Bookmarks XLIX: Jill Sparrow

At first I was going to paper-piece my little pirate girl, but then I got intimidated by all the cutting. Instead, I decided to try my hand at something else: coloring with Copics.

Now, I have no illusions about my skill at shading and blending at all: my coloring abilities are at "Level One: Can Stay Inside The Lines," and I'm actually pretty okay with that.

Also, I own a total of four Copics. You see, I bought them to edge paper terrain, so I have a grey one for stone, a brown one for dirt and wood, a green one for foliage, and a light blue one for water. It's a very sophisticated collection.

I love the little eyepatch I made, too! It was Krisha's idea several weeks ago when I asked for idea help on a WOYWW post, and I loved it immediately. I thought the bookmark needed just a little something more than Captain Jackie Sparrow there.

(Well really, look at that hairstyle and bandana and hat; it's a miracle she's not wearing heavy eyeliner as well, I think.)

I wanted to find my copy of Swiss Family Robinson to photograph the bookmark on, but I couldn't. So I've used Pippi in the South Seas (a Pippi Longstocking book), which fits rather well. (Unfortunately while reading through it I've realized that the story of Pippi's big fat white man father ruling a South Seas tribe of stereotypes is just a tiny bit racist. Bother.)

I'm entering this pirate-y bookmark in the following challenges:

• Cute Card Thursday: Girls Only (I'm so pleased to enter something so very not-pink-and-frilly into a girly challenge, I think the entries get a bit stereotypic a lot of the time...)
• Rogue Redhead Rebel Challenge 17: UnCard (it's a bookmark!)
• Dream Valley Challenge 45: Anything Goes
• The Artistic Stamper Creative Team: Anything Goes
• One Crazy Stamper: Anything Goes

Supplies:

The Ducky Tie Edition

So I sent my sister her birthday present. Hey, less than two months late! We're not very good at getting each other presents in a timely fashion...

Anyway, the present was Season 7 of How I Met Your Mother, a fairly funny TV show. No doubt I will help her watch it when I next see her; I like it too. The tagline on the DVD case was "The Ducky Tie Edition". Not yet having seen this season, I had to look up the reference -- shockingly, it refers to a tie. With duckies on it.

Well, "duckies on it" sounded like a fairly easy wrapping paper prompt. Does anyone know of any stamps in the classic rubber ducky shape? I keep running into the need for one but I can't find any. In this case, I improvised by masking the legs off a different duck. Most of the time, I even remembered to take the mask off the stamp before stamping... oops.

The ducky tie has a dark blue background, so I found the darkest blue I had and made a band out of it. I stamped my sister's name in white and embossed with yellow embossing powder; it definitely worked better than stamping in yellow would have, but I wish the color were a little softer. Oh well, it worked out acceptably.

The problem with wrapping a DVD case in a sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper is that it doesn't actually fully wrap. So neither the paper nor the band actually make it all the way around the DVD. I solved this problem in the classiest possible way: with tape.

Now that I've sent my package off, I'd like to enter the packaging in these challenges:

• SweetPea Stampers Challenge: Gifts (gift packaging)
• Rogue Redhead Rebel Challenge 17: UnCard (it's wrapping paper!)
• Dream Valley Challenge 45: Anything Goes

Supplies: (the tape is from Recollections / Michaels)

Bookmarks XXXVII: Pair o' Pairs

Here's the story: I had rescued a particularly hideous greenish mustard piece of cardstock from the floor, so it was sitting on my cutting mat. I was paging through DCWV's "Sweet" matstack looking for something to think pink with, because hey, right now that's enter-able into about a dozen challenges without even stretching. (Look, they don't always have to be challenging.) And then there was this floral pattern incorporating pink and an almost mustard-y yellow. It kinda looked like it would go with that ugly cardstock.

I determined to force the issue. Almost-coordinating papers don't give you the opportunity to use up something ugly every day, after all.

I also wanted to use some of my new fruits and sweets stamps. And it hit me that, hey, pears are a yellowy-greenish color!

There was also a light blue on the floral print, giving me the opportunity to use some fairly dull and uninspiring light grey-blue cardstock as well... and to make a pair of pear bookmarks.

I promise that's the only play on words I'm deliberately committing here. And I totally would have stamped a bunch of grapes for the blueish bookmark if I'd had such a stamp, just to avoid the pun. 'Cause I like clever puns, but this one is not clever.

Also, that blue pear kinda weirds me out.

I stamped everything in pink (and clear embossed), edged with pink, and used a little of my new pink polka-dot washi tape in an effort to play up the pinkness for all those Breast Cancer Awareness / Think Pink competitions.

To be fair to the grey-blue cardstock, it's not entirely uninspiring. However, the only thing it suggests to me is rainy days, and I own no cloud, raindrop, or umbrella stamps. So.

I'm entering this pear pair of bookmarks into the following challenges:

• Link Up For Pink
• Our Craft Lounge 137: Go PINK for Breast Cancer Awareness
• Art Impressions 83: PINK! for Breast Cancer Awareness
• Dream Valley Challenge 42: Go Pink
• Lexi's Creations Challenge 75: Pink
• Drunken Stampers Challenge #100: Think Pink
• Ladybug Crafts Ink: Flowers and Embossing (flowers on my patterned paper, and all the stamping is heat embossed in clear)
• Stampin' for the Weekend 18: Feeling Floral (flowers on patterned paper)
• Joanna Sheen: Down in the Garden (more like down in the pear orchard, yeah? But that's a kind of garden.)
• Crafty Bloggers Network #4: Anything Goes

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's October Linky Party.

Supplies: (washi tape is "printed paper tape" from Up & Up / Target)