Hi Mom, are you reading this?

This is a super exciting post for me today because it will be the first time my mom will be able to read it  from the comfort of her own home! YUP! This Christmas my brother and I got our parents online and I'm so excited!

I talk to my parents frequently but sadly not as often as I blog so having them 'connected' will keep them up to date on my crazy life at the touch of a button! The best part is that they are embracing it and loving it and that just makes me so happy. They have my number and I have offered myself up as their 7x24 support! And lucky for them, they won't even have to pay a support maintenance fee! Pretty sweet deal!

Personal excitement aside, I do have a card today! I know I've been laying low for the past several days but I was kind of carded out! Early Christmas morning hubby asked if I had cards for the boys and I said NO, give them a boxed one! How sad is that? I made close to 95 Christmas cards this year but didn't even make one for hubs and the boys! They all laughed it off but I hope to rectify it next year! You might equate me to a plumber who has leaky faucets in his house! Get my drift?

In my colouring hiatus I was feeling a little scrappy and decided  to create a scene with Stamping Bella's Artsy House as the focal image.

This is how I did it!

I started by stamping Atrsy House on a couple different papers and pieced it together after sponging the edges with distress ink. Then I stamped lulu KETTO's heart clusters on red patterned paper and cut some of them out to create the 'smoke' out of the chimney. Ketto was used again and I stamped tripletree on a piece of subtle green patterned paper (actually the same paper as the foreground grass) with versamark and embossed it with clear EP, then coloured in the open leaves with a black water based marker. Why water based? Because I could be sloppy and get it on the embossed portions and then just wipe it off the excess with a damp paper towel and not worry about staining the embossed portion. The trees were stamped again with black versafine on the same brown DP used for the roof of the house and I cut and pieced the trees together.

The rolling edge of the foreground grass was cut freehand, the fence is a Martha Stewart punch and the hills were cut from some cosmo cricket paper. The blue patterned paper was from my scrap drawer and I have no idea where it came from! The clouds are a Papertrey die and the I just love you sentiment is Stamping Bella but I can't find the link so it may have come as a sentiment with an image. I've emailed Emily so when I find out exactly where it came from I'll update the link.

Finishing touches include liquid applique doused with glitter on the clouds, glossy accents on the windows and heart on the door and a product from JudiKins called Speckles to give some texture to the foreground grass.

That it is! I had a lot of fun doing this card and i felt like I was piecing a quilt...don't get me started on quilting though...that is whole other passion that I won't get into here!

Later, Linda.

This is why I make cards...

Besides the comfort and relaxation I get from colouring, every once in a while I get an email or a phone call from some one who received one of my cards and it may go like this email I got from Kathy this morning...

"I LOVE IT!!! …thanks so much …I was thinking since you had given the first one to Emily I would never see it again!!! …so very excited to see it again …it’s truly beautiful …

..I’m planning on doing a scrapbook with just pictures of children I’ve taken and this card will be in that book!"

Remember this post...when I got the CHOIR with a star on top by Mo Manning I coloured it 'specifically' for my friend Kathy. Then Emily, knowing it was for my friend, asked if I would have time to colour another one for her before the Toronto Creative Festival. Well...heck, it was probably only September and I knew I wouldn't have time to do another one for her on such short notice so I gave that one to her and PROMISED myself I would do another for Kathy. But I never let on! hehehehehe! It was SO hard to keep it a secret!
 

Feeling pretty good right now that I kept my promise and I DID colour another one for Kathy because she is my friend, and my pod mate for 8 hours a day and if ANY image was meant for her, this was the one...and i HAD to do it!
 
I hope it looks as good as the original Kathy!
 
Now I'll be taking a few days off to spend Christmas with my family but I won't be gone long...I should be back next week. Maybe with some stray Christmas cards, maybe something different...who knows! I'm just gonna wing it!
 
Later, Linda! ....have a wonderful Holiday!

A repeat

Same image, different colours!

I've seen so many cards out there done up with this Door with Wreath and no wonder, it is a stunning image. I know I've coloured it before but knew I wanted to do it again...mainly because my original card went to Emily for display at her booth and I couldn't let this Christmas slide without sending one out. I could have just done a repeat of my original, but how boring would that be. I wanted to do a red door but Paulabella screamed noooooooooooo when I told her because she was doing a red door (we no likey to compete) so I decided to do a brown door with a red shovel.

I used E40 thru E44 on the door and warm greys on the frame with G82, 94 and 99 on the wreath. Again I added some green glitter to the wreath and liquid applique doused with glitter for the snow. I let the liquid applique dry overnight and then heated it just slightly to puff it up a bit. Helen, who works for Emily at the Stamping Bella boooo-tique said many people asked what glitter I used on the wreath, so for inquiring minds it is Art Institute, Ultra fine, #167 Rain Forest Transparent. whew! And for the snow, I used Hero Arts prisma glitter (one of my fav all purpose go-to glitters when i want iridescence)

After I had it all coloured I searched my paper stash and had NOTHING to match it...a good excuse to make a trip to Pickle and low and behold, this piece of Crate Paper from the Restoration collection could NOT have been more perfect. I think I may go back and get a couple more sheets just in case I decide to make a few more of these for my stash.

Till next time, later....Linda.

Whadoya think about a Christmas Penguin

I think it is ADORABLE on so many levels!

A) it was relatively easy to colour
B) it paired up nicely with Basic Grey's jovial paper, and
C) he's just darn cute!

This is penguin with a gift by Mo Manning available in rubbah at Stamping Bella.

