Mixed Media Flowers

Just because they are called EM's mixed media FLOWERS does NOT mean they are meant to be used just for mixed media. Us card lovers can use them too and this is what I created.

I stamped these BEAUTIES on some hot press watercolour paper (I prefer the smooth texture of hot press!) and 'painted' them up with my Tombow markers. I say 'sort of' painted because it wasn't really traditional painting. I added marker directly to my paper and with a wet paintbrush pulled out and blended the colours. If you want to add more depth, let it dry and then add more. It is important to let it dry between layers. After cutting it out I decided it was so pretty and bold I just wanted to mount it on a plain white background and let my work of art steal the show. Before mounting it, I did sponge some distress ink around the edges...sorry, just had to do it!

When I was thinking about accessorizing I pondered glitter but just couldn't decide on where to put it and when I finally decided just to add some glossy accents to the tiny bubbles I was super satisfied with my choice. With such a clean contemporary card the glitter just wouldn't have worked but the glossy accents...OH YA BABY...it was just the look I was after. Gotta love when that happens!

Next week our challenge is a sketch...I'll say it again (because it sounded good)....OH YA BABY...we all love a sketch, and we ALL LOVE Ebru's sketches. I know I say it all the time, but I still don't think I say it enough...EBRU IS A SKETCH GODDESS and we'd love for you to come join us.

Email your card to Emily and/or upload to our splitcoast forum and you just may be lucky enough to win some of those pink Bella BUCKS!

You ready for a Flynn?

I know I've been MIA lately but I'm in a bit of a slump. No creative motivation. Do you ever feel that?

This weekend while hubby and the boys hold down the fort with the pooch along with our pooch buddy JD I'll be shopping and eating with JD's mama and a few other gals from the day job on a weekend getaway. I'm gonna make you hold your breath though and not tell you where we are going until we get back! How mean is that! Sorry!

But until I spill the beans I have a Flynn to show you! This is Stamping Bella's Sunshiny Flynn and I've been DYING to colour up their fab thick hair ever since I laid eyes on them.

I sort of broke away from my typical E33, 35, 37 for hair and decided to go a bit red by using:

E21, YR12, E95, 97, 99

other colours used on Flynn:

E000, 00, 11, R20, 14, 08, B000, 00, 41, Y00, 11, 15, YR20

I cut her out with one of my new spellbinder dies and used my 'out of the die technique' on the balloon. This card is just a tad bit larger than an A2 and cut it out to an A6 which is 4 5/8 x 6 1/4. I'm loving the yellow, blue and red combo....so country and cosy. I'd love to have a sunroom in these colours but sadly, I do not have a sun room and if I did, I'm sure hubby would nix that colour combo pretty darn fast.

Don't forget about our flowery challenge this week over at bloggabella, mine is all done and I'm pretty excited about it!

Be back on Friday!

I'm just resurfacing!

after Scrapfest! and I was only there for the day!

Christine Dol, a show newbie, might not come out of hiding for weeks after holding down the fort at the make and take table for two days! LOL!!!!! Her and Emily were doing FAB little samples with with Koi Markers, sprays, stencils and stamps. Of couse I made one, then of course I had to buy the markers! If it comes in a little tube and has a brush tip, I gotta have it. I also scored a entire set of the new distress markers. A pretty good day I would say!

Paula spent the weekend here and I even made her desert for Friday night. She might not know this, but that is a BIG DEAL for me because the last time I made desert might have been back in the 90's!  This was just 3 ingredients, my speed...however if you asked me to make beef bourguignon I'd be all over it. See I like to cook, but I don't like to bake. This is what I made, and it was a hit!

Skor Bar Squares

1 box Ritz crackers (225gr) crushed fine
1 bag skor chips (or Heath for US Residents)
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk

-combine all ingredients, spread in a 8x8 pan sprayed with non-stick spray
-bake at 350 for 25-30 mins until they start to brown on top.

I have something else to share! A card made with the dress form in Stamping Bella's funky barcode set. Since I have been watching Tim's Creative Chemistry 101 classes, AND seeing Paula's latest cards, I was determined to use something from this set.

