Meet Ms. August

Suzi McKenzie is our Ms. August.

1. Brief info about yourself, including your name, where you live, your family (if you want), etc.
My name is Suzanne McKenzie, but everyone calls me Suzi, I live in Aberdeen, Scotland with my husband Stewart and our three cats, Alice, Dotty, and Sophie.

August is a very special month for me as I celebrate both my birthday and wedding anniversaries in August. This year it's two biggies being my 40th Birthday and 10th Wedding Anniversary.  I no longer work due to various health problems including Fibromyalgia and anxiety, so my time is my own.  When I'm feeling well enough, I love to create and you'll find me in my craft room, usually at the computer having a sneaky game on Facebook!

2. How long have you been stamping and/or crafting?
I've always been into arts and crafts, loving drawing and painting from an early age. I was also lucky enough to have a grandmother who taught me to knit and crochet.  I studied Art and Design at college but gave up my studies due to health problems.  I got into card making about 12 years ago when I started planning my wedding and could not find any wedding stationary I liked, so I made my own.  That's when I discovered my local craft shop and Ebay and got addicted to pretty papers, flowers, embellishments, and all the wonderful goodies that accompany them.

3. What are your favorite Bombshell sets and why?
I love the style of all the Bombshell sets, so choosing one favourite is nearly impossible.  I adore roses, so any of the Bombshell sets that features roses are right at the top of my list of favourites.

4. What kind of projects do you like to do?
I like to make cards, tags, ATCs, wall Hangings, Altered Art, Mixed Media Pieces.  I love to experiment and try new products and techniques. I'll try anything once.

5. What are your favorite coloring mediums?
My favourite colouring medium of all time is coloured pencils. Unfortunately due to problems with my hands, I find I can't use them very often, but they will always be my first love.  A few years ago, I discovered alcohol markers, which I tend to use most of the time now. I love being able to layer the colours and how beautifully they blend together. They are much kinder on my hands too, so I get to create more than before I discovered them.  I also have lots of fun playing with inks, pastels, and paints.

6. Describe your crafting "style".
My crafting style is pretty unique. I think the one thing all my work has in common is colour. I love using colour, usually quite bright and intense colours. I love getting contrast and texture into my creations.  I love sparkly, glitter embellishments, along with ribbon, tape, and gems.  As I love to colour, the majority of my projects will have a hand-coloured image as its focal point

7. Describe your crafting process. Do you start with a stamp set? A sketch? A technique you want to use?
Most of the time I start with an image, which I'll stamp and colour.  Then I'll either pick out papers to coordinate with my image or create my own backgrounds using stamps and embossing folders.  Sometimes I'll use a sketch for my layout, but most of the time I just play around with my card elements until I get inspired. Sometimes I'll have a die I want to use with a certain image and that will pretty much dictate my project's layout.  I also love to create scenes and tell a story with my projects.

8. Do you have any other hobbies?
I love listening to music, playing puzzle games, and Sci-fi Fantasy films. I'm not much of a reader, but love films, so we have a nice widescreen TV and vast DVD collection in our living room so we always have something to watch.

9. Free for all including little facts, etc. about you.
I'm a night owl, it's not unusual for me to stay up most of the night finishing a project.  I'm also very last minute when it comes to creating, not something I particularly like, but I tend to get my best ideas when I'm pushed for time. I guess I need that bit of stress to get my creative mojo going.  My favourite colour is pink, the brighter the better.  My favourite flowers are roses.  My favourite animals are cats and elephants.

Now that you've learned more about Ms. August, here's some of Suzi's artwork!

Be sure to check out Suzi's blog for more inspiration!

Circus Pony

  This project actually kills two birds with one stone (ouchie!)  I wanted to use my new Wild Horses Stamp  Set   from Bombshell Stamps in a couple of different ways.  You recently saw it as a rather patriotic American mustang and today it is appearing as a very feminine frou-frou circus pony, tomorrow I will have yet another different way to use this very versatile pony. OK, so that's one of the birds down, next victim, I mean bird, is the small matter of a design team challenge amongst the Bombshells. Our challenge is, if we should decide to take it, to create a variety of different projects that are NOT cards.  (BTW this posting will self destruct in 10 seconds.)

    So quickly before the destruct sequence starts, here is my circus pony wall hanging.

Here's a close up of the pretty pony in her glittery harness

     As you can see I went totally girly for this one; pastels, ribbons, lace, flowers, feathers, pearls, and glitz.  If I missed something, it's not from lack of trying.  I do not do the girly thing often but when I do, I really, really do.

May's Sketch Challenge!

It's that time again! May's Sketch is here to inspire you! We'd love to see your take on the sketch, so please be sure to share your Bombshell project with us using the Inlinkz below!

May's Sketch!

Here's my card using the ship from Homeward Bound.

Here's what the Bombshell Girls and Pin-ups have done with the sketch!

Bombshell Girl Rachael used Man's Ruin to create this college-themed/school spirit scrapbook layout.

Pin Up JennieWren came up with this using "Till Death" which is on sale at the moment.

Susie using "Till Death"

Alaine used Cherry Bomb, the sentiment from Rose's Portrait and a LOT of Bling

Stempelientje used: Live to Ride and Banner Sayings (reduced in price now!) 

Kelli using Rise and Shine

Bombshell Sparkly Mary used Wild Horses for her sketch

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Wild & Free

I'll freely state that I love sunsets and am fascinated by them, so I continue to keep trying to capture them. This attempt uses several of the new western-themed digital stamps by Bombshell Stamps, which is running a fabulous Black Friday Sale this weekend. Plus, if you sign up as a blog follower, you get the chance to win a fabulous prize.

Anyways, I digress. The big rearing horse is from the Wild Horses digital set. The cacti and the clouds are from the Desert Background digital set.

The nice thing about digital stamps is that you can change their sizes and orientations, so I did just that. Then I printed out my little scene, colored the horse, cacti, and clouds with my Copic markers. I heat embossed them with clear embossing powder to act as a resist, used the negative of a circle punch as a reverse mask, then sponged Distress and Memento inks to create a setting sun. The next step was to mask the sun with the circle and sponge the sky and desert. I added shadows with Copic marker. I have no idea if I got the position of the shadows correct, but perfection is overrated. *grin*

When I was moderately happy with my little scene, I realized it was really too big for a card, so I decided to make it into a wall hanging. So, I made a frame from old Cosmo Cricket wood-grain paper, heat embossed it, added the pewter eyelets (almost exhausted my stash of those though I have a gazillion colored ones), and added the twine. I computer generated the sentiment, printed it out on parchment paper, then stamped an empty banner from the Banner Sayings set over the words, added some Copic shading, then cut it out and glued it onto the frame. The frame is popped up with dimensional tape and was put over the scene which was matted on green and white cardstock. The angle of the phototograph makes it look uneven, but it is moderately even in real life.

I've got it hanging up on my wall now! Yay.

Thanks for visiting today!