A new Bella gets inked!

Hi everyone, I've acquired a few new Stamping Bella stamps over the last couple months that have sadly not seen any ink yet, until today! I was cleaning up some of my mess and came upon this scrap piece of patterned paper that screamed Stella to me. So I inked up birthday cake with a stella in it and pulled out the copics. Now I rarely colour an image to match a piece of paper because whenever I try to do it, I always end up using different paper anyhow! But today I was determined, you might say I challenged myself. If Stella was just sitting in front of me and I took my markers to her, I would have NEVER put these colours together so it really was a challenge for me.

I was also determined to stamp on this card and Papertrey's faux ribbon was the perfect match. I stamped the line of dot's in Memento Rose Bud and the sentiment is also from a Papertrey set called Birthday Basics.

All in all it was a good day to use stamps that have never seen ink!

Anatomy of a Card

Hi everyone, this morning I was working on some cards for an upcoming pickle class and after getting a cutie magenta lion all mounted on this card I decided I didn't like it. So I carefully ripped it off and had this green background with giant eyelets left in front of me. After using three of those giant eyelets it seemed sinful to trash the entire thing. So I pulled out my JudiKins abstract leaves that I bought in Novi this past summer and set to work with my prismacolor pencils.


I didn't use gamsol on these, instead I put on thin layers of color with my pencils slowly adding colour until I had enough on there to be blendable. Then I blended the colours together with a blender pencil. When that was done, I coloured on top of the leaves with my VersaMarker and embossed in clear. Finally, I sponged on some Thatched Straw Versamagic around the edges, mounted it on a piece of black cardstock and onto the card it went.


Three giant eyelets salvaged and a good masculine card for my stash!

Home for the Holidays

Merry Christmas everyone! We had our family dinner yesterday, prime rib and all the fixings! I used the temperature probe on my oven for the first time. Way cool! Probe your meat, plug it into the outlet inside the oven, set the temperature you want your meat at, set the oven temp and that's it. The oven display shows what temp the roast is at and when it hits the desired temp, it shut off and beeps! No guessing! It was perfect!

Anyhow, I needed another gift card holder for Casino gift certificates for my parents. These aren't gambling money, they are for the buffet. My mom is quite the regular there so she has tickets for all the upcoming shows and we thought we could treat them to the buffet before or after the show.

I coloured up this house a few weeks ago and almost gave up on it because it was a LOT of work but I kept at it and pulled it out of my stash to finish it this morning. instead of using the stamp that came with the board and beam accessories i used liquid applique with glitter. The image was coloured with my prismacolor pencils and gamsol and i sponged some versamagic thatched straw on the edges.

Better go get ready...we are heading to my brothers place in London this afternoon for the BIG party...my parents will be there and all my sister in law's family...should be about 25 people in all.

Merry Christmas!

Season's Greetings

Hi everyone. I'm sure you think I have dropped off the planet...no...i'm still here, just deep into Christmas. After my 60 Christmas cards I had to take a little break from card making and I spent a couple days crocheting a hat. It's done, but I have to felt it and haven't gotten around to that part of it yet. And I also have to go mooch my friend Kathy's washing machine because she still has an agitating washing machine and you can't use a front loader for felting. I've never done this so we'll see what happens.

Today I needed a gift card holder so I whipped this up. I stamped this Elzie while visiting my friend Mary over in Northville back in the summer and have had her coloured up for a while, just never mounted it, so this card came together pretty quickly. I still managed to make a total mess of the table though! How does that happen?

I thought the inside was pretty cute too. Speaking of card insides, I always put liners in my cards, and when I have time I usually decorate them too. I've been seeing a lot of cards out in blog land lately that have 'beautiful' innards. They are using papers that match their card fronts and maybe a little stamping, maybe none. But they are really nice so you should be seeing me do some of that in the near future.

