Friday is here again!

As I write this post I'm sitting having a coffee and watching Jason Mraz sing on the plaza on my fav Today show! He was the opening act when we saw Dave this spring and that song I'm Yours just makes me smile! As much as I love Fridays, this one is bittersweet for me because it's the last day of my stay-cation! Oh how I have LOVED my time at home. I got some things done around the house, spent some time with family and friends, got some colorin' done and basically lazed around to re-energize for what I know will be a buzy September. The boys will be heading off to different Universities and haven't been doing much to get prepared. I'm sure once they get there it's gonna be a lot of "mom, i need this". Fortunately, one is heading to Hamilton and the other to London so they are in the same direction and at most 2 1/2 hours away.


I took some creative liberties on Paula's sketch because I needed to make an anniversary card for my mom and chose Funky Irises. I didn't have any appropriate sentiments to fit the sketch so I replaced those with embellies instead. Three light olive glass pearls on the upper left and a bow down to the right. I colored with copics and added some sponging on the edge with my dauber and wheat and thatched straw ink.

short list for a change on the copics:
E40, 41, 50, T1
YR000, 12, 20, 31
R22, 24, YG03, 67, G82

Best get moving here, got groceries to do and some housecleaning to prep for another family bbq tomorrow! 16 people...YIKES!

Got on the Turtletot Bandwagon

Looking at those cute as a button turtle cards that Joannabella has been posting lately made me want to color one up and see what all the fuss was about! See...I get sucked up in blogs just like everyone else does!

My little nephew's birthday is coming up so I thought I had the perfect excuse to get me one (okay I bought three!) and pulled out Turtle Tot Cowboy. They are seriously fun to color and I stamped this little guy on bella paper and used my copics but added the sky and dried out grass with pencils. then I took my colorless blender to the belly to create some dots and highlighted them a bit so they would look a bit dimensional. THEN, I went over the dots with my clear glaze pen to add some texture and added some sponging to the edges with versamagic wheat chalk ink and a dauber.

In typical Joannabella style, I even used THREE co-ordinating Scenic Route papers. However, unlike Joanne, I did NOT stitch on my card. I just can't seem to bring myself to use my beloved Bernina to sew paper! And check out the dots! They fit just perfectly into the doughnut circles!

Don't forget to play along in this week's Bellarific friday sketch challenge brought to us by Paula....and don't worry folks, she was much easier on us this time!

ETA! Sorry folks, I forgot to list the copics used....here they are

E11, 13, 33, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44

W2, 3, B41, 52, 95, 97

YG11, 13, 17, G82, 85, Y15, 26

It's a shoe thing

I have a shoe thing! I love them and there was a time in my life when I would not even leave the house unless my shoes complimented my outfit! Sick I know! All that changed last summer when I got plantar fasciitis and a heel spur in my left foot! A year of pain, and ORTHOTICS...ACK!!! really put a damper on my little obsession. Now when you see me I will likely be wearing sensible shoes, I still try to keep them fashionable but more importantly, sensible. I recall when I started stamping 6 or 7 years ago the hubs asked where I was getting the money to buy all these stamps...I said "haven't you noticed that I haven't bought any new shoes lately"...LOL! Now when I am not spending my disposable income on stamps, I buy purses!


So now, since I can't buy hot looking shoes for my feet, I buy them in rubber! These daisy hightops just called my name! And if it's a girl thing I always reach for pink, yellow and green...my hands down fav girly color combo. I stamped the image with memento ink on bellah paper, colored them in copics and finished off the shading and grass with pencils. The edges were sponged with a dauber (that I see Emily now is stocking!!! YAY!!!) and Versamagic Thatched Straw ink.

Get ready...copics used in this image:

Y0000, 00, 11, 15, 17
YR0000, 000, 04, 14, 18
R24, 81, 83, RV0000, 00, 10
YG03, 25, 67, W00, 0, 1, 2
C0, 1, 2, 3, E42, 43

On a final note, yesterday I made the trip to the Heirloom Rubber Stamp Festival in Novi, Michigan with my Chatham stamping buds Lynn and Pauline and even hooked up with some of my American stampin sistahs, Paula, Dana, Shannan and Mary. While I'm chatting with Mary she points out Kimmie Ried standing a few feet away. I don't know her but I sheepishly walk over and say Hi Kimmie Ried, I'm Lindabella!!!! LOL!!!! We jumped, squealed and hugged like we had known each other FOREVER! Too fun!

ETA: Kimmie, I've been thinking and 'cause I'm central to you and Paula the next girly girl get together we have at my place I love for you and Andrea to join us in Chatham....think about and we'll keep in touch! It's all about stamping...and maybe pizza!

I've got a nice quiet day planned which hopefully will include some coloring!

Imagine This!

