Coloradoleen's Weblog

I LOVE Canon and am now a Canon camera user for life!!

coloradoleen — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:16:58 +0000

A bunch of years ago I purchased a Canon PowershotA95 camera and have loved it’s performance and picture quality. Sometime over the summer however, I would occasionally see a pink slash of color on the cameras screen while setting up a shot. At first this didn’t bother me as the camera is old enough to still have a viewfinder, but when the downloaded images had that same slash of color something had to be done!

The search for a replacement camera was a royal pain in the butt and did not produce anything that I was willing to settle on. A few weeks before Christmas though, George found a possible explanation for the issue online and contacted the Canon Company about it. What he found was: “Canon CCD Sensor Service Advisory”. The problem is faulty wiring with the CCD Image Sensor that could possibly come loose in humid or hot climates

They said that if this was the problem with my camera, then they would fix the camera free of charge, even if it was out of warranty. All we had to do was ship it to them, on their dime, and they would either fix it and ship it back, or contact us with the problem and tell us how much it would cost to either fix it, or ship it back to us.

Over the last two and a half weeks, I would ask George if he had heard from Canon about my camera, and his reply was always the same, “Not yet”. This morning, December 27, 2011, at 10:00am my camera was delivered back to me, good as new! I spent about 30 minutes snapping pictures around the house to make sure it worked, and not once did I see that pink color.

I am SO happy and will now be a Canon camera user for life!!!

December 24, 2011

coloradoleen — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:41:41 +0000

Wishing each and every one of you the Happiest of Holiday seasons!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good night!

Final Card Designs

coloradoleen — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:10:47 +0000

Here are the last two designs I did for this years Christmas cards.

The first design is the Silent Night sheet music stamp by Morning Star and shiny silver cardstock.

And the last card is the same design that I did a few days ago only it was time for some silver and blue. Again, I used my Tim Holtz Pine Tree stamp and my Cuttlebug Victoria embossing folder with Pure Luxury heavy base weight white cardstock.

As always, thank you for stopping byand I hope you are all enjoying Holidays!!

More Cards & a Tag

coloradoleen — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:34:53 +0000

Here are a few more cards that I’ve made over the weekend. The first two are single layer card with the left card stamped onto Ivory base weight pure luxury cardstock and colored with colored pencils. The card on the right is Pure Luxury in white with the color added with copic markers.

Here is another tag made by embossing the Tim Holtz snowman with clear embossing powder and then adding Broken China distress ink over the top to bring out the detail.

After making the tag, I had the idea to create this card. Again, I embossed this Tim Holtz Pine Tree stamp with clear embossing power. I then cut it out with a nestability die and used Peeled Paint distress ink. To add some sparkle and class I used shiny gold cardstock and embossed a layer of Pure Luxury white card stock with my Cuttlebug Victoria embossing folder. The oval is also raised with some foam tape.

As always, it’s a pleasure to share my creations with you. If you see something you really like please let me know by leaving a comment.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cards & Copic Markers

coloradoleen — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 04:44:25 +0000

I am way behind on my Christmas cards so today was the perfect opportunity to play with my new Copic markers. Since I am so new with this type of professional alcohol marker, I did a search of my favorite blog, Theresa Momber’s Crafting The Web, for tips on shading an image. After studying several of Theresa’s card projects, I grabbed my markers and got to work.

Here is the completed card

I started my card front by embossing apiece of Pure Luxury heavy base weight card stock in Ivory with Memento Rich Cocoa and clear embossing powder. The Holy Family stamp that was purchased from the Rubber Stamp and Scrapook expo a few months ago. Unfortunately, I neglected to write down the vender that I purchased it from. If anyone happens to know who to credit this stamp to, please do let me know.

I started by tracing some of the stamped lines with YG63 .

The with YG03 I filled in the rest of the image and blended it with the darker outline color.

I repeated the process with Mary starting with B24 to do the outline.

And then filling and blending with B21. I think I need a middle shade here. The difference between the light and darker color seems a little drastic to me.

Following the same idea here with baby Jesus I outlined with Y13.

And then filling in with the lighter Y11.

Finally, I completed the image with E00. Now seems to be a good time to mention how much I LOVE the blender pen!! In all of my research into these pens, the one thing that stuck in my mind was to purchase the blender pen first. It amazes me how this thing will erase a mistake, it is now my new best friend! LOL

I don’t own a lot of Copic markers, in addition to the ones used on this card I have Lipstick Red and Cool Gray #3. Because I don’t own a brown color, I had to improvise a bit for the staff that Joseph is holding by using a colored pencil. To complete the card, I used a stamp of the sheet music Silent Night by Morning Star and embossed it with gold embossing powder. This was then layered over shiny gold cardstock and attached to the card base of Pure Luxury in Ivy.

It was so much fun making this card I ended up cranking out 4 of them today! I’m still a long way from being done with my cards, but this is four cards that didn’t have this morning. lol

Thank you for stopping by and please do leave a comment if you have any suggesting on how to improve my shading technique.

Gift Card/Money Holder

coloradoleen — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:26:01 +0000

Here is a gift card/money holder that I made for a Christmas gift this year. It was very simple to create. The card is a regular 4 ¼ x 5 ½ inch card. After using the score pal to score the front of the card at 4 ¼”, I trimmed the back panel to 5 ¾” so I could fold up 1 ½” to create the pocket. I then covered the inside and outside of the card with pattern paper that I picked up at the local scrapbook store. The text is a Tim Holtz stamp that was embossed with memento ink and clear embossing power and I finished it off with a thin ribbon.

Merry Christmas and thanks for stopping by.

More Christmas Tags

coloradoleen — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:46:30 +0000

Here are more of this years Christmas gift tags. All of them were made with Tim Holtz stamps, memento inks, Distress ink, and my new Copic markers.