This week's sketch even worked out well for me because I got to use some of the new metal findings I picked up at Scrapfest. Other product used:

distress ink - peeled paint, pine needles, brushed corduroy

stamping up punch

cosmo cricket paper (an oldie!)

wide ribbon from a local fabric store

brown embossing powder (yes that dress form is all embossed and shiney!)

the sentiment comes from the same funky barcode set.

Remember that challenge we had for spring showers....well it is time to BRING ON THE FLOWERS! Use a Stamping Bella Stamp, pick a flower image, flower paper, or a flower embellishment and get busy! Email your finished card to emily@stampingbella.com, or upload to our SCS gallery to be eligible to win some bucks. We ALL love a good flower image and with some new ones to choose from and MANY old ones in my stash I will certainly be decision impaired! 

till next time, Linda

April Showers bring May SMILES!

Early April is a busy time for us here in Lindabellaland...our twin boys celebrate their birthdays, and 5 days later hubs and I celebrate our anniversary. And typically Easter falls right in there somewhere. We traditionally have a very Polish Easter weekend with ham, keilbassa, eggs, grated horseradish and beets (there is a name for it that has slipped my mind) and our BELOVED Polish Easter soup, White Barszez, google it and you'll find dozens of recipes...it is delish!

This year we had exams, work, plus a 90th birthday interrupt our Easter plans so hubby and I enjoyed Mom's FAB spinach pie and some of my signature greek dolmades (YES, mine are as good as you would get in any greek restaurant).

I didn't make Easter cards but I did make an Anniversary card for hubby and tried to multi-task to pick an image that would work with the Spring Showers challenge over at Blogabella. Hubby was on to me though and asked if his card would 'fit into a challenge' and I had to fess up and tell him as a matter of fact it did and I was using Uptown Gal Lucille to 'shower' him with love! LOL...we both got a good chuckle out of it!

Somehow my pic turned out much darker than it really is...so trust me, she is much prettier up close and personal. As always I stamped her on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured her with a blend of copic markers and prismacolor pencils blended with gamsol.

Next week we are back to a sketch! YAY!

I know how WE all love them, so pull out one of the lovely bella stamps and play along.

Tomorrow I'll be at Kitchener's scrapfest along with Paula and Pauline so be sure to stop by Stamping Bella's booth because you will most likely see us hanging around there. Me thinks there may be some other babe's making an appearance as well!

Mixed Media class at Pickle

Yes...I'm back with another mixed media class at Paper Pickle. If you are a store regular you've probably already seen the sample on display because I'm VERY late with this post. But for those who cannot make an up close and personal visit, I'll tempt you!

Unlike my last class where I gave you guidance but let you choose your own colours, this class will be very 'step by step'. Everyone will use the same inks, sprays, mediums, tools, etc and I will walk you through how I created THIS PIECE step by step. Now don't think that everyone will walk out with exactly something that looks identical to this because you won't, mine won't even look exactly like this. I plan on doing several of these 'technique' type classes and each class will use the same size paper which you will be able to frame like I have done here...

...or keep these 'technique' pages and bind them up into a 'technique book'.

What do you think? Are you coming to join me? The class is on Saturday April 21st and if that one is full, we will run a second class if there is interest.

Hope to see you there!

Late Bellarific Friday...AGAIN!

Earlier in the week I thought I'd write my post Friday morning, because I didn't have to go to work! YAY! Then yesterday I woke up and thought it was Saturday....I didn't even bother to turn on the TV to watch the Today show because I thought it was Saturday. So I do my regular Saturday things and putz around the house and once it warmed up outside I spent the rest of the day cleaning up in the yard.

By the time I realized it was Friday I was immersed in trimming back an overgrown dogwood shrub and was too tired to do anything else. So early to bed and early to rise (I've been up since 6) and I have another whole day ahead of me. The agenda...

• coffee!
• a trip to the garden center
• plant some Heather
• mail cards to Emily (so PAULAbella doesn't take over Scrapfest)
• put some ribs on the smoker
• make a quick trip to Costco (maybe..or maybe hubby will go alone!)
• COLOUR!!!!

