My copic Chart

I had a question about my copic chart.

I created it on excel and printed it on papertrey stampers select white paper, because that is what I use most often with my copics. Also, Brilliance Graphite Black is my ink of choice.

If you would like a copy, just email me, and I would be happy to send you one. If you don't have excel, no problem, you can download an excel reader here that will allow you to open the files.

Happy coloring with those copics!

Time Well Spent

Call me anal if you must, but that's okay because when it comes to organization, I am a bit anal. I got my first copic markers about a year ago after fence sitting for about 6 months. I knew it would be a big expense and I had to decide if I would really use them, and more importantly, if I could 'master' them. When I finally decided to take the plunge I bought the Copic Ciao. I toyed between the full set of Copic Ciao's and the much anticipated colors that Ellen was going to carry. Shortly before Ellen came out with her colors Eclectic Paperie had a deal that I couldn't pass up and jumped into the Ciao's.

Now I'm a girl who has to have it all when it comes to colors! I LOVE to read about everyone's favorite combos but I'm my own person in that respect and need to decide what colors work for ME and I need the whole selection to decide upon. So since buying the set of Ciao's I've been filling the gaps with Sketch markers. I LOVE the sketch markers, not because they are better, because they are NOT...just because I can more easily find the color I'm looking for because the color is labelled on the end of the marker. Like just about everyone who uses copics, I have made a chart with all the colors on it and identified each as being a sketch or a ciao so I can find it more quickly. However, when it came to finding a ciao I was always pulling several out of the case to find the one I am looking for...why...because the color wasn't identified on the end of the cap!

How did I overcome this...well, I spent almost two hours labelling the top of each ciao cap with the color number using the fine tip of an IdentiPen.

So yes, you can call me a bit anal, but I'm much happier now that I have all my markers identified easily so I can quickly find then!

Here are some pics of what I have done.

Labelled Ciao markers.

My Sketch markers that I keep in cups.

The chart that I live and breath by. In case you are just dying to know, the highlighted numbers are the markers that I have in sketch and the little asterisks indicate I own a reinker for that color. If the color box is 'empty' it means I don't have that color yet.

May you all organize your Copic markers, whatever they may be, in a way that makes you happy!

Home from the house that Bella built

Well ladies, my roadtrip to Em's was a blast. What a drastic change from the last time I was there in March. The scramping room is open and filled to the brim with pretty paper. The 'main' room now has all the bellas, stellas, and chichis proudly perched on the wall. Not to mention the Dolby original with those Stella's chit chatting up there having just a gay ole' time. I'm tellin' ya, this is the happiest place on earth!

When I invited Paula to come along she asked what will we do there. I think I said we are just going to hang out and color and shop. I'm sure she was thinking...I'm gonna spend 5 hours in a car to hang out and color...do I really want to do this! Not to mention drag two of my friends along with me. I hope they weren't disappointed.

Paula wowed us all with her pencil/gamsol magic while Nicky took her place opposite and studied every move. I colored up Baby Buttercup with my copics and Janine tried out the peerless watercolors. Nicky scooped them all! Em had us all drooling over the Lyra colored pencils but only Paula took the plunge. I CANNOT wait to see what she creates with them. I'm sure I'll cave eventually. I'm a color freak and the array of colors in this set is stunning.

Laura Evans chit chatted with everyone and I couldn't let her leave without a couple Linda originals. I was really hoping to have more cards to share with everyone but being sick all week really put a damper on my creative juices.

I'll leave you with a few pics of the day.

Mary, Carol, Paula, Pauline and Janine. Clearly something was said that is shocking. Or maybe that was the moment that Mary decided that her son's education must come before a new set of pencils.

Laura, Em, Nicky, Dena and Janine.

The Stella's

And finally if you ever wonder who lovingly packs all those mail orders, well here she is, Dena! At her desk in what I call the Rubber Room! Next time you place an order leave Dena a little comment and say Linda said to say Hi!

May you all get to spend a day at the House that Bella built!

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good, I'm off on a road trip tomorrow with Paula and friends to the Bella's Digs. Very Excited about that!

The Bad, I've had a nasty chest cold and cough all week!

The Ugly, LeRoi Moore, sax player for the Dave Matthews Band died suddenly on Tuesday from complications arising from an ATV accident back in June. This is the last time we saw him. Toronto, Molson Ampitheatre, June 18th, 2008.

