Sometimes an image just reminds you of someone

Now I'm not gonna say exactly 'who' this one reminds me of because I know she reads my blog sometimes but I'll just say....this is SO her and I think I'll be keeping tucked in a safe place until her birthday rolls around.

On another note, my housekeeper called last night and cancelled her date for today because poor thing is sick as a dog! She sounded terrible. Jane is a total sweetie and has been my right hand for the last 20 years. Without her, I'd never be able to do the things that I do while maintaining a full time job. Now, as crappy as it is that she is sick, for me it was a bit of a weight lifted because I could go plop myself on the couch with the pooch and forgo the 'pre-cleaning' ....okay, so I don't really 'clean' but I do tidy up EVERYTHING and that takes me quite some time. (remember, I craft in my kitchen so there is usually LOTS that has been left out that needs putting away). The bad part is that I'll have to clean my house this weekend :(.

Back to the topic at hand. This is Stamping Bella's Uptown Girls PATTIE and DOTTIE friends FOREVER.

Do you have a forever friend? I have some friends today that I certainly hope will become forever friends and only hope our lives will continue to cross paths so we can remain friends long into our senior years.

For this card, I stamped these gals with Memento ink on bella's BESTEST paper, paired them up with Basic Grey out of print 6x6 paper and started colouring them with copic markers. Again, lots of pencils were used here...my copics just gave me the base...and Ebru's sketch fit perfectly with this 5x7 card.

Next week is easy peasy, just use a Stamping Bella image and anything else goes. That means you can go to one of your fav sketch or colour challenge blogs and combine them all into a bundle and knock off three challenges with one card. Email your card to Emily at emily@stampingbella.com by next Thursday to see it on her blog, but if you wanna a chance to win some Bella Bucks, upload your card to SCS using the keyword BELLARIFIC0612. All of the challenge details over on SCS can be found in the forum here.

See ya soon....tonight I pack up stuff for crafty goodness at Paula's tomorrow.

What's your fav?

Our challenge this week over at Blogabella was to use one of our fav Stamping Bella images. really? I have to pic a fav? So I decided to go with my current fav line which are the uptown girls and chose an image that hasn't seen ink yet...this is uptown girl CLAUDIA has a candy. Do you like how I just used a portion of the sentiment so it would fit in my tag? But don't look too close, because I did get just a smidge of overflow ink, however, not enough for me to trash it and try again.

As with all my uptown girls, she is on a large 5x7 card, stamped with memento ink on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured with copic markers. I added some shading with prismacolor pencils and gamsol and they really did come in handy on the candy. After I coloured it with markers, it was too pink to match my paper...No worries!....a bit of some deeper orange on there with pencil blended out with gamsol altered the colour perfectly.

What did ya think of the release and Emily's new artists? It was a great release with a little something to please everyone I thought. Now me, I am a little smitten with little matilda and romana, but LOVE tHE cool sophistication of the Jane Davenport line. Can't wait to get my hands on them and hopefully you can't wait to see them all coloured up soon.


Next week we are taking the pressure off and going back to a sketch. I really think we need a shout out to our fantastic Ebru for making these for us so go give her some love this week. Remember to upload your image to the Stamping Bella SCS forum using the keyword BELLARIFFIC0312. And to make our gallery the BEST on SCS, add the keyword StampingBella.

Now for a puppy update, Bessie had her CCL (equivalent to a human ACL) surgery yesterday and is resting comfortably at home. Her spirit is totally broken because she is an active ole' gal and I'm sure doesn't quite understand why she can't run and jump and play and bark at all the dog walkers in 'her' field nextdoor. On a good note, when I came home from work today she perked right up to see me and managed to eat something. Two weeks of restricted movement, then we can start trying to get her to use the leg again. I love my sassy little dog and can't wait till she has her old personality back. (i say that now, but I may regret that in a few weeks when I'm trying to get something done and she shoves a toy in my leg).

