Belated Birthdays

I'm terrible at remembering birthdays.  No, I mean really terrible.  Like, if it weren't for Facebook reminding me, I'd rarely remember anyone's birthday.  And it's not like I haven't tried.  I have whatever dates I know marked in my address book by the person's name.  I even have one of those Birthday Reminder perpetual calendars.  The sad truth is that I'm not organized enough to LOOK at any of them with enough time to actually get anything made or sent out.  Not a good thing when you're a card maker.

So this summer I decided I'd get caught up.  I didn't really want to create a ton of belated birthday cards.  So instead, I thought I'd just make a bunch of Thinking of You cards, encouragement cards, silly cards, etc.  I figure, if the point is to get at least two cards out each year -- birthday and Christmas -- I won't be doing too badly with a non-birthday card at an unexpected time of the year.  Right?  lol

I've been on a color binge lately.  I've spent so much on alcohol markers, I figured I'd better hunker down and finally learn how to use them.  I posted the card I did for my brother.  That was fun but time consuming -- all those little paint brushes took over two hours. But by the end of it, I think I'm feeling confident coloring wood.

My next try were people -- I've been afraid of coloring flesh.  I haven't finished putting those cards together, so that will be for a later post (I also recently got some really funny and sassy sentiments that I can't wait to use with these images).

Finally, I wanted to try my hand at blending on flowers.  I'm still struggling a bit to get good blends, but I wonder if I'm trying to do something that shouldn't be done?  I see others' coloring and they don't seem to worry to make the lines look as smooth as I'm trying to get, so maybe I don't need to?  Of course, I'm my own worst critic.  And really, while I don't want to KNOW that people toss my cards, the reality is that most of them probably are getting tossed -- eventually.  So do I really need to work so hard?

Anyway, I wanted to try my hand at exotic flowers with stark color differences.  Yeah, after the first flower, I gave up that idea.  lol  So I just limited myself to some gradients and shading.  Here is one of the cards I finished.  I think it came out cute, if I do say so myself.

I colored the flower, from Stampin' Up's Secret Garden (now retired) with Spectrum Noir markers.  The leaves are from Stampin' Up! cardstock and vellum (from Secret Garden framelits and various sizzlets).  The sentiment is "Garden of Life" from Rubbernecker, stamped in Old Olive (one of my favorite greens).  I also spritzed the background with various Stampin' Up! markers using their now retired color spritzer (which Tim Holtz has redesigned and released).  It's hard to see in the picture, but I like the effect and texture it gives the card.

Now to decide to gets to receive this... hmmm...could it be you? :-)

Thanks for looking!