Yay, Alice!

I'm so proud of my blogging friend Alice who was recently chosen to be part of the Sketch Crew over at Taylored Expressions! Alice makes awesome cards and has an incredible eye for color. Today is her first appearance on Taylor's blog and she did a knockout job with TESC#88 as only Alice can. This Cheer Anya from The Greeting Farm was perfect for a card for her, right down to the "A" on her outfit. Way to go, Alice! It's a happy day in Wonderland!

Feeling a skosh better today--still burping!--and thanks to all for your concern. TUMS and I have become good friends...

Randomness

Sharing a few more pics from our trip to Japan.

In Odaiba, we stopped by a Toyota showroom and they featured these colorful cars with designs that were made by school children. They had a contest and chose the winning designs and put them on little Toyotas. This one caught my eye because it was cute and must have been done by a girl.

Here's a display of a (fake) sushi tower in a restaurant window in Osaka:

Glorious Mt. Fuji, as seen from a bullet train, after Typhoon Melor passed through:

Thousands of origami cranes at a memorial for mobilized students in Hiroshima:

And.....a can of SPAM that we saw in a Tokyo supermarket, selling for 662¥! Equivalent to $7.25US.

Hope to finish up and share some cards tomorrow. Feeling a little blah today with the cloudy weather and a mild case of acid reflux. Thanks for stopping by...have a great day!

Happy Halloween

I'm not into Halloween. I think it goes back to an early childhood when moms still made their kids' costumes. My older sister wanted to be a witch so I had to be a witch, too. I wasn't happy at all, and that was probably my last Halloween that I remember dressing up for. I quit Halloween!

To this day I'm not a Halloween fan. But I just loved this Spooktacular stamp set from The Greeting Farm. And I've always wanted to use the Purple Onion Designs noteblock stamp so this 4"x4" card came together rather quickly.

I almost bought Martha Stewart's scary fence punch (with a 40% off coupon) and I'm glad that I didn't. Just trimmed and uglied up her regular picket fence and I saved myself about $10. Now that makes it a Happy Halloween...

Finally, a card!

Yay, I finally feel almost back to normal! Normal enough to pick up my new Copics and color this Miss Anya while I watched "Glee". Love that show!

I was so happy to get C5, C7, and C9 in Japan to color black hair as Oozak has been out of them for the longest time. (A lot of colors coming in on the 20th, so they say.) It was interesting to see that a lot of the young girls in Japan do not have black hair and seem to like the auburn or light brown look. After a while, they all started to look the same no matter where we were--like they were cloned!

Don't look too closely at the hair highlighting. I didn't know what I was doing as I got down to the bottom. Still need lots of practice...

Copics and cranes

At Hiroshima, we visited the Peace Museum and I saw a display of tiny origami cranes. They were the actual cranes folded by Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was a victim of the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima in 1945. She developed leukemia as a result of exposure to the radiation and her classmates folded a thousand cranes with the hope that she would be cured.

She continued to fold them even after the thousand were completed and used whatever type of paper she could find--cellophane, gum wrappers. I was humbled by how neatly they were folded and the fact that she created little works of art with what she had. Apologies for the dark photo but we weren't allowed to use flash in the museum.

And for anyone who's interested, here's a shot of my Kokuyo stash--love the yellows!--and the 19 Copics that I got. I thought I bought a dozen but 19 is a nice number. I should have rounded it off to 20.

Home!

We arrived home this morning after a 6-1/2 hour, over the ocean, through the international date line return trip from Narita Airport. Everything went smoothly through customs and I showed the agent my declaration form with "Art Supplies" on it. Yep, my 27-inch, 43 lb. suitcase held about a dozen Copics and some Kokuyo tape and refills and I proudly declared them!

I actually screamed as we turned the corner at the Loft and there were the rows and rows of Copics--Sketch markers, Originals, and Ciaos. Felt badly that I scared a poor little old lady and politely shoved a teenager on the side just so I could marvel at the display. Then my daughter gave me a shopping basket and wished me well. I was in heaven.

Japan is the birthplace of Copics and Kokuyo tape, too. I watched a video on a new Kokuyo tape that you can stamp just a square of glue if you want to affix, say a postage stamp. Pretty cool. I'm sure it'll be making its way to the US very soon.

Oh, the food was great:

and the scenery was awesome and Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge are both marvelous structures.

But for me, getting my hands on those Copics was a definite highlight of the trip. I picked up twelve of my "most wanted" colors and my sweet hubby encouraged me to get more but I'm quite satisfied with what I got and managed to fill in more spaces on the Copics color chart (thank you, Maylee!)

We didn't get to see any changes in the colors of the foliage--our guide said October is too early--so we'll probably have to return to Japan in a few months to see that--and pick up more Copics!

Will post more pics after I get over this jetlag. It's good to be home.

Last post for now...

Our trip to Japan seemed such a long way off and now it's just a day until we leave. Double checked to make sure our passports were all in order and I've started packing some clothes that I know I won't be wearing here anytime soon. Just found out it'll be thunderstormy so I'm off to get some small umbrellas.

Some friends gave me a list of craft places to haunt--thanks, Lisa and Sharon!--and I'm hoping to find Copic refills since it's quite expensive in Hawaii, and many of my flesh tone colors are drying up quickly.

I'm excited about visiting craft stores, hubby is excited about electronics, and our daughter is looking forward to the little clothing boutiques. And we're all excited about the FOOD!

So....Sayonara for now. I'm sure cobwebs will form as I won't be auto posting but hope to share a ton of photos, and catch up on news when I return...

Altered ego

I'm sure we've all done it before. Trimmed off a bird's legs, lopped off a ponytail. But that isn't the definition of "altering". Amazing Amy (who should just change her name to Amazing) is a stamper I discovered a while back and I've been lurking her blog and only recently began leaving comments. Well, more like gushing comments. She is amazing with her altering!

She'll take parts of one Anya and combine it with another to create a completely different character. And during the "Design a Sprout" week, she dazzled us daily with new and incredibly awesome characters. And gave them the most perfect names! Visit her blog and you'll be dazzled, too.

I emailed Amy to ask if I could mention her here and she graciously agreed. I wanted to alter Geisha Anya and give her some opened eyes. I thought, okay, I can do this. I have a light table and a 0.3 Copic multiliner pen. Wrong!! Here are two results that I threw away and retrieved from the wastebasket. I think it's the head size/eye ratio that's so important. And having a degree in art makes no difference...

Land lovin' mermaid

Mermaid Anya arrived in the mail yesterday and Kelly was right--she's fast and fun to color! And trim. That's of utmost importance because these eyes and hands are not as young as they used to be.

I was looking for a background and found this water splotched piece in my scrap basket. Cuttlebugged the top portion with the Tiny Bubbles embossing folder and added some seaweed around her. Then I realized that she looks as if she's walking on land. Amphibian Anya. Will have to try this again...

I've gone digital!

Just wanted to share my first digital hybrid card! Lucy, Hero Arts' digital design member, shared an easy tutorial on how to work with digital images here. I was skeptical at first, and didn't want to fuss with Photoshop but she explained how to use Word and insert the images from your files. Not scary at all! And if I can do it, anyone can. Really.

So I tried it this morning and had to show my hubby how clear and crisp the details were. Best of all, Copics don't smear the images! That means you can color and shade them to match whatever cardstock colors you use. Fun! I'll be buying more digi kits from Two Peas after our trip. And the good thing about them is they'll never be sold out.