Rest in Peace LeRoi, we will miss you!

Exciting things happened in Novi

First off, I ran into Emily and Nicky! They looked fantastic as usual...must have been that side trip they took to the Bare Escentuals store in the mall down the street! I can't wait to go to Toronto on Friday and hang out at Bella HQ and chat and laugh all afternoon.

Secondly I had quite a surprise when I strolled by the Impression Obsession booth. Last year I posted this card on SCS and it got quite a bit of attention. To my total surprise it got more than 3000 views! I even heard through the grapevine that someone sent the link to Impresson Obsession and when my LSS Paper Pickle was placing an order the topic of 'that' card came up. Kell said, oh ya, that card was done by one of our customers. So I thought it would be fun to make a card and give it to them when I went to Novi last summer. This year as I was looking at the card samples....AND LOOK WHAT I SAW....two of my cards on display. The one in the upper right corner is 'THE' card, and the one in the lower left corner is another IO image that I used in a class that I taught.

How cool is that!
Hope you all get to see one of your cards on display somewhere someday!

I crack myself up sometimes!

The director of IT, who just happens to be a friend of mine, is LEAVING IT after 35 years to go 'direct' in another area of the company. We will miss her, but hey, she is not leaving the company, only going to a different floor. But girls will be girls and we used it as a good excuse to get together for a bbq. We bought her a little gift and I was asked to make a card. It had to be Stella, and it HAD to be Stella has something to say. Before I reveal the punch line, I must say one thing about the card. My lls (a new acronym that i just made up for long lost sister) Paula always adds funky titles on her cards with little cut out letters so I thought I'd give it a try...OKAY...not gonna do this again anytime soon! Especially with this many letters and I'm under a time crunch! But I gotta say, it sure looks nice!

So on to the best part...Stella needed to give some really good advice, something that a director could use in her new position, so scouring the internet I found this and thought it just might be something that Stella would say:

In any organization
there will always be
one person who knows
what is going on

This person must be fired

Till next time,
Enjoy!

Linda

What a Weekend!

Well, I'm home from my last show of Dave's 2008 Summer Tour! I'm sure you are all glad to hear that so you don't have to listen to me ramble about it anymore. But I can't let it go without sharing a few pics. This is my husband, wearing his Rothbury shirt. Yup, for any of my Michigan readers, the hubs went to Rothbury with one of his jam-loving buddies. You have to understand, camping was involved and Mark's idea of camping is the Holiday Inn express. He sent me emails daily titled, Survived Day 1, Survived Day 2 etc. So day 2 for Alpine Valley he puts on this shirt and I said, "are you really gonna wear that?". Yikes!

Now check out picture #2...tailgating before the concert. That's us, hubs in the Rothbury tie dye shirt and me, wearing my new pretty yellow Ann Taylor sweater, diamond necklace and coach purse. I sometimes wonder how we ever hooked up!

And finally, I'll leave you with a pic of Dave! I gotta say that was the most 'into it' crowd I have ever seen. You know you are amongst fans when Dave starts playing a song and 30,000 people start singing and Dave only sings the chorus! The girl sitting next to me has seen him 31 times, and we saw someone else wearing a t-shirt that listed all the concerts she has been to and it said 100 and counting!

Well, that's it for my Dave Matthews summer tour. I should have more time to get back to some serious card making soon!

Hello from Wisconsin

Well, I’m having a fab time here. Chicago was wonderfully busy as usual. Such a change from our little quite city of Chatham! I got to Blicks, spent a WAD of money on copics. Pauline, I got all but three of the colors you wanted....sorry Lynn, no SP multiliners!

Then mark wanted to go to this bootleg record store and surprise surprise…there was an Ann Taylor Loft next door and I dropped wad #2. Then we hit PF Changs for dinner, came home to watch the rest of the Olympic opening ceremonies and were going to go to this jazz club across the street but we fell asleep! Man, we are pathetic. Definitely not late night people.

So next day I wanted to go to Sephora…just to get a couple things but i ended up dropping wad #3. the sales lady actually whispered the total to me because mark was standing beside me! HAHAHAH! Now I don't wear a lot of makeup, actually I hate wearing makeup but I've been pondering trying out Bare Escentuals...so starter kit, plus a couple extras, PLUS...some french radiance serum that is guaranteed to erase my fine lines and i walked out of there thinking I'm going to have to refinance my house (again!) Nicky or Em....if you are reading this I blame it all on you because you went on about this stuff when I was there back in March and I've had in my mind ever since. So when I see you in a couple weeks you'd better tell me I look 10 years younger!

