 3 of Fred's Flowers Blossom Kits ( digital) - Blue, Pink and Purple. Here is a small preview of what you get ( plus all the flowers and leaves as full size single images ).



Please leave a comment on this post ( Make sure your name or blog link is on it or I can't find you -wink). I will leave this open until Wednesday June 25th. I will have Emma draw out of a hat and announce the winner on Thursday. If the winner has bought these flowers already I will offer a digital gift certificate toward my store for equal value of the purchase price. Good luck!

OH YES, and HAPPY 50,000 HITS to me, yahoo! I saw the ticker turn over today ;)

Absence & Grieving

We tragically lost our beloved Molly last weekend. She will always be in our hearts and I hope there are plenty of jerky treats, balls, and frisbees over the rainbow bridge.

Molly Miller 1999-2008

We are doing better now but it has taken a tole on me. We are busy for the remainder of this week with birthdays and ballet recitals. I had papercrafty things in the works but I had to put them on hold. I hope to be back to "business" next week. Take care everyone.

Fred's Flowers v2 UPDATE

I have updated the Fred's Flowers v2 Pointy Petals Pack to include single images of the flowers and leaves for more versatility eg resizing and colouring on the computer. I have also reduced the price to $5 CAD from $6 and I have notified purchasers with the update and info. If you have purchased this product and haven't received an update email from me via E-Junkie, please email me with your transaction ID number.

Fred's Flowers v.3 - Whirly Flowers and a freebie

Fred's Flowers v.3 - Whirly Flowers - outline sheets is now up at the store.

Here are some samples. There is a third flower type on the sheet but I haven't got the card made yet. Put your sunglasses on for the first card LOL! The green cardstock was a piece I used to show the "inlaws" how the cuttlebug worked.... thinking I would never use it... not "me" or so I thought. LOL It went well with these coloured flowers. The greeting I made in PSP to fit the opening of the "stamp" die that came with my cuttlebug. The die is square and 1.5" wide and I didn't have too many greeting stamps that fit this opening, so I made some. If you would like the sheet ( has general greetings - "Happy Birthday!", "Congrats!", "Just Because", "Just for You!", "With Love", "Happy Hello!" & "Best Wishes") you can download it HERE. It is a PDF file so please right-click on the link and save the file or it might open in your browser. The "girth" around each greeting should be sufficient for round/square/rectangular dies around 2 to 3 ". Please leave a comment if you have downloaded it :) I also take requests! ( but they have to be short and sweet to fit) I'll post the new greetings on this blog.



Here is another card. I lost my pastel sugarcoated brads I just bought boohoo!!!!! So I have been adding Stickles glitter glue to my dollar brads ( this one is grey with platinum stickles). I have also been adding some clear glue ( any clear glue/glaze/crystal effects, etc) to the brad and shaking on some "glamour dust" from DecoArt. I dry my brads in the hollow bottoms of my upside-down markers LOL! My 10 yr old son had that bright idea after he saw his mom holding a wet brad in a panic LOL. I guess you could stick them in styrofoam or flower foam as well.



The other flower has 3 petals and you layer & offset the flowers. There is also a sheet of assorted leaves. I'll make samples with the leaves soon. There are so many more things I want to get ready, maybe if I "burn the midnight oil", I can get a few more up :)