I live in the world of grandbabies. My world revolves around my babies. I am so blessed that 3 of the grandbabies (oh ya and their parents too ..lol) live on the opposite end of our house. They give Nana a reason to get out of bed in the morning! My other grandbabies come and visit too, and Nana loves having them visit too! Everyone that said grandbabies are more fun than your own children were right. All this time I thought they were crazy, until I got my first grandbaby. I am still in awe over how much you can love a child that you didn't give birth to. Of course I love my daughters too, but not near as much as my grandbabies! lol Nana loves you Kaylee, Allan, Clayton, Isabel, and Keegan!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Coloring Bears with Copics

I was asked by a few people to show them how I colored my bears from PPbN bears with my copics so I made this simple tutorial.  I hope it helps.  Please become a follower of my blog and leave me feedback to let me know if this helped you!  If you click on the top right widget it will take you to the Paper Piecing by Nikki website where you can find this cute digi stamp, or acrylic stamp.  It is called the Kiss This Bear.  You can also find this bear, along with four others, in the Beary Beary Fun Bears paper piecing and digital cutting file.  I know a few of you have had trouble finding copic markers at a store near you.  My copics were purchased at Scrap Happy in Clarion, PA.   The store also sells items online at www.scraphappypa.com.  I'm not sure what all is listed online because I just go to the store, but I know Jen will ship and even special order anything you need.  She carries the copic ciao, not the copic sketch.  I like these markers a lot better, and they are half the price of the sketch ones.  The shape is easier for me to hold and use, as they are shaped like a regular round marker, not oval.  The copics I use for my bears are number E35 Chamois & E37 Sepia.  If your numbers are within 10 in the same color group they should blend together well.  (Thanks for that tip Jen! I use it a lot!)  I also use a black and white gel pen when I am finished coloring my bears to add accents, and I also use pink Pebbles Chalk to add a little pink blush to their cheeks.

I tried to capture each step of the coloring process in the below picture:

Step 1 (pic 1) I use the lighter brown E35 Chamois to color the tail, muzzle, and the inside of the ears.  You have to go over the color a couple times to get a nice smooth solid color.

Step 2 (pic 2) I outline the areas that I want to have a darker edge with the darker brown E37 Sepia.  As you color more you will get to know how thick you want your outline.  The thicker you make your outline the more space it will take to blend it smoothly with the lighter color.  I also color in the outside of the ear solid dark brown since there isn't much room to blend.

Step 3 (pic 3) I make a thin single coat of the light brown where it will be.  Don't worry about lines in it, because you will be going back over it multiple times as you blend the dark into the center.

Step 4 (pic 4) I have blended most of this bear but I left areas on the butt and face hoping that you can see some of the stroke lines showing how I just use small strokes from the outside towards the middle and blend the color from dark to light.

Step 5 (pic 5) This bear is complete now.  He can be used on your projects as is, or you can add more details like I did in the next picture.


 
If you look at the picture of these 2 bears you'll notice the one has a lighter muzzle, tail, and inside ears. I colored these with number E31 Brick Beige. The rest of the bear was colored with E35 & E37 just like the other bear was. I used a black gel pen for a small line down from the nose, and blushed the cheeks a little bit with pink chalk, and added white accents with a white gel pen.


Don't forget to become a follower, and leave me feedback!  Thanks!

Friday, December 14, 2012

Merry Christmas Blog Hop

The Paper Piecing By Nikki Design Team welcomes you to our "Merry Christmas Blog Hop". Today we want to inspire you with everything Christmas. You'll see lots of ideas for layouts, cards, tags, bags, boxes, gifts.....and much more! Please take a minute out of your very busy schedule and join us.

If you'd like to start at the beginning, then hop on over to Nikki's Blog (www.paperpiecingsbynikki.blogspot.com). If you've come in from Amanda B's blog then you are in the right spot. If you get lost along the way, here's a complete list of our Design Team line up:

Nikki - www.paperpiecingsbynikki.blogspot.com
Patti - www.pattilynncreations.blogspot.com
Linda - www.lindascreativity.blogspot.com
Kimi and Pam - http://lovebugcreations3.blogspot.com/
Amanda B - www.thescrapoholiccandyshop.blogspot.com
Barb - http://mommaducksblog.blogspot.com
Amanda S - http://scrapbookinghayven.blogspot.com/
Debbie - http://craftydeb-ddscrafts.blogspot.com

Here is a super quick and simple gift idea! I used snowflake Cookie Gift Bags that I bought premade after Christmas last year, on clearance of course. To dress them up I added the reindeer (just printed and cut out the jpg file) from the "Santa and Friends" file, a stamped image from Stampin UP!, and a little bling.  I think they turned out beautiful! I'm sure Santa will agree as he delivers his secret Santa goodies in them!

