Happy Boy's Day!

Just about 2 years ago we released Katsura!  This is still my go to image for Boy's Day since he's carrying the traditional koi that is hung over your house if you have boys.  I haven't colored up this image in a very long time, so it was nice to see my old pal again!

Decided to do a gatefold card... Haven't done one of those in a long time either! Love the washi paper used on the card by Hanko Designs.  It's very masculine and nice to use as a background since its not that busy.

I had to pull reference on how to color up the koi since I haven't done it in awhile.  Do you ever do that?  I have to do that a lot for our images since my sister takes a lot of care and attention to traditional Japanese ways, so I try to do the same.

Hope you have a great Boy's Day! 

Big Island Taiko Festival 2013

Although this is a semi-personal post, I thought I'd share this tidbit with you since it does have some relation to Sister Stamps....

My husband's Taiko group had a great performance in this year's Big Island Taiko Festival!  Yay!  They've come a long way from drumming on old tires!!!  Here's my favorite photo from their performance.

Since I made favors for my daughter's ballet performers, I had to do the same for my husband's taiko group.  Here's what I came up with at the last minute.  It's amazing what you can come up with if you procrastinate long enough... 

Since the M&M sticks were already made, I wanted to do something with the sticks.  I had already made a drum out of the candy stick bags before... see my old project here... so I couldn't do the same thing again right?  Especially since the same kids are still in the group.

So I had to use my brain cells to come up with something new and cool... Here's what I came up with.....

At the end of the performance, each group comes out with their group's banner like the one featured here.  All I did was print "Puna Taiko 2013" on the computer, cut it out and mounted them on black and red cardstock.  Although you might automatically think I should use Yoichi for this project, I opted for Katsura since he was already holding a long pole.  I cheated a bit and printed him up on my computer and just cut off the koi flag.  Since I thought everyone might want to save Katsura and eat the candy, I put everything on a BBQ skewer.

Here's a closer look at Katsura...

And here's a better look at the banner.. All I did was punch holes at the top and bottom of the banner.

Wow!  Looks like a parade of Katsura's!

Here you can see the banner I referenced.  The kids did a really good job this year!  It's amazing how much they've grown as players.  As my husband would say... "they must have a good sensei"!  I think he's semi-serious when he says stuff like that.  Bwahahahahahaha!

It's Release Day!

We made it!  It's our 7th Release and I'm so excited to hear back from all of you on how you like our stamps!  Can't wait to see all the samples in blogland too.

First of all, I have to give a BIG mahalo to Kris, our Guest Designer for this release!  Thanks Kris!  And to my girl Debi for always helping me out!  You rock!

Ok on to my last project.  Decided to go all out and make a Waterfall Mini album!  Found many tutorials online and on YouTube, so you can just do a google search for them or on YouTube for the instructions.  For some reason I love this WAAAAAY more than the original Waterfall card.

Here's the cover- honors goes to Katsura.  Do you like my red snapper?  I got it at a local store in downtown Hilo.  They import things from Japan- need to remember to check them out more regularly.  Unfortunately its too soon to get any of the small boy's day koi that comes with candy filled sticks that you can find around boy's day. I know we had a couple from past boy's days but can't seem to find them in my messy house. Thought about buying a regular one that you hang above your house, but those are waaaaay too big to fit in this photo!  So red snapper fish will have to do.

Picked this washi paper as the constant in the album.  Love the masculinity of it (is that a word?)  Next up is Yoshi- posed him in a somersault position so he looks like he's really tumbling!

Page 2 features an old favorite- Nobu! Yes, he snuck into this mini just to say hi!

The next page features Kenichi and his doggie...

And this last page features Keitaro!  He wanted to join in the fun too!

 

There's actually one more page behind Keitaro, but I didn't have any more small boy stamps that would fit!   Anyway, I'm thinking I can add on the photos on the back side of the pages and add journaling to the pages with the boys.  What do you think?

Ok so if you've been reading all of my posts, I didn't really answer the question of how I cheated in cutting out the images right?  You are probably thinking- are you ever going to answer that question?  Well, on the Katsura tag, I didn't cut out the string part of the fish.  It would've been too thin, and since I had placed him on a colored background, it looked funny with the white showing through... So I played around with my copic markers until I found the right color that was the same as the background and colored that space up to match.  I did the same for the area in between Kenichi and the doggie.  There!  Now you know my secret!

So hope you had fun with this release!  Can't wait to see what you all come up with!  Enjoy!  Be back soon with the Release 7 candy winners.

