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.

Hanging Ornaments

Keeping with my "no colouring - no problem" theme I have another quick and easy card that requires NO colouring, but still has that WOW factor. I pulled out three different stamps for this card and used an easy technique I'll describe below.

• cutesy ornaments (even though there is nothing cutesy about this card)
• ornament with holly on top
• patterned holly

Now, how'd she do that? I started with a piece of bella's BESTEST cream paper and stamped the holly leaves with versamark, embossing with a gold pearl embossing powder. After the embossing was good and dry I sponged on some Distress ink in antique linen, tea dye, then vintage photo keeping it darker on the left side.

Then I stamped the ornaments, again in versafine and embossing in the gold pearl. I cut them out and for the green one I sponged on shabby shutters, peeled paint and forest moss. The red one has fired brick followed by aged mahogany and finally for the bronze one I went back to antique linen, tea dye and vintage photo.

I played around with a lot of different ornaments and a lot of different colours before settling on this layout...I'm sure I spent a couple hours, but now that I've done it...it will be pretty easy to crank out a few more in limited time. This is also a small card, A2 size, which I rarely do but I like the coziness of this one....and heck....it will probably get a front row on someones mantle so it doesn't get hidden behind the tall cards.

There is still time to leave your comment with challenge ideas on THIS POST for your chance to win $25 bella bucks. I'll be posting the winner tomorrow at 12pm EST.

Now I'd better get to cooking myself some grub here and clean up the kitchen/studio...hubs has been gone all week and I'll spill a little secret....my kitchen table is ENTIRELY COVERED IN STAMPING SUPPLIES and has been all week since he left...heheheeee!!!! I'm pretty darn sure even if he read this it would come as no surprise to him, but it sure was nice to 'pretend' I had my own space and could leave my works in progress on the table for a day or two until I got to finishing it.

see ya tomorrow!!!!!

No time to colour? No problem!

I've got ya covered! This week I am going to show you THREE NO COLOURING REQUIRED holiday cards that hopefully will get your wheels going.

What do you get when you put two brilliant minds together! Pure GENIOUS! And that is what happened when I paired up Tim Holtz dies with Isabelle's Eclectic Stamps from Stamping Bella.

Not only was NO colouring involved, NO PATTERNED PAPER was used either! NOPE! NO WAY! I started with some inexpensive smooth white coated cardstock. I don't think an uncoated paper, like Papertrey white would work as well here. I pressed two Distress ink pads onto my teflon sheet, a piece of acetate would also work, I think I used Tumbled Glass and Broken China. Making sure I had  enough to account for the size of my paper I spritzed the ink with water, then layed down my paper pressing it into the wet inky watery mix. I did this for both the main background piece, and focal background piece. You CAN do two sheets one after the other, but keep in mind, your second layering of paper will be lighter than the first.

Once dry (hint: use a heatgun!) I stamped Eclectic #8 ticket with Pumice Stone on the larger background piece and Mini Checker with one of the blues (can't remember but I think it was the lighter one!) on the smaller background. Then I sponged with the same blue inks to give more depth of colour and finally sponged some Distress Pumice Stone around the edges.

The snowman is a pure rip off (or should I say CASE) from one of Tim Holtz's 2010 12 Tags of Christmas. Okay, not a total ripoff,  I did cut out WISH in snowman's belly and added an eye and some buttons which Tim didn't do. So I guess it is a legitimate case. The snowman was cut out of grungeboard, painted with white Claudine Helmuth Blank Canvas and when dry I sanded it and sponged on some Pumice Stone. Ya, Tim did that. The hat, arms and nose were also cut out of grunge board scraps and rubbed with some distress ink for colour. They were also sanded and glued on to the main snowman with glossy accents....again, that is what Tim used for glue! So in the end, I took some of his ideas, blended them with mine and came up with something that I really love in the end! That is what inspiration is all about and I hope I have inspired you!

Now for my little give away! OMG...you ladies have come up with some FANTASTIC challenge ideas! Sketches seem to be a common theme so I promise we will have more of those next year but we will also include some new ideas based on what you have said! This is so exciting and I'm looking forward to a new, challenging and inspirational year of challenges in the year 2012! Keep those comments coming, because it ain't over yet! You have until Friday!

Happy Mother's Day

This is the card I sent to my Mother this year and again I decided not to colour but rather do something clean, classy and contemporary, AND it fit right in with our flower challenge. I'm tellin' ya, these Isabelle Norris stamps are giving me a whole new boost and taking me back to my stamping roots when there were no fancy punches, no dies and patterened paper was only used in scrapbooks.

I started by inking up CURLY silhouette with Memento rhubarb stalk and rich cocoa and stamped it on a piece of cream cardstock...hint...start with the rhubarb stalk so you don't contaminate your red ink pad with the brown dye. Then I stamped mother definition block with black stazon on a piece of tone on tone vellum and eclectic BUTTERFLY on PRINT with rich cocoa on a piece of cream cardstock. I used ECLECTIC mesh on my background piece and stamped it in versamagic wheat and sponged the background piece and flower piece with antique linen distress ink.

