You're Sweet

 

I made this as a thank you card for my cousin Alyssa! And I stamped the kraft paper wrapping of her very-belated Christmas gift to match. Alyssa is bright and vibrant and cute fruits really suit her, I think.

 

 

Pom Mom Bday Card

 

Because my sister loves Pomeranians (she has 2 rescued boys), and I consider teal her signature color.

A LOT of Birthday Cards!

 

Whoops I forgot to take a picture of this one after I added the sentiment!

Christmas in...uh...May?

OK, so you could say I'm a little behind when it comes to posting my more recent handmade cards. I try to wait to post Xmas cards until I'm sure everyone has received theirs, and then I just ended up forgetting altogether. But without further delay, here's my batch from Christmas 2020!

 

The gang's all together

So breaking things down, there's a trio of simple tree card designs:

I really liked these guys! Sometimes simple is best. Here's a closer look at them individually.

Moving on....

So my 2020 Secret Santa happened to be very proudly Italian-American, and the Italian flag colors work well for Christmas too! And I liked the design so much I made it a twin for Mike, my (unofficial) step-dad. Christmas is also his birthday!

This one is unique, I only made one of this design. I liked the kraft card base with the images I'd used from a few different stamp sets.

This one I made with a stamped sentiment background that went unused a year or so ago.

Edit: I just realized that apparently I never posted my Christmas 2019 cards either. Oh boy.  Well, here's those.

Kevin the Dragon

Redrawing my Middle School OC

After Rocky passed away, I took down his cage and moved in some furniture from my childhood bedroom. I found a drawer containing some cherished art from when I was in middle school!

Yikes! These were one of my first experiments with alcohol markers (specifically, Prismacolor Markers). And as you can see, Baby Amanda hit a few road bumps. I wasn't using appropriate paper. I didn't use appropriate liners. Just overall, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I made three attempts and was pretty dissatisfied with all of them at the time. I just couldn't get the markers to do what I wanted.

But now, many years have passed and I know exactly what I was doing wrong: Everything. I used a water-based liner so that it wouldn't bleed with the alcohol-based markers. I used cardstock that could handle the job. I didn't want to change the design this time around (maybe in the future I will), so I just kind of did a quick mash-up of the three reference images and here's the result:

 If you'd like to watch me work on this, be sure to check out Redraw with Me: Middle School OC Edition:

I'm going to be upfront. My hand was in the way for most of the video. Oops? I'll be more careful next time.

Pookie Pixels' Loom Beading Tutorial

Years ago, I spent a ton of time creating a detailed Loom Beading tutorial. And I can't for the life of me remember WHY I did this, but while organizing files on my PC I FOUND IT! And I've uploaded it to Gumroad where you can read it by downloading for free. Here's a link!

Miyuki Delica Seed Beads

Loom Beading Process Pic

It's a Nyan Cat beaded bracelet!

The finished Nyan Cat bracelet in action.

 Maybe viewing the tutorial will give you some insight into why I stopped selling beaded bracelets. They're a lot of work!