As I ALWAYS do, I stamped him with memento ink on bella's BESTEST paper and coloured him up with my copic markers. I think I used EVERY shade of cool grey on this little guy. Then added just a small bit of white pencil for some highlights.

For all my friends and family on my mailing list, I FINALLY got the cards in the mail today. It was bittersweet to see them go because some of them I really love and had trouble parting with so soon. Like this little guy....hmmm....wonder who he will go to?????

Later, Linda.

It's a birthday surprise!

A surprise birthday blog hop for our very own Danabella! Happy Birthday sistah!

If you just popped in here, you might want to step back a bit and start at the beginning on Karen's blog, yes that Karen, the former KarenMotzabella. It is so fun playing with her and some former babes again!

For Dana's card, I was lucky enough to get putyourFEETupabella in the mail this week and I think it is THE PERFECT card for her. This is how I hope she is spending her day, kicking back, relaxing and lounging in a big chair. Maybe even with a drink in hand!

Now you can hop on over to another former babe Joanne Basile.

Enjoy your day Dana, and enjoy the hop everyone!

Happy Friday!

And oh what a happy Friday it is because I am now on vacation until January 3rd! Of course, I shouldn't really call it a vacation because Derek comes home from Hamilton today and Alex will be home Wednesday that means lots of cooking and spoiling their bellies! But it also means lots of bodies in the house to protect me from any future attacks. And I should also mention that the pooch will be the happiest one of all because order will be restored and the entire family will be under one roof. She really misses snuggling up with Derek.

Another reason that it is a happy Friday is because I have another Christmas card under my belt. I was hoping to have my two more done so I could get those cards mailed out today, but no such luck. I'll get them done today though. This is Stamping Bella's Polly Packages and another one of my all time fav images. I love her little work boots!

I've had her coloured up for a while and used Basic Grey Pyrus paper for my inspiration and Paulineabella's sketch fit the bill. Of course I stamped her on bella's BESTEST paper and used the following copic markers:

E000, 00, 11, R20
E50, 53, 55, 40, 42, 43, 44, 49
B0000, 41, 95, 97, BG10, 72, 75
YR20, 21, 23, 24, G82, 94



To complete the sketch, I cut a tag with a spellbinders die and stamped your book is due to give some interest to the background, then stamped season's greetings and finished it off with a double bow made on my bow easy.

That's it for today....tomorrow I have a surprise!

Tall trees and birds again!

This time we are using Stamping Bella's birds decorating TREES and although it was super easy to colour, I could not whip up 20 in a day! But that is what makes this one special...cause it is one of a kind! And whoever on my list gets it, they are the ONLY one who will have it! I kinda like that aspect of the one of a kind Christmas cards I have been sending for the past couple of years.  However, I do now keep track of who gets what image so if I use an image again the following year, no one will get the same image twice. So it is a bit more planning on my part, but I do enjoy looking back on what I sent them the past year and deciding who gets what! It's like organizing and I do LOVE to organize things!

Okay...on to the card...I did not colour this one last year, I don't even think I had it last year and I'll NEVER know why because I just LOVE LOVE LOVE this image!

I started with a base of copic markers, but coloured it primarily with pencils to match up with the cosmo cricket paper. Just as I was about to start adding some snow or glitter (or both) below the trees I decided that the  merry christmas sentiment would fit PERFECTLY stamped below that solid line. (hmmmm....do you think Emily planned that one out?)

My biggest stress was hoping I would stamp it straight! It is just a bit off so note to self...USE THAT STAMP POSITIONER WHEN YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS IN THE FUTURE! oh well, I'm not stressing over it...the teeny little flaws make it even more 'one of a kind'. I even decided that I wanted to keep the card 'cosy' so mounted it on an A2 size card which I rarely do. But it seems when I want a cosy feel, that is the size I use. Besides, when I display my xmas cards, it is always the smaller ones that get a spot 'up front' so I hope this one gets front and center wherever it may land.

That's it for today...tomorrow my card using the FANTABULOUS sketch from our fellow babe Paulineabella!

Later, Linda.

Case of a Case!

I've been soooo bizzzzy my head is spinning. Do you know that tonight I just finished up close to my 95th Christmas card! YUP! I do 45 for myself, about 30 for my mom and 20 for Mark to give out at work! I'm freaking exhausted! Mine are ALMOST done (just a couple more to do), Mom's are done and I think she has got them in the mail already and this past Sunday I needed to get going on Mark's. Needless to say I wanted them to be simple, yet striking. So I decided a CASE was in order and sifted through all my past received handmade xmas cards (yes, I've kept all hand made cards that I've received...one day eventually I will start to purge them because I don't hoard things, but for now, I still have them all).

I came across a card that I have ALWAYS loved that Paulineabella sent me a couple years ago which I think may have been inspired by a Michelle Zindorf card. So I took Pauline's card and simplified it just a bit to make construction easier and came up with this. I LOVE IT! And by golly, I whipped up 20 of them in no time!

The trees come from a Stamping up retired set called Trees Three (one of my alltime fav SU sets), the sentiment is Verve and those little cardinals, well, I borrowed them from Pauline! I think they are also SU. I used my pan pastels to shade below the trees and that embossed border on the left is a cuttlebug embossing border edge. Like Paula, I also have a Sizzix Vagabond and whipping these thru that electric machine was a snap! And oh so much easier on the old wrist of mine!

Thanks Michelle and Pauline for the inspiration!

Tomorrow, more trees, Bella style!

Later...Linda.