About Me

Hi! - I'm Nancy Augustine (aka Naugie) and this is my Crafting Journey Blog.

My background is mainly in Black & White - Charcoal & Graphite to be precise.
I have been doing portrait commissions since 1991 and first set up on the web in 1998.
[Currently my regular Art Site is not up, but since Go Daddy has moved me to a quicker server I may be able to rebuild my site there after all.  I will link to it once it's actually up].

I've always loved the beautiful contrast, and drama, of black & white, and though my photo realistic portraits were becoming harder & harder to work on (due to health problems that slow me way done when I'm trying to work on highly detailed areas), I still felt no real desire to move to color.  Then I went to Florida - in February - and was blown away by all of the wonderfully inspirational colors!

A week after I returned I picked up my first little set of Copics (one of the Skin Sets), and set out to learn how to use them, and how to translate my tone & value knowledge into color. Just getting used to the brush tip was an experience by itself.  I mean I actually sharpen mechanical pencils on sandpaper in order to get the smallest, the finest tip possible when doing portrait detail work so this brush tip seemed down right HUGE to me - though it really isn't.

In order to practice with my new art medium I decided to start coloring digital images.  I also realized quite quickly that the kind of paper you use makes a BIG difference.  I tested a lot of papers before settling on my favorites (Cryogen Luxury Iridescent Cardstock 89 lb & X-press It  Blending Cardstock).

It soon became clear that all of this "practicing" was going to leave me with a stockpile of aimless images so I embarked on my card making journey and chose images with that end in mind.  Luckily for me I discovered Saturated Canary early on as Krista's images are so expressive, so versatile and such a joy to color!

This blog pretty much picks up right there (though the first 2 posts appeared on my alternate site first - before I realized that for a card making blog Blogspot really was the way to go).  Mousey Mo Goes Camping was the first card I ever entered into a Challenge (and I really treasure the fact that Krista herself commented on it - on the original thread).  I think she's really adorable and will definitely be using her again.