Your guy says to you "hey honey, let's go shopping, I'll buy you whatever you want, and I'll even carry the parcels for ya"! What would you do? Pull out Retailfellabella and give him a nice little thank you card like this with a sentiment that says oh happy day! Or, if you were me, you'd have to call 911 because I'd be going into cardiac arrest...LOL!!!! Okay, I'm just kidding, my guy is pretty darn good to me, NOW, he won't buy me anything I want, but he will carry parcels for me, and he doesn't even mind shopping.

I also think this card is VERY appropriate for today because have you seen the ***new releases*** over at Stamping Bella. OMG....that ketto clothesline is in my future, not to mention the new Lulu collection , Studio Petite AND some new Krista christmas images. Head on over to this post on emily's blog for a direct link to all the new images. AND to make it even easier on ya, there is free shipping on orders over $50 with this code...julyfs.

I'm gonna digress here for a bit, so skip on over this if you don't want to hear about it. But, one day a couple years ago we decided to go shopping at Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills Michigan. It is shaped like a racetrack with stores in the center and stores around the perimeter. We parked at a center entrance. Just as you walk in there is an entertainment store, FYE which is in the center and two entrances, one on either side of the 'track'. We sync our watches, I go off and and he heads into FYE. Mark doesn't realize that the store has two entrances and enters one side, but exits the other, he leaves the store and gets his bearings as to where we are gonna meet. So now it is time to meet up. Usually when I get to the designated spot he is waiting for me, but not this time. No biggie, I just wait a bit longer. Twenty minutes later I'm thinking...hmmm...this ain't good! So i do a wander around the 'track' but cut thru a walkway just before I hit the entrance to FYE on the other side. I'm now getting a bit worried so I go outside to see if the car is still there. I'm thinking, I ran into him at Eddie Bauer and he told me that he just bought me Neil Diamond's new CD so why would he do that and then decide to dump me at a mall! So I go back to our designated spot. Suddenly all the security guys riding around on scooters seem more apparent and I think...OMG...he has been abducted! Someone snatched him, took him to the men's washroom and performed surgery on him to harvest his organs! I PANIC....just as I'm about to go to the security office to have him paged he shows up! He had been waiting on the 'other' side of FYE! I was never so happy to see him and after beating on his chest like a wild orangutan monkey we head on over to Carraba's for dinner where THREE, yes THREE glasses of wine were needed to calm me down! BWAAAAHAHAHAH! We have been back to that mall since, but he now uses the Liz Claiborne store as his landmark!

Bella and her fella were colored in copic markers and I also did some shading with the copics, but it wasn't doin' it for me so I took out the pencils to add some more!

For those who gotta know, here are the copics used in this image.
E50, 51, 53, 000, 00, 11, 13, 15
E41, 42, 43, 44
YR12, 14, 09, R0000, 00, 02, 05
BG0000, 000, 11, 02, 72, 75, 78
YG03, 25, 67
W00, 01, C1, 3, 5, 9

Now while you head on over to Stamping Bella to do some shopping, I'm gonna go wash those windows that didn't get done the other day!

No fair girl!

I just LOVE the name of this stamp, No Fair Girl...gosh, I don't know HOW many times I whined that while I was a little stinker! And then she's got that little hmph look going on! It is seriously just too darn cute! A bunch of little sentiments come with her and I used my stamp positioner to align a couple of them up for the tag.

I should be making a whole stash of these cards because even though I HAVE a whole stash of cards sitting in my house, I am THE WORST about actually mailing them out and I'm notoriously late getting birthday cards in the mail.

The paper used on this card is a piece of Making Memories that I bought last time I was at da bella's. I really love papers that have a border built into them because it gives a nice layered look without all the work! And heck, after I spent all that time colorin' I'm all about finding the easy way out. In case you are wondering, I typically spend 30-45 minutes to color an image of this size. Longer if they are bigger. Oh ya, and I finally got new specs so that should help to ease my pain, and if I'm lucky, speed it up a bit cause I'll spend less time holding the darn thing out at an arms length to get a good look at it! LOL!

I pulled the following copic markers for this image and stamped her on Bella's Bestest paper. All shading was done with pencils and Versa magic thatched straw was sponged on the edges:
E00000, 000, 00, 11, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47
E31, 15, 50, N0
Y11, YR02, 12, 20, 21
R20, 22, 24, 29
BG0000, 000

Stay-cation update: Last night was our final Dave Matthews concert of the season, so sad to see it come to an end but it was a fantastic show and he sang soooooo many songs from the new CD. We had great seats, 22nd row to the right of the stage. From there we could see into the side of the stage where they walk out and who was sitting watching daddy sing...Dave's twin daughters. They looked so unimpressed, not even toe-tapping! I'm sure it was just a run of the mill day for them. Oh ya, I got busted for taking pictures. You aren't allowed cameras at his shows but every other person seems to sneak one in and I am the one to get busted...likely because I was sitting on an aisle and the security people last night were like Nazi's! So I didn't get as many pics as I normally do, but I'll put this one out here just for my own personal enjoyment!