Distressed Katsura

 I know I don't mention my personal blog all that much, but I've been recently inspired by my craft idol- Tim Holtz.  I know he and his awesome products have been around for awhile, but I guess I never really understood how to use them until I signed up for his Creative Chemistry 101 class. I'm hoping that the 101 means that eventually there will be another version later. (crossing my fingers!).  All I can say is that if you haven't signed up for it yet, you can still do so since its an online class and if you sign up, you will have lifetime access to the videos!  Sign up here- you won't regret it!

So while doing my "homework" for the class, I ended up playing around since I had a lot of the supplies out.  I had a really fun day playing around with different color combos and stumbled upon this one that I fell in love with.  While at CHA, I took a Hero Arts class (click here to see the cards I made) and Sharri Carroll (who taught the class) shared how one of her favorite color combos was brown and blue.  I guess I had that in the back of my mind when I made this card, and now I absolutely love it! Especially for male cards!

So after inking up this tag, I followed the advice of my wise husband who told me after I expressed that I wanted to play with Distress and not Sister Stamps (gasp!).. why not mix the two together! Duh!  He's so smart yah?  So I added some detail to the tag for some interest by digging through some old stamps that I had in my stash.  The branch stamp is an old Stampendous wood stamp and the dragonfly and kanji poem are both by Hero Arts.  The branch stamp was inked up using Forrest Green distress ink and the other two were stamped using my Versamark pad and topped with bronze mica powder for shine.  That might be the reason its so hard to see in this photo.

So I got in close and tried to get the light to hit the tag just right to show you the kanji poem and dragonfly images covered in mica.

After I colored up Katsura, I cut him out and adhered him to the tag.  Can you see where I cheated in my cutting?

Hope you enjoyed this distressed tag as much as I had fun making it!   Don't forget to check out Debi's and Kris' projects too!  See you tomorrow for Release day!!!

Other supplies used (not listed above):
Katsura- Sister Stamps
Copics
Gold Smooch
Tim Holtz tag die
Manila folders

It's Time To Release The Boys! Meet Katsura...

 Are you ready to meet the boys?  Well first up is Katsura.  Katsura is my brother's middle name, who is named after our father.  It always reminds me of Chicken Katsu, and I think that's how I remembered it all these years.  I did a search online to find out what it means.  I laughed to find out it could mean toupe'e (sorry, can't find the correct symbol).  I guess it also means moon, which is probably the more correct meaning of why this name was chosen by my grandparents.  Let's just say that it is so I don't start laughing everytime I think of it! (hee hee).

I guess I picked my brother's name for this image because he's the only boy in our family.  Poor thing yah?  Surrounded by 3 women his whole life, then gets married into a family with mostly women, and then has 2 daughters!  Since he's the only boy in our family, boy's day was really all about him.  Being that there's not a lot of testosterone in our family, I had a hard time making boy cards for this release!  Here's what I came up with for my first card...

In preparation for this release, I've been picking up a few boy papers here and there to assist me.  Found this boy's day washi paper while shopping at Hakubundo in Honolulu.  They have a small selection of washi paper and crafts, but mostly I went for the japanese props to help my my photos more fun.  I need to go back since I gave them to my sister.

Back to the card... I got this cool punch by EK success recently and it just screamed Japanese background to me.  Punched it out on both sides of the cardstock and stuck a strip of brown shimmery cardstock over it and then layered my boy's day washi on that.  I call it a boy's day washi because it has koi (fish), samurai helmet, and other boy's type things.

Because the next size reverse wonky die was too big for the card, I had to figure out how to make it stand out a bit.  So I decided to use my distress inks on the edges to kind of frame it so that the image pops out.

I topped it off with a new sentiment by Island Scrapbooking- Happy Boy's Day, and popped it up using my mini pop dots.

Ok- now for the real reason why you are here right???  Want some candy?  OK here's the rules:

1.  Leave a comment on THIS POST for your chance to win Katsura by Friday, April 6th 11:59pm HST.
2.  Tell me how many boys are in your family.
3.  Follow this blog Publicly (so we can verify) if you are not already.

Sound easy?  Ok- see you back here tomorrow so I can tell you about our other boys.  See you soon!

Look Who's Coming Soon!

Boy oh boy!  We have a special all boy release coming your way!  You've showed us how much you loved our first boy- Nobu, so we have three more boys to share with you soon!  Introductory posts start tomorrow, so check back for more fun.