Polly Packages 2011

I have coloured up Stamping Bella's Polly Packages every year for the past three years (I think) and each card I make I like better than the one before it. Hmmmm....could be with all the cards I have been colouring over the years I think I may be getting better at it. I've said it before, but it never hurts to repeat it....PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!!! It really does make a difference. You'll find your groove, settle into your style and when that light bulb goes off it will become much easier when you find YOUR comfort zone.

This year I gave her a rustic feel and paired her up with Basic Grey's 6x6 Wassail paper and coloured her with the following copic markers:

E000, 00, 11, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49
E04, 07, 09, 30, 33, 37, 55, 57
E51, 53, Y11, 26, 28, R22, 35, 39
G40, 8, YG61, 67, BG93, 96

WHEW! That seemed like a lot of colours for a tiny chichiboulie. I added some sparkle around her with Hero Arts glitter and going with that rustic feel I pulled out my JudiKins Straw speckles to sprinkle at her feet. One thing you should know...it is best to use some Ranger Glossy Accents, or something similar, to glue down these heavier texture sprinkles. AND, in case you are wondering, the holly vine is a Memory Box die.

I'll be back on Friday with my Bellarific challenge card and hmmmmm....did I use texture on that? I can't remember. You'll just have to wait and see.

Later, Linda

Guilded Trees

I coloured up Stamping Bella's birds decorating TREES with no particular paper in mind. Pretty scary thought isn't it, but I knew I was going to colour them all green with blue shades and blue birds so how tough would it be to find paper to match.

After stamping my trees with memento ink on bella's BESTEST paper I coloured them up with the following copic markers:

YG41, 45, G12, B12, 16, BG07 (trees, birds and ornaments)
E42, 44 (tree trunk)
YR30, E50, 51 (shading around trees)

I decided on an elegant background and used a piece of a solid Basic Grey paper that had subtle shading in it. Ran it thru my vagabond with a sizzix embossing folder and then sponged on some evergreen bough distress ink and tsukineko all purpose ink in Vegas gold. For my local fans, I got this at pickle...which by the way, is where I got the idea ;).  The gold glitter at the base of the trees is a JudiKins product called ROXS. I have several of these very textural accents which I have been hoarding for years and I've decided to start putting them to use. It's all about the details and the more little accents you add, the more the WOW factor will be....but remember, LITTLE is the key to my style! I never want to be so over the top with accents that my image gets lost in the clutter...but that's just me.

Now it's only Tuesday so you still have lots of time to get in on our Friday Challenge over at Bloggabella....our theme is keeping with the season and HOLIDAY is your inspiration. And if you are ready to take the plunge....WORDS is the AJ Monday challenge and you can read about it here.

I've still got one more card to show you before Bellarific Friday, so don't wander off too far! K!

till next time, Linda

AJ Monday

For Emily's AJ Monday I have journalled another thing to document to my list of ever growing passions...gardens. However, this is not a new passion, more likely something inherited from my dad's side of the family. I cannot imagine looking out my kitchen doors and seeing nothing but grass surrounded by a fence. I want interest, and I want flowering shrubs, and hosta's, and interesting trees and in the summer I want to sprinkle all that with some annual flowers. The problem is, our yard is clay and as dry as the sahara. I start out every May with good intentions and then the heat of our southern Ontarion summer sets in and if I'm not home to water several times a day all my good intentions just dry out by July. But one day, when I retire my yard will be the picture perfect overgrown lush victorian garden that I dream of.

I do have a point to all of this rambling and although I have several 'unpublished' pages in my journal that have hearts on them, I was in the mood to create yesterday. So I looked out at my yard that is losing all its greenery and starting to show signs of winter hibernation and that made me think PINK! I needed some pink in my day so pink along with our theme of hearts, I have this page to share.

I sketched the flowers lightly in pencil then gave a watercolor wash in pink over the entire page. I wasn't too concerned about covering up the flowers because I could still see the pencil marks and painted the flowers with acrylics. I hope I've inspired you today, and if you want/need more....just check out Emily's blog later to see the other 'heart' inspired projects.

For you card lovers out there, I'll be back tomorrow with one of those.

till then...Linda

CPS Sketch sponsored by Stamping Bella!

I hope you aren't getting sick of them yet cause I have lots more to make. This one is rather special though because Stamping Bella is the sponsor over at CPS this week and I'm a lucky babe to get to showcase my card! You may have gotten a glimpse of it last week because we babe's had our dates mixed up.  I think CPS may be one of the first card sketch blogs to hit the net and has always been one of my go-to sites when I'm feeling a little sketch challenged.

