*New* Oz Digi Kit & a Free Digi Stamp!

Today, we return to Oz! Last year I discontinued a number of kits and craft CD's, one I discontinued was the Oz craft CD and not a week has gone past without me being asked about it and if I will bring it back. I love the Wizard of Oz so I had the perfect excuse to get drawing again and revamp it and recreate the kit, even better than before!

The kit is available for a limited time at the bargainous price of £4.50 here in my shop (it should be £6.50) and as well as papers and embellishments contains a record 13 digi stamps and 6 SVG cutting files! My team have been working with the kit for a week or so and you can see the first project by Ian here on his blog - there will be lots more inspiration with this kit in the upcoming Lookbook magazine (look for more news on that next week!)

To celebrate the release of this kit I've designed a 14th digi stamp which is completely free for you here on my blog today, just click here to get yours (both black and white and colour files are included!)

I'd love to see your creations so please feel free to share here in the comments or over on my Facebook page.

Have a lovely weekend...

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Book Review - Everything Oz

Recently, I was lucky enough to be sent a preview copy of a new Craft book called 'Everything Oz' to read and review...

Get your copy here on Amazon

The book contains lots of creative projects and things to make and bake - if you love the Wizard of Oz as much as I do, then this book is an absolute 'must have'! Every once in a while a book comes along that I think 'wow, this must have been fun to write / produce / illustrate' and this is definitely one of those books. With lots of diverse projects, from making your own Ruby slippers to baking your own little 'Toto' some treats, it's just great, I can't wait to get time to do all of them!

Today I tried out the 'Toto's Treats' dog biscuits and got baking for Fuzzybutt - she is one spoilt pooch, I know! I made a few extra for B's brothers dog too, I couldn't leave her out. I couldn't find my bone shaped cookie cutter (yes, I do have one, how sad is that, lol) so I made little 'B's (for Belle) and F's (for Fuzzybutt) and M's for my BIL's dog Millie...

They were really simple to make, just a few minutes and Fuzzybutt loved them, look at her licking her lips! lol

Its nice to find a good homebaked treat for her as I do worry sometimes about the ingredients in the ones you buy in the shops - they seem so manufactured and artificial whereas I know exactly what is in these ones and can even choose to make different flavours now by adjusting the recipe a bit - no more icky fake treats for my girl :o)

Now I'm off to rustle up a quick dinner for me and B before he starts moaning about how I only cook for the dog, hahaha. Then later tonight I have some fun emails to send... *wink wink*

Thanks so much for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Sharing my Secrets! - My Illustration & Design Process

One of my favourite things to read on blogs is a little 'behind the scenes' peek, whether it's someones desk / studio or their work process. So today, I am sharing my, up til now completely secret, illustration process using a couple of my 'Oz' characters to demonstrate, these illustrations were used for my 'Oz' craft CD launched earlier this year...

I have a ton of notebooks and journals and each one I do something different in, one is for sketching for illustration, one is for sketching for craft designs, one is for sketching for future craft projects, one is for blog projects, one is for brainstorming etc etc... I probably have about a dozen in progress at any one time and these are all kept on my desk so I can get to them at any time. So from my brainstorming for product ideas, I decided to go ahead with the Oz craft CD, it was something I loved and knew would be popular. I then select a colour palette, I usually do this in illustrator just using trial and error until I'm happy with the combination...

 

Once I'm happy with the colours I then start sketching the characters and ideas for papers, embellishments etc... (I always start with the characters or digi stamps though, they really set the scene for everything else) 99% of my sketches are done with pencils / pens in my sketch book, I very rarely start anything digitally. Here are my first pencil roughs for the Lion and the Tin Man...

 

Once I'm happy with the overall look of the sketches I scan them into my computer, usually using illustrator to redraw the images (I like them to be a vector image so I can resize them for digi's / paper etc...) Here are the black and white outlines of the lion and the tin man once I had redrawn them... 

Once the characters are all drawn out in black and white I start to add colour (keeping a black and white copy as a back up for later changes, and for the black and white digi stamps that you like to colour in! Depending on the look I want for them and the project i'm working on, I use photoshop or illustrator for this or sometimes I print out the black and white version and colour using promarkers, paint or  coloured pencils and then scan back in for any retouching or adjustments.