To attach the vellum I first mounted the flower piece onto my background and then cut the vellum piece wider than the background and folded the edges to the back and glued it there so you wouldn't see any tape or glue marks through the vellum....pretty clever eh! I cut out the butterfly and glittered it all up with a dark brown opaque glitter for the body and some translucent brown glitter on the wings. I only glued down the body of the butterfly and folded the wings up slightly and held them up with a couple dabs of Helmar Liquid ScrapDots (LOVE THAT STUFF!). Although this card looks so simple, I'll tell ya, I spent an entire morning fussing around with it to get it looking exactly like I wanted...for me, clean doesn't always mean fast! I'm going to create a new category for this card called Simply Stamped Cards because I plan on throwing in more like this in the coming weeks. Hope you like them!

Next week our challenge is just a little krafty...yup...another easy peasy challenge so NO EXCUSE not to play...just use a Stamping Bella stamp and some kraft paper, email your card to Emily by Thursday at 5pm and see your creation up in lights on Bloggabella.

Later!

Life is making me happy today!

Fortunately I am not one of those people who can never be pleased and the littlest stupidest things can put me on a total happy high and today those things would be:

1. the new cord to plug my laptop into my kitchen tv so I can turn my laptop into a DVD player to watch my crimal minds or whatever else strikes my fancy on a bigger screen. That also gets the laptop off the table to give me more room to craft!
2. Christy Tomlinson's she art workshop...I'm in LOVE
3. my new mixed media products
4. a long weekend, even if is only three days
5. stamping bella's mesh stamp
6. and finally, my anything goes card

 

Aren't they JUST THE CUTEST THINGS EVER! And so perfect for Easter too, but that was just a coincidence.

Here is how I did it...I started with some very subtle background papers and one bold print. Papers are a mix of basic grey, kaiser craft and memory box. On the main focal background piece I stamped some of the mesh with distress ink tumbled glass, then with versa fine smokey grey. I didn't even put the stamp on a block, just held in in my hand and that assured me I would get a more random and subtle impression. (learned that trick from Emily!)

Then I stamped the largest of the eclectic birdies on the REVERSE side of the patterned paper and cut it out. I also stamped just the tail feather portion again on a coordinating paper and cut it out. The two smaller birds were stamped on the RIGHT side of some smaller print patterned paper in a light enough colour ink that would not cover the pattern entirely but be enough for me to see the edges to cut them out. Then I sponged the edges, drew around the edges with a fine black marker and accented with maisy KETTO'S POLKADOTS and more mesh. The eyes on the little birds were darkened with a marker, but the big mamma bird's eye is embellished with a button brad.

After gluing them down I drew in their legs with marker and added some grass with my pencils. Then I had to fill in the empty spaces above and after much deliberation I decided that I would part with some of my rubons....oh it was hard, but worth the sacrifice. I cut the sun freehand and added a bit of sponging but kept everything soft.

So what do you think? Personally I think it should be featured on cute overload dot com!

Next Week! With Mother's Day just around the corner our challenge next week is to celebrate a Mom in your life...it could be your mother, your sister, a friend, or heck, even yourself!

AND! Jess has taken control of our forum and has tons of new fun going on over there....you can upload your cards, check out the babarooni cards and even play in some challenges. Over the next little while I will be uploading many (if not ALL) of my blogged cards over to the gallery. That way if you remember you saw something and want to check it out again,  but don't want to scroll thru all the babble on my blog you can just hop on over there and have all my cards right there smack in your face to browse through. We are doing all we can to make things easier for you...and more fun! AFTER ALL...isn't it all about having fun! I have some helpful forum links down on my sidebar too so you may want to check it out.

Later, Linda

Exploring

After my little mixed media make and take at the Stamping Bella booth last weekend and completing week 1 of Christy Tomlinson's She Art Workshop that is running again I was feeling a little "out of the box" this week. With that overwhelming creative energy building up inside of me I decide to go all out on what I would consider a collage type card. I've always loved them, but at the same time, I'm afraid of trying them....fear of not adding enough, or maybe too much. Now that I look at this one again, I think I should have added more...maybe some lightly stamped script or crackle on the oval background. But it is done, and it is what is and the little things I learned will not go to waste.

I bought the Tim Holtz sewing room die at the Bella booth at scrapfest...I LOVE LOVE LOVE it and really felt I scored when I picked up the last one. This card is large...5x7...to accommodate the die because I wanted to use it all. These are the other products I used:

Julie's words to live by
Script from eclectic mini BUBBLE, MESH and FRENCH SCRIPT (on the butterfly)
crackle from the checker, music and crackle set (on the wooden portions of the dress dummy and on the background script paper)
Border punch is EK success
oval background is SPELLBINDERS
Birdcage is quickutz
Butterfly is magenta chipboard
Tim Holtz distress ink, tattered rose, antique linen, brushed corduroy and walnut stain

The meaning to the words I used can apply to many projects but this one is geared to sewing an outfit...you start, you stop, (because you're frustrated!) you carry on until you finally get to wear it! Then...there is that feeling of accomplishment and life is good!

Next week our challenge is free form...that means you get to do anything you want as long as you incorporate stamping Bella stamps into your project! Now I'm off to watch week 2 of my she art workshop so who knows where the free form challenge may take me! But for you colouring addicts out there, no fear, I'll be back with a couple more of those in the next day or two!

Later, Linda