Before I get to that I DO have a card I made for yesterday, and I see that Emily was having some probs uploading pics to her blog so this is your FIRST viewing! I made this card for Baby B, aka Derek, aka Peanut, aka Spinky. We called him peanut as a baby because he (they) were 5wks preemie and Derek had that preemie body, big belly, skinny limbs etc. Then somehow, and I wish I could remember why, we started calling him Spinky/The Spink. I wish I would have written down how we came to that because there was a reason which I cannot remember for the life of me.

Derek loved dogs and in one of his school primers he wrote that he wanted to be a vet, but didn't want to work on poodles because he didn't like them. It had something to do with the way the groomed them with all those poodle puffs. Heeehee! So I thought an appropriate card for him would be Stamping Bella's Woofin' it up by Christy Croll.

I coloured it up with about 5 million copic markers, okay, not that many....but LOTS and took a stab at writing Bessie's name on there. She is our crazy West Highland White Terrier. The paper is from Kaiser Craft and the tickets were out of the same pack. On one of them I wrote the date of his birthday.

On the inside I again used some labels from the paper pack and paired it up with another one of my River City sentiments and the arrow from Stamping Bella's journal your art out GRUNGY SET..

Now for some Babe news. We have a new girl on the block, Natasha Kara...she is new to the blogging world and you REALLY MUST check out her blog HERE. She has a wonderful style, very Tim-ish, which I love and I CANNOT wait to see what else she has to share with us.

Next week our challenge is all about showers...APRIL SHOWERS....or baby showers, wedding showers, raindrops....whatever....use your imagination. Pick up a sketch out there if you are sketch challenged and play along.

Whew, that was long winded! See, that's what happens when I'm gone for a few days.

Happy Birthday Fella's

Our twin boys turn 22 today! YIKES....that makes me ancient...but on the other hand, I think it also makes me one year closer to retirement...so I'm totally okay with that! I'll slow down the clock when the clock is entirely mine and I no longer have to share it with a day job.

This is Baby A's card, otherwise know to the fam as Alex, or in his early months we called him Hootch because he was a BIG TIME drooler! For those who don't know, Hootch was a movie from the late 80j's or early 90's and one of the stars of the show was an oversize drooling dog...sorry Alex!

I pulled this image out of my pile of 'already stamped' stuff and I think it is an art impressions, but I can't be totally sure. Of course I coloured him with copics, but used LOTS of pencils for shading.

He looks kind of mean, but he really isn't, he is just old, and wise... and these are the words of wisdom he has to say...(sentiment compliments of River City Rubber works)

Pretty good advice for a university student, don't you think!

If you want to see Baby B's card, aka Derek, aka Peanut, aka Spinky, you'll have to come back Friday because I rolled that one into our Bellarific Friday sketch challenge this week! A girl just has to multitask sometimes!

Linda.

Tim inspired

Me, along with about 5 billion other people probably have just finished taking Tim Holtz's first ever online class. Many of the techniques I have seen and even done before, but a refresher never hurts. And I have a whole new appreciation for my 'large' supply of glossy paper.

Do you know how smooth and silky distress inks apply to that paper? well just look below.

In his technique he used archival inks with distress, but I only have black so attempted to use Versafine, then regular dye inks and neither gave the results he achieved. Note to self: get some archival inks in various bright colours!

I used a variety of Stamping bella stamps here for my background, as well as my focal image:

eclectic mini bubble wrap

eclectic mini checker

eclectic #8 ticket background

curly silhouette

solid funky bamboo

I must say of all the stamps I own, these are among my most FAV because of their versatility. Did I say LOVE...I don't think I did...I LOVE these stamps.

The background paper was also 'hand made' by me...well, not the actual paper...it is kind of a tissue like paper that was dyed with various concentrations of andirondak sprays, stencils, stamps and H2o paints. I made it in a class that I took with Fred B Mullett several years ago. If you ever get a chance to take one of his classes...JUST DO IT...he is genious!

That's it for today, be back later this week with something more conventional....but in the meantime, embrase the technique and as Tim says, enjoy the journey!

Linda