Here is the complete 'Oz' line up once I had finished...

 

So there you have it, my process - summed up of course, this process from the starting sketches to the finished CD took around a month of almost full time work (fitting in other illustration and writing jobs around it) so much work goes into every project but CD's in particular have so much on them that they take a LONG time, hours and hours of work, I think Oz was around 150 hours of work in total, I'm constantly adding and thinking of new things as I work on it and often the thing that stops me and decides it is finished is that there wouldn't be enough room on the CD! LOL

Right now with all the things I'm working on for my craft range as well as the other illustration projects I have going on, I am literally buried in sketchbooks, pieces of papers, sketches, notes, schedules, briefs (the illustration kind, not the undie kind!), revisions, scans, prints, reference materials, colour swatches etc... It's a fun process though, I love it!

I'd love to see your design or illustration process if you'd like to leave me your link in the comments :o)

Sarah x

Some Oz Inspiration!

I should have posted this yesterday but naughty me stayed up all night Sunday night and ended up falling asleep about 8.30 last night! probably a good thing as I had to be up super early for a meeting today!

So here are some of my Design Teams projects with the new Oz CD to give you some inspiration and project ideas...

Clare

Clare made this gorgeous pop-up card using the Dorothy and Castle Digis and my cloud stamp from the Woodland Whimsies set

 

 Jaine

Jaine made this gorgeous 3D frame using the papers and digi stamps fromthe CD all coloured with Promarkers

 

Melly

Melly used the whole cast to make this gorgeous Oz card!

 

Tams

Tammy made this gorgeous card using the Glinda digi stamp adding stickles to her wings to make them sparkle!

Claire

Claire made this stunning canvas using the digi stamps from the CD along with some of the trees from the Woodland Whimsies CD - gorgeous work!! I want one!! :o)

If all of those gorgeous projects have inspired you and you want to get your hands on your very own Oz CD then click here!

Sarah x

Making Cards Magazine

The new issue of Making Cards magazine is out now! and I am the Guest Designer (yay!)

So quick, rush and out and buy your copy!! Or get it here online. Would love to see anything you make with my papers, come and share on my Facebook Page!

Thank you all for your Birthday wishes on Friday, I had a lovely day with B and Fuzzybutt and then drinks with friends in the evening followed by a fairly relaxing weekend (actually had little choice in that as I could barely keep my eyes open, ME relapse urgh!) but I'm starting to feel perkier which is lucky because I have SO much going on for the rest of this month - yay!

Also a big 'Thank You' to those who have already pre-ordered my new 'Oz' CD - the packages are here, all labelled, just waiting for the CD's to arrive so they can be packed and posted!!!

Sarah x

Happy Birthday (to me!)

Just a short post from me today, as it's my Birthday and I'm officially taking the "day off" ha! But I wanted to share with you this free Birthday Cupcake Digi Stamp.

Click on the picture or here to download!

Thank you to everyone for the many many birthday wishes on Facebook and Twitter - you're too kind :o)

And I'm so excited to say that over half of my first order of stock of 'Oz' previewed yesterday (see below) has already been pre-ordered - in less than 24 hours!!!!!! I think this will be more popular than Wonderland (happy happy!) so make sure you pre-order yours to guarantee your copy from this first batch.

Sarah x

**New** Product Release - OZ Craft CD

As promised, today is the release of my brand new Craft CD 'Oz' - I hope you will love it as much as I've loved creating it!

All the product information is below, and you can pre-order for despatch on the 17th June here!

The Cover

All the info...

The Characters

And some projects from the CD to give you a quick peek...

An Oz Card, a Wizard Tag

 Or you can even make Dorothy's Basket & Ruby Slippers!

 There will be more peeks and projects added here and on my Facebook Page over the next few days.

The CD contains all of the papers, embellishments and digi stamps (in colour and black and white) that you need, all perfectly colour co-ordinated, as well as projects for you to make, templates for shaped cards and other bits and pieces and all the sentiments you need to add to your projects.

I added the pre-order info to my Shop and Facebook Page about half an hour ago  and I'm already printing preorders, I think this one could be even more popular than Wonderland!!

I look forward to your comments :o)
Sarah x