Does this mean Winter is coming? AND a GIVEAWAY!

Our challenge this week has to do with snow...and we wanna know if there is snow at your house, or at the very least...incorporate some snow on your card. Personally the ONLY snow I hope to see this winter is on my cards. I'm getting older, and the older I get, the more I hate snow. I hate shovelling it and/or tromping thru salt melted mush that ruins my collection of designer boots! I don't care what they say about UGGS, I NEVER want mine to trudge thru salt melted slush because I prefer to keep them in a pristine state and wear them as a fashion statement.

BUT....uptown gal Quinn wears her UGGS is not only fashionable but does not appear to be afraid to stand in snow with them. She is braver than I am that's for sure!

I think this is my FAV uptown girl. Now I love them ALL, but this one really speaks to me and I think it is because of what she is wearing....I would dress like that. heck I do dress like that! Since my UGGS are dark brown, I had to colour hers dark brown too, and her coat had to match...because Quinn would not have it any other way. Now for the other colours....hmmmm.....what to wear with brown? In my opinion anything goes....for me, brown is like black, anything goes. So that is when I went to my paper stash and decided on green to go with this basic grey ambrosia paper. Good choice I thought...after all, I would wear that. In the end she turned out exactly as I had envisioned her. Classy, sassy, and sophisticated! I LOVE those uptown girls!

Next week our challenge is HOLIDAY WISHES. With the holiday season just around the corner THIS is the time to get those juices going and get busy on those holiday cards. I know you need them! I need them! You've GOT to do them, so pull out some of those bella stamps and knock one card off the list, plus play in the challenge for a chance to earn some xmas bucks.

FINALLY ...THE GIVEAWAY!  .....we are calling all creative minds! We know you are out there and we want you to join us! Do you have a great challenge idea? Do you like sketch challenges or do you have something in your head that you would like to see in a challenge next year. Leave me a comment with your idea and I will pick a random comment to be announced on my blog post next FRIDAY. The lucky person will win $25 in BELLA BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!! As Reganabella would say...SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! We wanna hear from you!

My girl wears mink!

I was going to just show you just a teenie bit of her and make you come back for more, but Emily said I could post the entire thing and that made me just as happy! Quite frankly, I HATE just getting a little corner of something, give me all of it, or just go away. And that applies to cheese cake too! If I'm gonna eat it, I'm gonna eat a big piece.

Let me show you Uptown Girl Eva and her mistletoe, just one of Stamping Bella's suprise 'mini' release lineups...I LOVE when she sneaks in little things like this...it makes me giddy! I 'dressed' her up in velvet trimmed in mink, not cheapie velvet and fake fur, no way, my Uptown Girl is all about high end fashion. Then I gave her a smokey vintage look pairing her up with some basic grey and cosmo cricket. I think I may send this card to myself this year! HAHAHAA!

I probably don't have to say it, but I will. She was stamped with Memento ink on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured with copic markers. Didn't use any pencil on the dress, just to shade around her. Then I sponged on some versafine thatched straw and finished up with a bit of Tea Dye Distress ink.

These are the copic markers I used:
E000, 00, 11, 15, 17, 18, 29
E40, 42, 43, T5, W7, C8, 9
R20, 24, 46, 39, 89, G24, 29

Now don't go away for too long, because I'll be back tomorrow with another one....can you say Christmas?

Another Sunday

I've spent the last couple hours cleaning up the mixed media mess in my kitchen. Man can I make a mess! Last night I finished Emily's AJ Monday page....I went VERY clean and simple this week because I think I exhausted myself painting the front and back covers of my coptic journal. If you are wondering what that is, it is a hand stitched journal and mine is assembled with Arches watercolor paper. It is the journal I will be using for my Suzi Blu A Lovely dream art journal class. She is ONE amazing artist.

