Jeremiah Ketner - Mornings

Morning!
I hope you're all having a lovely Sunday. My week has been a mixed bag really. Wednesday my partner was taken in briefly to the surgical assessment unit as he was taken ill at work and they decided to do some tests, so that was a bit of a worry. The bloods came back OK and they are sending him an appointment for an exploratory test/exam just to check what's going on. He seems fine for the moment so we'll wait for that which will hopefully shed some light on the problem.

Thursday as those of you who follow my blog will know was my parents Diamond Anniversary, 60 years of marriage....that's kind of wow right there. Sadly fate chose this day to throw one of the biggest TIAs (mini strokes) at my Dad (who's 86), that he's had over the last 4 years. Friday he had a fall and my Mum (who's 80 in October),  couldn't get him back up and they waited over 2 hours for the ambulance to come.

2 bloody hours. Lying on the floor, bruised and confused.

I can't even begin to tell you how mad and disgusted that makes me feel. It seems that if you are over a certain age in this country you're just not considered to be a priority.

He's stable for the moment, all thanks to my Mum and no thanks to any of the health care services down in Dorset who don't seem to give a shit, the doctor has not even been out to visit him. We'll see what the do come Monday.

I don't normally share too much of my private life on my blog, but really I needed to vent, so thanks for listening.

My card for today needs to be a little uplifting after all that, and I think it is. Recently I've finally made a little time to play around with the box of Prismacolor Pencils I got from Dan (my partner) for Christmas....yes I know, it's taken a while. I just wasn't happy before with what I did following tutorials, so I decided to find my own way on this more.

I coloured in this image Mornings from Jeremiah Ketner. This image has actually been in my folder for a long time, I bought it over a year ago, but I find the shading that appears on the uncoloured image difficult to work with when using distress inks, so I never coloured her up. With pencils though this isn't an issue.

I'm always confused by the name with this stamp, since to me she seems part of the night, surrounded by stars as she is.

I'm sorry  but as I was experimenting I do not remember the pencil colours I used for this, I'll try and write them down as I go next time.

I coloured her on some Stonehenge paper, just using the pencils themselsves to blend with each other and cut the image out with a stitched rectangle die from MFT.

The paper behind her is actually Christmas paper from the Websters Pages All That Glitters pad, I thought the starburst effect with the stars would look perfect.

I used some ribbed kraft cardstock behine that and also to cut out some stars with Stitched Stars Stax also from MFT and popped them up on some foam tape.

The sentiment from Your Next stamp is stamped with Memento ink on plain white cardstock and I cut it out with a fishtail banner die from the same company.

I finished embellishing with just a few clear gems keeping the whole thing pretty CAS.

I'm quite happy with the way she turned out, particularly her hair.

That's all from me today, but I'll be back in the week with a new Challenge At Deep Ocean and also the August release from Whimsy Stamps, which you're going to love!

Enjoy your Sunday!

Orchids - Use Ribbon/Lace at The Ribbon Girl

Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you're enjoying your weekend, I'm busy getting everything sorted ready to go back to work tomorrow, my break was lovely, but my goodness it seemed to hurtle by.

I'm here today to share my card for the new 'Any Image' challenge over at The Ribbon Girl and this week the theme is Ribbon or Lace.......not a hard one for me eh? :P  You can find all the rules on the blog.

I went for ribbon (though I also used lace) and thought I'd do something a little different from how I normally use it, so I chose 3 colours from my image/papers and ordered some of the very pretty narrow satin ribbon that Mary and Andrea stock. It's just 3 mm wide and I've used it here in loops among my flowers in the same way that I would use twine. It gives such a pretty effect. 

The gorgeous image is by Jeremiah Ketner, I have been chomping at the bit to colour up some of his artwork!  This one is called Orchids and it's just divine, love his work!

I coloured it up with my distress ink markers and I've totally forgotten what colours I used here! I do know that the hair is Evergreen Bough mostly and that the skin is Vintage Photo.

I tried something a little different on her hair and outlined the edges with a Sakura Stardust pen in Clear Star, I was inspired to do this by the fact that on Jeremiah's paintings he uses a lighter colour on the edges of the hair strands to really make them pop, and it made me think of Elise Dinolfo's white gel pen technique. The gel pens I have never seem to work well though (must remember to buy myself a Sakura one) so I used a Star Dust one instead.
Now I have to say I was holding my breath the whole time as I really did not want to ruin my already coloured image, and it could have gone so horribly wrong.....so, you might want to experiment on a practice coloured piece first lol!  It really does look lovely in real life, the camera (or my photography skills do not do it justice here.

The lovely paper is from a Kaisercraft pad, I've used an old Doily Flower Doo Hickey die and a Cherry Blossom branch from La-La Land Crafts.

I used the following Ribbon Girl goodies on my card, and I've added the links so you can click on and go straight to the item in the store.

Ophelia Ivory Lace, 3mm Aqua Satin Ribbon, 3mm Hot Pink Satin Ribbon, 3mm Pink Satin Ribbon, Apple Blossom Mixed Pastels Lemon & Mint, Pastel Mixed Pretty Blooms, 

Lily Flowers Small Pale Pink, Sweetheart Blossom Baby Pink, 

Rolled Paper Roses - Aqua Kort & Godt, 2mm Clear Gems S/A Flatbacks,

5mm Clear Crystals Self Adhesive

You can buy amazing butterflies like this one from Karla's Kreative Korner

If you'd like to see more of Jeremiah's work (make a drink and set aside some time, there's lots to delight the eyes) you can find him here. If you want to try your hand at colouring one of his images you can find digital stamps of his work on his Etsy shop here. This won't be the last of his I colour, I have plans for a 'few' more lol.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the team's amazing makes, and we'd love to see you enter the challenge!

That's all from me for today, time to go and do some ironing, see you soon! :) xx