For this card I decided to make a cozy little A2 size and pull out Stamping Bella's SNOWY house.

Like I do every time, I stamped it on bella's BESTEST paper and used the following copic markers:

R22, 24, 29, G40, 82, 94, 20
YG93, 95, 97, 99, E42, 43, 44
R59, B0000, BG000, 10, 11
C00, 1, W1

For some extra glitz, I cut the Tim Holtz snowflakes out and completely covered them in glitter. Some Icicle Stickles on the roof top, flowersoft snow on the ground and gel glaze pen on the christmas lights finished it off.

Now don't forget, tomorrow's AJ Monday over at Bloggabella is to make Jayden smile and use a heart on your page, or like I did, use A LOT of hearts...come on there is still time....give it a try!

Happy Black Friday to my American friends

...and a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all too! We have our own recent American Thanksgiving tradition as well and that is to head to Windsor on Wednesday night with friends, dine at the Keg, lose money at the Casino and then head to the Lion's football game on Thursday. Truth be told, I just 'tag along' to the game and I'm only interested in the dinner and Casino part.

I also updated my profile pic with my new 'do'....I will say that it didn't look anything like that this morning. I almost scared myself when I got out of bed. Yesterday for the game I just showered and blew my hair dry without any real concern for style. (really, with people wearing turkey's or blocks of chess on their heads, who is gonna look at my hair) Well my natural waves took over and by the end of the day it was getting a bit 'large', and by this morning it was out of control and i woke up looking like Kramer. EEEK! So I guess it is not quite as blow and go as I thought.

Enough about my adventures...I do have a card, and it's another quickie. This past week I have been focused on getting Mom's Xmas cards done and when I get on a roll like that it is hard for me to switch gears. This is Stamping Bella's reindeer circle and I kept the card very clean and simple turning the circle into a hanging ornament.

I'm lucky to have the day off today so I'm gonna put another card together which is all ready and coloured up. Then head to pickle to get more paper to finish Mom's cards, oh before that I will shower and deal with my hair! And this afternoon, just pull out some images and my copics and relax the afternoon away.

I'm also feeling the urge to get a little creative with product so I may just throw in another no-colouring-required card again. We'll see. Our challenge next week at Bloggabella is appropriate for the first Friday in December and it will be another HOLIDAY card! I don't know about you, but Christmas is most fav season to make cards.

AJ Monday

Our AJ challenge this week over at Stamping Bella was to draw a face. Now I am no portrait artist but I have been practicing a lot this month and I am getting better at it. I also must say that taking a couple of Suzi Blu's online classes have helped to build my confidence.

I drew her roughly, VERY roughly with pencils first. One thing I have learned is that I am more of a sketchy drawer and cannot get that line correct the first time so I sort of sketch with lots of lines. Then I erased some of the extra lines and watercoloured her face and the background lightly. Now the best part...adding some pencil crayon....AHH the control of the pencil crayon after the uneasy looseness of the pencil and watercolour. I started to gain confidence at this point. Then I used a foam stamp with acrylic paint for the flowers building some layers and softness. And of course I used bright happy colours to represent my mood at the time....a new 'do' will do that to me (don't worry...I'll update my profile pic shortly)

That's it....I couldn't even bring myself to journal anything on it! And speaking of journalling, I have had a couple questions on how I do my journalling. It's no big deal really, NO it is not a stencil, not computer generated, no die cuts....here is how I do it...and it turns out different every time depending on where I thicken my lines.

Step 1: just write (or print) what you want to say

Step 2: I use a black Pitt Big Brush pen to start thickening the lines on the left side

Step 3: Start filling in those thicker lines and wherever else you want! Again, I am using my Pitt Big brush but you can also use a Sharpie, pen and ink caligraphy set, whatever. Just be careful that what you use is not going to react with water if you want to seal your work with mod podge or PPA.

Step 4: this is my fun part and I add some shading. Lately I have been addicted to one of my Golden Fluid Acrylic paints. It is such a beautiful rich gold and really opaque. If I have time and/or desire I might even make those words pop more by adding another 'strip' of shading along the gold lines with a browinsh shade of pitt pen and while it is still wet, just soften it off with my finger.

So that's it, my attempt at drawing a face and my journal style. Hope you enjoyed it. Next week our Bellarific AJ challenge comes directly from Emily's daughter Jayden....YAY Jayden...I miss you sweetie....she wants to see hearts on your page. I think I can do that! Stay tooned!