The second pic is of the "Santa Bear" file.  I decided that this santa bear would be super cute, hung on the addition door off our livingroom, where we hang our Christmas cards each year.  So if you think this little fella has toys in his bag guess again!  He's got Christmas cards full of Happy Holiday wishes for you all!  The other Santa Bear was lovingly made by my 2 year old granddaughter Kaylee.  You can read the whole story in the next post down if you want to! I love my grandbabies!

 




Thank you so much for hopping with us today. We hope you've been inspired to try some of these ideas. Please leave us a comment, we love hearing from all our fans. We will be picking one fan from all the comments to win some PPBN files. Tell us what you will be making for Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year to all!  Now hop on over to Amanda S's blog  (http://scrapbookinghayven.blogspot.com/ ) to see what she has to share!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Paper Piecing Fun With My Granddaughter

My 2 year old Granddaughter Kaylee loves to invade my scraps box in my craft room!  I decided to make a big Santa Bear to hang on the door where we hang all of our Christmas Cards this year.  He was so darn cute and I didn't have a particular use in mind for him, but I so wanted to see how adorable he was pieced together so I sized him to about 18 inches tall, and cut an extra for my little helper since the pieces were so big.  I figure her Mommy painted her first ceramic piece when she was 2 so why not! (and her high chair, and her hands, and her clothes, and her hair, and a few spots on the floor, and a spot on the wall, and well...you get the picture...lol)  So, I made my Santa Bear and of course, as usual, Nikki did a great job creating, and I loved him!  I took my bear, supplies, and the pieces for Kaylees bear to the kitchen table so we had lots of room to work.  She was so excited!  She held up each piece in her pile and I told her what they were, and if she looked like she didn't know what that was I would point to it on my bear.  Finally, we through that (which wasn't on my agenda but I found adorable) and I told her what piece to get out of her pile to start.  I would put adhesive on it and hand it back to her and tell plus show her at the same time where to put it at.  As you can see from her bear she actually did a pretty good job!  Her "I can do it myself"  "Little Miss Independant" did come out several times too!  Hence the reason Santa's nose is on his mustache and beard, and the sole of his one boot is sideways, etc! By the time we had him all together I could tell it was not the right time to do his marker on his face, and I stopped there.  Later on when her Mommy got home she did her Santa Bear's face with her Mommy.  She sat at the table in her little booster seat and laid her head on the table beside her bear while his face dried, and so Nana could get a picture, but she wouldn't look at me cause she was too busy watching her Santa Bear.  These are the moments that Nana scraps in her grandbabies Scrapbooks so when they get older then can remember these special things we did together.  I have a scrapbook for each of my 3 grandbabies, and come April when Baby Isabel arrives Nana will start one for her too!  I encourage every Grandma to do the same thing!  MT memories with my Grandparents are the greatest, and I so wish I had more pictures of the things I did with them growing up!  Even things we did together when I was 8 that I have pic of the details are foggy.  Never assume your grandchild will remember all those great times that you cherish together.....take it upon yourself to make sure they have pictures and the the details too!



Saturday, December 8, 2012

PPbN Sketch Challenge December 5-12, 2012

This is my take on the sketch challenge this week for www.paperpiecingsbynikki.com.  I am also entering it in some additional online challenges as well.  Page 2 of this layout will be in the Jan/Feb issue of Cutting Edge Magazine!  If you aren't a subscriber to this e-mag you should check it out! It's very affordable, and has some amazing projects, tips, and ideas in it!  Their website is www.cuttingedgesvgs.com. If you like page 1 make sure to pop over and subscribe today so you can check out page 2 in their next issue!

 
Supply List:
Paper:    Simple Stories - Red Dot/Santa's List - Item#2717
              Fancy Pants Designs Inc - Ball Game(Plaid) - Item#1618
              Fancy Pants Designs Inc - Player (Stripe) - Item#1620
              Hollo's Papercrafts - Dark and light teal, red, white, and orange
ColorBox Fuid Chalk Inkpad - Ocean & Chestnut Roan
Karen Foster Designs - Sparkle Burst Brads - Item# 01849
Paper Studio - Self Adhesive Gemstones - Red
Stampin' UP! - Jewels Basic Rhinestone
Celebrate It 360 5/8" white organdy ribbon
Cricut Cartridge - Pooh Font Set -  for 2011
Pictures of my Beautiful Grandbabies Kaylee & Allan December 2011


ADORABLE!!! Baby Card


This little baby card is the most adorable baby card I think I've ever made!  It's a super easy file to cut and assemble from www.paperpiecingsbynikki.com.  The file includes the card overlay and teddy bear piecing! 

Super Simple Christmas Cards


I cheated this year and printed out some of the adorable files from www.paperpiecingsbynikki.com to make some quick Christms cards.  I had a lot of fun printing cute sayings to go on them too.  My one polar bear card says "Fishing you a Merry Christmas".  The kissing bears with the cute little butt cheeks, under the mistletoe, got a "Merry Kissmas" sentiment.  To some people these may seem a little abnormal, but to my friends, they will find them completely normal from my craft room! lol