Copic VS Pencils

I occassionally get asked if I prefer copics or pencils. Honestly, I can't say I like one more than the other so a few evenings ago I sat on sofa and decided to take Butterflyabella and color one with pencils and the other with copics and compare the two. What do ya think? I would say I like the pants, grass and shading on the pencil image, but much prefer doing the tiny areas with my copics, like the shirt and the ruffle. And most definitely I like using copics for flesh which I did on both of these cards. And one thing I really like to do is color a base image with limited shading in copics and then go in with my pencils to add some depth! I'll show you that another time.


Are you wondering which image made it on a card? Well, I decided to use the pencil version and if you live nearby you can see it up close and personal because she landed herself a permanent home at Pickle.


I still have something else to tell you and that is how I did the flower. It started out a plain jane white flower and I know that some people take their copic air brush to them. Well, I have one of those...no surprise...but didn't want to pull it out. Instead I used a Judi-kins color duster and memento ink. Swirled the brush into the ink pad and dusted it on the flower! Voila! I also used the color duster around the edge of my image, but it was a little too bright yellow so I ended up sponging on some versamagic Wheat chalk ink over the yellow to tone it down. Another great tip I learned from Paula! One thing that isn't in the picture is that i added some glitter around the butterfly because it just needed to be there!

If you want to give this a try yourself, here are the colors used (even pencils, which I never do, mostly because I can't read the color on the pencil! LOL! new glasses coming soon to a babe near you!)

copics:
E000, 00, 11, 53, 55, 57
BG000, 32, 34, 07, 09, 72
R000, 81, 83, RV00
E40, 41, W3
YG13, G24, 94, 85, 99
colorless blender

pencil:
929 Pink
1029 Mahogony Red
992 Light Aqua
995 Aquamarine
933 Violet Blue
1095 Black Raspberry
943 Burnt Ochre
941 Light Umber
947 Dark Umber
1094 Ginger Root
1072 French Grey 50%

Have a nice day folks! I'm off to give my bedroom a good dusting and wash a couple windows!

It's here!

My glorius two week stay-cation has officially arrived. To celebrate I'm treating myself to a frozen Cosmo while I write this post (so please forgive any spelling mistakes! LOL!)


In honor of the pink cosmo I have a pink Curly Surpriseabella that I colored up for this week's Bellarific Friday. I tried really really hard to stay within the challenge, however I had to move my circle element down further to balance off my image otherwise my card was looking too 'top heavy'. I colored her up entirely with copics and added some liquid pearls to one of the packages...an idea that I snatched off of Paula. I really wanted to add some glitter but I just couldn't find the right spot for it.

Copics used in this image are:
V000, RV32, 34
E000, 00, C00, 0, 1
YR00, 20, Y000, 11
YG0000, 00, 21, 91
E31, 33, 35, 41, 57
W3, colorless blender

Now go head on over to Emily's blog because I took a sneak look this afternoon and saw she posted early today! Me thinks it was because she made a faboo card and wanted to show it off!

Addy is gonna get herself in trouble!

Happy Wednesday everyone! It's hump day and at the end of this week I have two glorious weeks of vacation. If I wrote out the million things I've got to do around the house it may not seem that glorious to some but I actually like to spend my vacation putzing around and getting things organized. When I'm working it seems I never have time to do it. And if the weather co-operates I may even find myself floating in my pool chair joining Addy with a martini! And of course I'll squeeze in some colorin' time!


As soon as I saw Addy 'tude who loves her 'tinis I knew she had to be mine, typically it would be a glass of wine in my hand but I've been known to enjoy a girly girl martini from time to time. This Addy even comes packaged up with the fun sentiment. The image was colored entirely with copics on my new fav Bella Bestest papah and I gussied her up with some glamour dust on her fur shawl, a rhinestone in her hair and clear glaze pen on her shoes and glasses. I used to use Ranger glossy accents for that bit of shine but the glaze pen is sooo much easier to use in the tiny areas.

Copics used in this image in no particular order are:
E000, 00, 01, 11, 33, 35, 37
BG000, 01
R30, 32, 35, 37, 59
YR20, 21, 23
G21, 24, YG67
W0, 1, 2, 3
C0, 1 and colorless blender

You still have a couple days to play along with this weeks sketch so hop on over to Emily's blog and check out what Karen Motzabella has in store for us this week! Did you know that I personally know two sistah's who have won bucks! What a small world! Oh and I just saw that Em is giving away FIFTY...YES FIFTY bella bucks and all you have to do is fess up a little secret about yourself! OOOOH, I can't wait to read all the comments!