And other stuff....

if you got a 'sneak peek' at my CPS challenge all I can say is OOPS! It wasn't supposed to be posted until NEXT Sunday.
our theme this Friday at Blogabella is FREE FORM! Strutt your stuff and show us what you got.
Emily snuck in a new 'mini' release not even telling us babes about it! How is that for secrecy! My order is going in tonight....go check it out here
I'm signing off because I'm going shopping! (then sleeping...the time change is KILLING ME!)

later, Linda.

I cut my hair today!

Well..."I" personally didn't cut it...my hairdresser Liz cut it. For several years now I have been wearing it in a smooth straight bob and I went in today and said...CHOP IT OFF!...I'm done with the straight iron, I want something simple, longish layers, blow and go that will work with my natural waves, but something I can still straighten to make look sleek and sophisticated if I want...and I brought pictures! I trust my dear Liz to tell me NO your hair won't do that but to my delight she said 'we can do that'.  I was excited! I was ready!

When all was said and done and my hair was lying on the floor I asked her if I thought she cut off a half pound! It certainly feels like a half pound lifted from my head and that might make a good weigh in at WW next week! LOL!!!! OMG...I can't even believe that thought entered my head! But I have been a little 'cheaty' this week, so if a half pound of hair makes up for the sodium laden chinese food I had...I'll take it! I don't know about you, but ONE meal of chinese food, even the slightest bit will tip the scale for me by about 3lbs...so I avoid it as much as I can, but sometimes you just gotta live and enjoy a thai or chinese meal.

Okay...enough about my hair and salt issues...I have a FAB CARD to share today to go with our FAB SKETCH provided by our sketch queen Ebru. I don't know if I've said this, but she is really among one of the most thoughtful and generous people I have ever met and her sketches ALWAYS WOW me. We are so lucky to have her as part of our team. With that out of the way, I bring you Stamping Bella's Pia Puddingtop, one of my FAV holiday images.

I kept with my vintage theme that I've got going on lately and pulled out some non-traditonal paper...Basic Grey curio....as my inspiration. She was stamped on bella's BESTEST paper with memento ink and coloured with copic markers, and shaded with prismacolor pencils and gamsol.

These are the copics I used:
EOOO, OO, 11, 51, 53, 55, 23, 25, 27
G12, YG41, 45, 67, 99, Y15, YR 14
B32, 34, 37, CO, 3, RV 23, 34, 17, R85, 89

I finished off by sponging all my pieces with distress ink tea dye and vintage photo and adding glitter around the image. Now...I have had a couple questions about applying glitter, shading, etc and I do have some links on my sidebar to some pseudo-tutorials that I have done. I'm not in the tutorial business because I do have a day job but from time to time I may add something there so be sure to check it out because it may answer some of your questions. On the topic of tutorials, I've had a couple questions about how I journal on my AJ pages. If time permits this weekend I'll put together some pics (sorry no video!) on my processs and post them with my AJ Monday page.

Next week our challenge will be FREE FORM!!!!!!!!!! Let your creative juices flow, personally, I KNOW mine will be anothe xmas card! My stash is low sisters! VERY low!

'till next time, Linda

The tree at Rockefeller Plaza has nothing on this one...

These are Stamping Bella's Christmas PEEP's and LOOK at the size of that tree!

When I did this one last year I paper pieced it but this time I decided to colour it and pulled out some Cosmo Cricket paper as my inspiration. I started by stamping on bella's BESTEST paper with black memento ink and used the following copic markers:

E000, 21, 11, 42, 44, 23, 25, 27

G12, YG41, 45, 67, 99, Y15, YR14, B32, 34, 37

RV23, 34, 17, R85, 89, C0, 3

I then added some turquoise pencil crayon to my tree and blended it out with Gamsol because I wanted to alter the colour slightly to better match my paper. I shaded around the tree with yellow pencils, then sponged some yellow around the edges while keeping my die in place and the two just blend together making it look like I coloured on yellow paper! Once I had the card all put together I added a nice thick glob of Ranger glossy accents to the ornaments to give them dimension. It is crazy, but I love doing that!

Now for some exciting news...Paula is having a birthday giveaway...so you have two things to do...first send her some love because she is getting older! (okay...that is NOT a requirement!!!!) And TWO....play along in her challenge to win yourself some of her fav images in bella rubber.

Here is what you gotta do:

• play in this weeks challenge over at Stamping Bella and your name will be entered into the draw
• play again in next week's challenge and your name will get entered again!

How cool is that...leave it up to Paula to do something so fun and creative. If you want all the details you can read it on this post.

And if you wanna get working on this weeks challenge immediately, here is the sketch...a WINNER!

Now go get crafty, that's an order!