And the winner is.....

*** Lana ***

I want to thank you all  for your wonderful challenge ideas and I will say that some were a REAL challenge but I'm up for it! Send me an email Lana (under my picture there is a like to contact me) and I'll email your bella bucks gift certificate! Since we had so many great ideas, I DO expect a lot of participation...so keep checking the babe's and Emily's blog because you NEVER know when you may see your challenge idea crop up. I'll give you a hint though....the sisters seem to be lovin' a sketch so I am pretty sure you will be seeing a lot more of those in 2012 so stay with us!

Movin' on to Bellarific Friday....I'm sticking with my 'no colouring required' theme and again paired up Stamping Bella stamps with Tim Holtz dies....a match made in 'Heavens'. LOL...pun intended! This time I used Tim's pine tree and Prancing Deer pairing it up with Isabelle's Eclectic music notes, and Isabella's script. Since there were two deer on the die, I made two cards! YAY, more for my xmas stash!

Both cards are pretty much identical except for the deer. I used a piece of Basic Grey paper, (fruitcake I think) from a few years ago and just like I did on my snowman I created the focal background by pressing some distress inks (broken china and faded jeans) onto my teflon pad and this time spritzing it with gold glimmer mist. That gave the background a nice overall glimmer of gold, plus some heavier areas where the glimmer mist pooled. Then I sponged the edges with some brushed corduroy and adding more of the blues. I pretty much 'worked it ' with those colours until it matched nicely with my patterned paper. Once it was dry, I stamped the script with faded jeans.

The music notes on the deer was stamped with walnut stain and then the deer was sponged with antique linen and brushed corduroy...I think a bit of vintage photo too.

The tree was cut once on dark brown, then again on green. I sponged the green piece with some peeled paint, forest moss and vintage photo. I cut the stem off the green piece and glued it to the top of the brown piece. Then I applied some distress rock candy crackle paint to just the green area. Thin in some areas and thicker in others to give a variety of 'crackle' ....NOTE...the thicker you apply it, the deeper and more pronounced your crackles will be. This card actually came together quite easily for me.

Hope you liked my no colouring week because I may be throwing in a few more of these here and there over the next weeks before the xmas mailing deadline. Next week our challenge is A SKETCH!!! YAY! Many shout outs for Ebruabella for coming up with this one because it is FAB....and so not me who always has everything all squared up and equal on every side. I LOVE when these come along. And considering the number of comments I had on the sisters who love them a sketch....I'm expecting great things from you!

Till next time, Linda.