Think Small

Hido Ho, crafty peeps!

GUESS WHAT??

No, it has nothing to do with chicken butts.

NO, I didn't win an all-expense paid trip to Liechtenstein.

NOOOoooo, I am not traveling back in time to meet Einstein (I wish).

Man, you guys are bad guessers. Are you even trying?

So I'll tell you.

The lovely folks at House Mouse and Friends have asked me to be a guest designer for them for awhile!

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!

Dropping hints paid off. (hee hee hee)

In honor of...well...this honor, I designed my own animated badge to display on my Design Team page and on the sidebar of my home page. I used an image from the House-Mouse Triple CD, and did some of my magic in Photoshop to animate it a little bit. Do you like it?

Now, back to business!

It's time for a new Monday Challenge over at the HM&F blog. This time around, we have a sketch for y'all. Use it as-is, flip it, bend it, or mirror it. Keep it simple or pile on the stuff!...WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO TO IT...(as long as we can still tell you used the sketch). Use any House Mouse image or one of their friends (Gruffies or Happy Hoppers) as long as it's a House Mouse Design stamp/image. If you would rather do things your own way, that's FINE! Because "anything goes" is ALWAYS an option! There are prizes to be had!

Check out their blog for details and to enter your project(s)...just click HERE

 So, for this project I pretty much took the sketch literally. Which, for me, is amazing since I tend to not follow sketches very well. The only change I made was to flip it 90 degrees counter-clockwise. I even kept the little scalloped edging to that center strip. I left the background white-on-white. I wanted the image to be the color pop on the card.

I used the 'Pop'-ular Fun digi stamp from the triple CD collection. Now, you have to know something about this card. It's small.

I mean like TEENY TINY...one could say....Teacup size.

Or in this case...demitasse size. It's not that much bigger than a standard ATC.

Which means the image is like...microscopic. It's about 1 inch high and 2 inches long.

Here are my fingers for scale (and I have very small hands).

I felt like that guy who makes little sculptures that fit inside the eye of a needle...like this one..yes that's a real needle...with a teeny tiny mouse inside! Don't ask me how he does it.

I used a pair of reading glasses over my bifocals AND a magnifying glass to see what I was coloring. Oy, this getting old is for the birds.

Here is a closeup of the coloring. Be impressed.

I didn't paper-tole this image. I left it flat and added the visual dimension with shadowing alone. The mere thought of fussy-cutting the elements out made me shudder and gave me angina.

I used a combo of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils to color the image.

Other supplies used:
Glitter pen (Sakura) -- for the thumbtack
Embossing folders (Cuttlebug, Darice)
Scallop edge punch (Martha Stewart)
Deckle scissors (Fiskars)

Thanks, as always, for coming out to Left Field!