Grow with me & Zest-It

My parents have gone and my house has returned to it's normal state of slightly cluttered. Slightly cluttered is that zone that involves stepping over a few toys during the day, but not enough has been moved out of place or stacked up to annoy us. We're pretty easily annoyed by clutter, so it's a fine line. We had a good visit with my parents, who managed to sell their house while they were here. They've returned to Alabama, homeless and in search of what they claim will be smaller and low maintenance. Since they've been saying this for the last five house purchases, it remains to be seen.

After their departure, I curled up on the sofa with my scor-pal (with mat installed) a stack of uncolored images and a selection of prismacolor pencils suited to match the My Mind's Eye Grow line. Over the remainder of the weekend, I colored 7 images, touched up another and made them and two of the dragons from a previous post up into 9 cards. I still have one image left to finish off and card up. The color combination of aquamarine and pumpkin orange is so bright and fresh. I really loved the versatility I was able to achieve without having to think about what colors I needed. I was able to color, blend, color, blend and when one image was finished, I snagged another from my pile and started all over again. It was the perfect way to relax! I won't inundate you with all 9 (soon to be 10) in one post. I plan on spreading them out to several posts over the next few days.

One of my favorite images from the group (although, not my favorite card) is an Elisabeth Bell image from Funky Kits called Reflective. She's currently out of stock, so I don't have a link for you. She's one of the first I bought from them. I have a picture of my daughter in just that pose, although, without the basket of apples. It's the main reason I bought that stamp. In my post "They're Here" I talked about OMS and why I chose Baby Oil as my blender of choice. Towards the bottom, I mentioned reading about Zest-It Pencil & Parchment blend. Out of curiosity and a need to empty some funds from a sale of crafty stuff out of paypal, I ordered a bottle.

I ordered the largest I could afford in hopes of getting good longevity out of my purchase. The shipping sucked. Seriously. It always bugs the heck out of me to pay more in shipping than in actual product. 99.9% of the time, that fact alone will kill an order. This is that 0.1%.

Apparently, the high shipping costs included routing the packet on the slow boat to China and then on to Oklahoma as it took 2 weeks to arrive. As I've been power scrubbing my house, top to bottom, I didn't much notice. When it did arrive, it came signature required on a day no one was home. My husband and I spent a couple of hours studying the pick up tag trying to remember what we ordered that would come registered mail. Our only clue was a small note at the top of the tag that said "Shipper: UK". Since I know that the United Kingdom, as a whole, doesn't ship stuff, it became a process of elimination. I'd gotten all the stamps I ordered from Funky Kits, save the one they were shipping out to replace one shipped in error. I rather doubted that they were suddenly going to make me sign for their stamps, so that ruled them out. It finally dawned on me and I scurried off to the post office the next morning before my parents arrived.

As I'd been invaded, I didn't get to open the packet until MUCH later that day. Even then, the bottle remained closed, although my daughter quite enjoyed the layers of bubble wrap. After my parents departed and I'd curled up with my images, the Zest-It came out. I love it. Seriously. This stuff blends like a dream. It was well worth every penny I paid. Like I've told people over on SCS. I have decided that I am a lazy artists. I can draw, but I chose to stamp my images instead. Likewise, I can layer color on color, tone on tone to get great images, but using a blender like Zest-It means I don't have to. For me, that equals great images without a huge time sink, giving me time to whip them up into cards.

Now, to wrap this post up, I'll finish out with a digital image from The Greeting Farm. I've had this one in my pile for a while. I picked it up as part of my Valentine's spending spree. I don't do blonde hair on my images for a reason. It drives me insane trying to get the right color tone. This image was no different. Her hair is a blend of Ginger Root, Sand and Espresso. It still bugs me, but not enough to keep me from putting it on a card.