Sunday, May 24, 2009

Lilian Garcia

This LO I can finally say finally to! It has been in the making for some time now and a constant headache with everything that had gone wrong. So, finally! As you can see it has a feminine touch and it was rather difficult getting there after all the dark and "male" LO´s I have been creating lately. It features Lilian Garcia, the announcer of the WWE RAW-show and the lucky little ... I call my son.

I immediately knew how I wanted this one to look since Lilian´s not only an announcer but also a singer. The letters I wanted to look like music notes and pink/red/girlie colours would not be in the way. Some flowers, bling and ribbon were also spot on. I started by drawing the LO just the way I wanted it but I soon discovered I could not get it exactly the way I wanted it. I had it all pictured in front of me but my drawing skills did not do my planned creation justice. Thats when my brilliant mind got to think of my wifes Bosskut Gazelle. It truly is a magnificient machine and it succeeded to cut out the letters my old shaky hands failed with. An absolute fantastic background paper from Imaginations, the above mentioned girlie-items, a little Stickles, 3D-cusions and it all fell in place. If I may say it myself, and I may, I just think this is one of the better ones I have created.


The happiest boy on earth and Lilian Garcia



A close up of the musical name and the arrangement of the LO




Flowers built out of three parts and a red stone to top it off.

Cody Rhodes

And so I am back (from outer space!) with another LO and this one is pretty basic. It features Cody Rhodes, and the son of course, when they met in Barcelona last fall. This was a difficult one and that is much thanks to Cody´s personality. I mean, he is a really nice guy and all but there is nothing that really stands out in his character. I usually pick my motives for the LO´s from the characters but this one just had me puzzled. I started out with the letters and I am partuculary proud of them since I just sat down and cut them out by hand, without looking at anything else. I added the red stripes (shadows) to get a 3D-look and then put them on my original choice of background-paper which was red. It did not work at all. I eventually found this black paper that had Family, history, legacy and tradition printed on in a corner and I fell for it straight away. Cody is currently in a wrestling-stable called Legacy with Ted DiBiase and Randy Orton (two other second generation wrestlers), his father is The American Dream Dusty Rhodes and his brother is Goldust, Dustin Rhodes. Extremly fitting in other words. It still looked a bit empty so after a lot of thought and even more shapes and other stuff that I tried to spice up the LO with I settled for some bling and some Diamond Dots. It´s not to shabby, especially considering I was totally blank on ideas, but it could probably have been better if I would have given it some more time. But time is something I am very short of these days.




The somewhat empty LO, still, it´s colour coordinated!



A close up of the letters that are mounted on 3D-cushions.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Kofi Kingston

Time for another one and this time the LO features the jamaican/ghanan wrestler Kofi Kingston and my son of course. I am in a bit of a hurry at the moment. The father, the son and the holy album with LO´s are planning another trip and I would like to have a few more ready by the time we are leaving. One never knows, we might run in to a few more wrestlers, which is never sure but if we do it would be nice to get some autographs on the album/LO´s. I currently have four LO´s in production and this is the first one I completed.

I have used two Basic Grey-papers, one Crate and six different CS. The whole idea was to lift Kofi Kingstons jamaican gimmick so I started out with the flag as a background. Looking for inspiration and ideas on Internet I found this picture of a rastafarian lion (yes, it must be the smoking thats hollowed it!) and I thought that it would fit in nicely. I drew the lion, as good as I could, cut out a template and then cut out two lions in a shiny black CS. It was a time consuming procedure with many non-printable words to spice it all up. The yellow/green/red-flags are of course "reggae-colours" and I also used the colours as a background for the photo but deliberately put them in a different order because it looked stupid with the yellow on the left hand side. I know, sometimes I am a bit strange. My wifes Bosskut Gazelle was kind enough to cut the name out for me, in blue to match Kofis shirt. It saved a lot of the time I "wasted" on the lions. A little Glossy Accent from Ranger made the letters look even better. I do like to cut most things by myself but I must admit that the Gazelle is a handy tool and that I will have to learn a little more about it when we finally move down here (and here would be Karlstad) for good.

And what about Kofi? Well, he was a very nice and pleasant person who signed the album, took time for a chat and also posed for a picture with the father. But that LO will have to wait till after the summer.



Kofi Kingston, the son and the LO I am quite happy with.




A close up of one of the lions I cut out. It took some time!




Nothing like a little Glossy Accent to shine up a LO.