Moving on....I do have a card today and it's one I created for our display at Scrapfest. Meet POSH has a present. A while back I asked if there was anything from the latest release you would like me to colour and I haven't forgotten about you, I just don't have those images yet and when I do get them, they will be the first I go to.

In the meantime, Margo wanted the shopping uptown girls in GREEN and since I don't have the 'girls' yet, I thought I'd tackle Posh in greens. Of course EVERYTHING couldn't be green so I threw in some pink.

When I want soft greens like this, I tend to use the lightest copics and do the rest of the shading and highlighting with pencil. And I couldn't do this all up in green without actually telling you what I used so here goes:

E000, 00, 11 (face)
G20, 40, 12 (dress)
G000, 00, BG11, G21 (green bags)
R00, RV11, R21, 22 (pink bags, shaded with E31)
E11, 13, 25, 27 (hair)
YG11, 21, 25, 67, G34 (bows and shoes)

for the pencils:
To shade the dress, I used some Kelp green and highlighted with white
I added some peacock green to the polkadot bag
I shaded around the image with pale sage first, then added some kelly green

Hope you like her! Now I'm ready to colour something up for our POP IT UP Friday challenge. hmmmmmmm, what to do, what to do.

Saving the BEST for last!

Meet Stamping Bella MADISON and her MARGARITA!

When Emily showed me this one I told her that she didn't ask my permission to use my image and motto! HAHAHAAA....seriously, I should get some of the royalties from this one.

Because it was going to be used in the paper pieRcing challenge for today I decided to pierce under the sentiment (which by the way, comes with the image) but I couldn't find my handy dandy piercing tool so I laid down a metal ruler. Well, as you can see, it slipped on me and I have a wonky line...oh well, look at what this girl is wearing, I really don't think she will care about a wonky line...she is probably too tipsy to notice!

Okay...enough of that! Are you sensing I LOVE her...she was stamped on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured with the following copic markers. Pencils were ONLY used for the grounding and blue shading.

E000,00, 11, 21, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 31, 33, 53, 55

R20, 21 27, 43, BG000, RV00, 10, 11, 23, 55

V15, 17, 93, 95, G20, 40, 12, 82

YG61, Y00, 11, 35, YR30, 68, C0, T3, 5

WHEW! lotsa colours there! Next week our challenge is all about da bugs...not the creepy kind that have more than 8 legs and scare the **** out of me...the cute kind...like as in HUGABUGS! See ya all soon...I have more of the new release to be coloured up in the next couple days.

Meet the Uptown Girls

If you haven't been to Bloggabella in the last couple days you had better just skip on over what I have to say and hi-tail it on over there to meet the Uptown Girls. Yesterday Emily introduced you to Claudia and today she revealed Victoria and Juliette...and YOU must read her funny story...nobody can tell a story as good as Emily and she fesses up on how she manipulated me into colouring up these gals. Without further delay, meet Victoria and Juliette...and just so ya know...they also come with a sentiment that says "Girls just wanna have fun"...is THAT NOT THE TRUTH!

Now really, HOW STINKING CUTE ARE THESE GIRLS! I seriously think they are the most yummy delish TALL SKINNY GORJUS gals I have EVER laid my eyes on! Did I say skinny, yes I think I already said that.

In case you are wondering that would be me on the left...because A) she's got her fav glass of red with her and, B) it's is one of those BIG glasses like the kind you get at the Keg and C) strapless tight waisted dresses are a thing of my past (actually, maybe a thing of past dreams!)...OMG, I just cracked myself up!

Finally, CHECK OUT THOSE STRAPPY SHOES!!!!! "I" on the left am wearing a silver glittery pair just like the Jimmy Choo's that Kate wore when she wowed Hollywood (ya, I'm a Kate stalker) while my BFF on the right has on some shiney patent leather beauties.

I'm squeezing this post in on my lunch hour, so I'll be back later to list the copics I used....alrighty...I gotta get back to the day job.

Linda.