The first set of tags were stamped with Tuxedo Black memento ink. I added a little bit of color with Copic markers (which are on sale this week 12/11 – 12/17 buy one get one 50% off at Michael’s). I used E00 Skin White for Santa’s face, R29 Lipstick Red for the hat, and YG63 Pea Green for what I took as holly leaves around the top of his head. To add a rosy glow to his cheeks, I dabbed a bit of Lipstick Red on my craft sheet and then picked up a bit with the tip of the Skin White pen.

The next set of tags were stamped with Peeled Paint Distress Ink.

These tags were stamped with Summer Sky and Danube Blue.

The last two tags were made with Bamboo Leaves and Cottage Ivy.

As always, thank you for stopping by my little corner of the internet!

Christmas Tags

coloradoleen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:14:17 +0000

I have yet to start on my Christmas Cards for the year, but I have been having fun making gift tags. I started off with plain large tags (5 1/4″ x 2 5/8″) purchased from Hobby Lobby.

The first two tags were made with Tim Holtz Pine Tree stamp with Memento ink in Cottage Ivy and Peeled Paint Distress Ink. The first tag was accented with Stickles to give it some sparkle and the next was covered in Fun Flock

The lamppost image used on the next tag is one of the very first stamps I ever bought. I remember that year to emboss my Christmas cards, I had to hold the card base over the burner on the stove to melt the embossing powder! LOL Life before heat guns!! LOL

This angel stamp is another that I’ve had for years. The color for both the lamppost and angel were added with colored pencils and a touch of sparkle with a touch of Stickles.

The next three tags are my version of Tim Holtz 2011, 12 tags of Christmas Day 5. You can see his tag as well as direction on his page HERE

Just a little run down of the technique for you:

I cut some of the packaging that came with my newest nestability die to approximately the size of my tag. I used alcohol inks on one side and after they were dry, I stamped my image using Archival in Jet Black OVER the alcohol ink. The trick to this technique is to blot the ink away immediately with a paper towel or soft cloth. Not only will it lift off the ink, but it will also lift off the alcohol ink underneath it. Such a cool technique, but you must be careful if using a stamp that has a right and wrong side, such as a text stamp. Tim suggests adhering the image to the tag with a bit of glossy accents, but I just ran my piece through the xyron machine.

To add a bit of something, I tied a bit of ribbon to each tag and then hit it with the heat gun to “scrunch” it up a bit.

All of the stamps used on these tags are from Tim Holtz

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Challenge Time

coloradoleen — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:22:06 +0000

This is the perfect time for a bookmark challenge from the design team at StampTV! I start a new class the 5th of September and I need a bookmark for my textbook. I started this one on a scrap of Pure Luxury white heavy base weight paper, then added the Harlequins background stamp from Stampabilities with desert sand memento ink. Then I added the text stamp from Inkadinkado with antique linen distress ink. To keep a light touch to this layer, I first blotted the stamp onto a paper towel before using it on the paper. The final layer is the Leaf Cluster stamp from Hero Arts with rhubarb stalk memento ink. I rounded the corners for the final touch and called it good!

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Another challenge I accepted this week was the Clean and Simple Cards challenge at SplitCoastStampers. This week they had a sketch challenge and to get an early start on a few Christmas cards, I gave it a try.

The first card I made is with my Tim Holtz Pine Tree stamp and cottage ivy memento ink. The greeting is from a set I’ve had for years, and stamped with tuxedo black memento. To add a bit of color, I took a length of ivory ribbon and used my Rambunctious Red Bic MarkIt pen to change the color. The card stock of course is from StampTV, Pure Luxury heavy base weight in white ( I absolute ADORE this card stock!)

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The next card I made for this challenge is with my new stamps that I purchased from the scrapbook and stamp expo last month. The image of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus was another stamp like the hummingbird that does not have any details on it. It was an unmounted stamp and I neglected to write down the name of the vendor that I bought it from. The text is just the top of a stamp from Morning Star. The entire image is the sheet music to Silent Night. Simple colored pencils were used for the image, but I did not smooth it out with baby oil this time. I wanted to keep that little bit of texture in the image.

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The last card I did was not for any challenge, but this is the design I had in mine when I bought these two stamps. The music is stamped on a piece of Pure Luxury heavy base weight card stock in Ivory with memento ink. The Holy family is stamped on white card stock and colored in with pencils and mounted on foam tape to give it some depth.

As always, thank you for stopping by!

Free For All Friday – For the Birds!

coloradoleen — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:03:56 +0000

Each Friday the talented designers at StampTV host a Free For All challenge. This week, our hostess Jennie wants to see bird theme card. A few weeks ago, I purchased a new stamp from the scrapbook and rubberstamp expo and last night I dug it out so I could join the challenge. I forgot to write down which booth I purchased this stamp from, and there is nothing but a price tag on the plastic baggie, but I love this little hummingbird.

The image is stamped on Heavy Base Weight Ivory cardstock with Tuxedo Black memento ink and colored with colored pencils and baby oil. I love how thick this cardstock truly is because the incomplete image of this stamp on the reverse side does not show through the finished card!!

You can’t really see it in the pictures I took, but the bird is layered. I stamped and colored the original image and then added a second complete bird over the top. After look at it again through sleepy eyes, I added the top wing as well to give it more dimension.

When I finished the card, around 2am, the top left corner looked so bare. This is where my problem comes with card making – what to do with all that white space. I didn’t really intend to create a birthday card, but after staring at it a while I looked up and saw this Happy Birthday stamp sitting on my desk. So there ya go!

I do have a question for you all though, what else could I have done with that space? What would you have done? Leave me a comment with some suggestions.