Finally I hit Paper Source. When I send a really nice card for a special occasion, I want a really nice envelope and Paper Source envelopes are my FAV! They come in luscious colors in all different sizes. Since I've been making square cards lately, square envelopes were the order of the day. Wad #4, dropped!

I'll leave you with a pic of Lake Geneva. This is pretty much across the street from our hotel. We got here yesterday with just about an hour to rest before heading to Alpine Valley to see Dave Matthews so we didn't get much time to walk around. WOW....what a HUGE place Alpine Valley is. I've never been to an outdoor music theater as large as that! Good concert...we actually met a couple guys who were from the Detroit area. Cool! Today we went for brunch, walked around the city and took an hour boat tour of Lake Geneva. Soooooo pretty here! I'd come back in a heartbeat.

Well off to see Dave again tonight, then head home to reality tomorrow.

On the Road Again...

Yup...Mark and I are on the road again to see our last shows of the Dave Matthews summer tour! So sad! I could go watch that guy every weekend! This trip we are off to spend a night in Chicago...I'll get to go to Blick's and Paper Source and we'll go to PF Changs for dinner and then we'll head to a jazz club. Now, I'm not into jazz, but I'm willing to put up if it gets me to Blick's and Paper Source! Saturday we'll head out to East Troy, Wisconsin to see Dave perform BACK TO BACK concerts at Alpine Valley Music Theatre. We've never done back to back before so this will be fun! And I've read that Alpine Valley is one of Dave's favorite places to perform so I'm anticipating a great show!

So here is a card before I leave you. It is Stella with her cupcake! Wish Big, is the sentiment that is going inside this card. Now, it's not my fav of colors, must be that blue in there that isn't doin' it for me... but the paper matched up with her so well I had to go with it. Colored with copics (what else these days) and added glitter to the cupcake icing. I know she is going to find a loving home.

Till next week...wish me luck at getting a good video of dave!

Tyler for Jacob

Man, blogger wouldn't let me upload my image yesterday so I'm here, but a day late! However, I'm not mad because I know (hope) there are people in the Blogger IT department trying really hard to fix it and running around saying "ohhhhhmmmmm".

Here is the second card I made for the nephews. This one is for Jake and since he is six years old and can read his name he thought it was pretty darn cool that the card had his name on it. Note that I used my Just Right Monogram stamper for the first time. I wanted to circle his name with 'happy birthday' but OMG...I just DID NOT have the patience to plug in and center all those little letters. If anyone has a tip for doing this in a reasonable amount of time PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back to Jake, he is a natural little athlete so Tyler the Jock was all to appropriate for him. He also seemed quite amazed at the ribbon! he kind of felt it, and examined it, way too cute! I love the little nephews and wish I could see them more often!

That's it for today! Except, if you haven't seen yet, you MUST check out Paula's bella. It's her very first bella and I think there is a Bella future for her! The coloring on her card is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!

High Tops for Andrew

We had a family BBQ in Windsor yesterday and although Windsor is only an hour away from Chatham, we don't see the family really often. This BBQ is a gathering of my husbands side of the family and my father in laws extended family and we always come with prezzies for Mark's little nephews who both celebrate birthdays in July. Little Andrew just turned two and we got him a tee ball set and I colored up these Stamping Bella high tops for him. More for his mom really, because at two I don't think he really cares all that much about the card. This stamp is one of my very favorites! It's easy and quick to color and you can use it for boys or girls and a variety of age groups. A good investment!

Thanks for stopping in, I'll be back tomorrow with Jake's card.

Springtini!

I had a wonderful day off today...played with my copics all morning and the hubs even took me out to lunch. Let's see, we have been married 20 years and the last time he took me to lunch was....hmmmmm.....NEVER! Honestly, I don't think we have EVER gone out to lunch on a weekday. It's not really as bad as it sounds though because we have lunch together just about every day. You see, we both work at the same place and our house is five minutes from the office (if you make both green lights...7 if you hit reds) and we both come home for lunch so we have lunch together every day! And I love coming home for lunch. It's a nice relaxing break in the middle of the day.

Today's card is Stamping Bella's Springtini. I've had it like FOREVER and finally got around to colouring it up. Then I had a martini to celebrate!

Thanks for stopping by