Thanks SO much!

For all the well wishes for my Dad!

When I saw him on Sunday I told him that all my blogging and facebook friends were pulling for him and he got a great big grin on! I'm sure one of the first things he will do when he 'breaks out' is to catch up on my blog! Albiet, there won't be much to read since there has not been much blogging for the last couple weeks, but I'm pretty sure he will go searching to see his card up in lights in cyberspace!

Speaking of 'break out' he MAY be heading home today, we should know about 9am! After almost three weeks in the hospital I'm sure he is ready for some fresh air! He's an outdoorsy kinda guy...likes to fish and putz around in his yard. Although he doesn't have a vegetable garden I'll bet he would if their yard was big enough. So I have another card to dedicate to him...this is the BIG GUY'S garden by Mo Manning available in rubber at Stamping Bella.

I really enjoyed colouring him and if I didn't dedicate it to my Dad, I would be dedicating it to my next door neighbor who has a garden that any urban farmer would die for! He often goes out into his yard and fills a basket of tomatoes and hands it to us over the fence! I LOVE my neighbors! He grows the BEST tomatoes I have EVER eaten!

I coloured the image with no particular paper in mind knowing I wanted the overalls a grungy blue with a light brown work shirt and well, you can't really mess with mother nature when it comes to colouring the tomato plant! Going through my 6x6 pads I decided on Basic Grey Marrakech but sponged the edges of the paper with Frayed Burlap Distress ink to tone done the bold blues. And I even used a more neutral colour thread for sewing to keep up with the distress look.

What do ya think? I was pretty pleased! I stamped him on bella's BESTEST paper and used the following copics:
E50, 51, 53,
B41, 21, 32, 34 (shading with E41, 42) for the overalls
E40, 41, 42, 43, 44 (shirt)
E74 (hair) W2, 4, 6, 7 (basket)
R24, 37, 39, Y00 (tomatoes)
YG63, 67 (tomato plant)

I rarely do this, and please don't ask me to make it a habit, but I even jotted down the pencils I used (probably because there were few so the list was manageable!)...these are prismacolor...
sandbar brown, chocolate and sepia for the 'dirt'
light cerrulean blue and true blue for the blue shading

didn't use any pencils on the main image.

that's it...quoting a chinese proverb...

if you would be happy all your life...
plant a garden

till next time, Linda.