For those of you in Chatham, I will be working on my next class cards in the upcoming week and I have something really adorable in my head! Then back on track with Birthdays and Anniversaries. I'm so excited that this year we had the addition of a little girl to our family...NO not 'my' immediate family....i'm well past the baby making years. But my cousin and her husband had a little this year and you can't imagine how THRILLED I am to be making cards for another little girl.

However you celebrate the holiday, I hope it's wonderful!

See ya soon, Linda.

This is IT!

The LAST Christmas card for 2008!

You've probably all wondered where I've been...well, in a nutshell, I had a miserable cold, visited Paula, had two Christmas dinners, one surprise b'day party, went to my Creative Memories Consultant's open house (YES, I scrapbook too when time permits), put up the tree, AND had my two front teeth drilled down to pegs for a new set of crowns.

I broke one of the teeth like 40 years ago (yes...i am THAT old) and had it veneered before I got married. The other tooth started chipping so we decided that I should have both teeth replaced with crowns. Well, while I was there for the big drilling ordeal I decided on a whim to get my teeth whitened! Why? Because when they shade the crowns, that shade is there for life and it seemed a pity to shade it to match my old yellowed teeth. So yesterday I had my teeth ZOOMED!....It took a couple hours and it wasn't pleasant. They put this contraption in your mouth to 'spread' your cheeks to expose the teeth....then add a whole whack of padding to protect your gums and face from the HIGH POWER UV light they put to it. Paint some bleach stuff on your teeth, then ZOOM the light on for 15 minutes. You can't talk, can't cough, can't MOVE...and they repeat this 4 times. Fortunately I had my iPod touch with me and plugged myself in to listen to a little Dave to calm my anxiety. I tell ya...if i ever broke my jaw and had to get it wired shut, they would have to put me into an induced coma!!!

So between all this, I have been up to my ears making Christmas cards....20 for the hubs to give to his staff and 40 for us to send to friends and family. I made several tangeled Stella's that I posted a while back, 30 of these Sunshine Design trees and with what I have in my stash I should JUST meet my quota.

I'll be really happy to make something other than Christmas cards!!!

Put your party hat on!

I had to take a break and post something different from a Christmas card or I am sure I would go MAD!!!

I picked up these little cuties back in September while visiting Paula. I have been stamping for maybe six years now and can you believe this is the first time I have ever done up one of these house mouse stamps? LIKE WHERE HAVE I BEEN??? These little party bunnies were stamped in versafine and coloured with my Lyra pencils and blended with gamsol.

They are the most adorable things ever...and since then I have bought a few more. I have to admit though, a couple of them are Christmas because I couldn't resist.

Enjoy.

Jolly Snowman

Back in September I went to the scrapbooking expo in London, Ont and I bought some whipper snapper snowmen. This guy was my least favourite because I thought he had a goofy face but now that i have him all dressed up on to a card, he's growing on me.

I coloured him with my prisma pencils and gamsol. Used my new spellbinders snowflake for some extra bling and I am pretty sure the DP is basic grey that I have been hoarding. The green paper is papertrey, and the pale blue is from Archivers. It is one of my fav's and I always buy a bunch whenever I get a chance to go there. Such a soft pretty color...and it matches up nicely with the SU ribbon.

Enjoy!

The Christmas Crunch and Mom's Christmas card

It's hittin' me! Yes, I'm sorry I've been a bad blogger but the Christmas crunch is hittin' me! This past week i celebrated the American Thanksgiving...YES...I am Canadian...but I grew up in a border city and am very much influenced by American traditions...one being the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day football game. I must say I have managed to avoid it for the last almost 50 years but this year my hubs has Lions seasons tickets (yes you can all groan now) so the good wife that I am trotted to Michigan to see the Lions lose yet again. Fortunately for me, there was nobody sitting next to me so I could slouch over the seat beside me and gett a little nap in during the second half! Seriously...I AM NOT KIDDING....i did nap!!!!

On a stamping productive note, I did get my Mom's xmas cards done and delivered today! And for the first time in three years I got them to her BEFORE Dec 1st!...That is a big load off my mind. I do enjoy making her cards because I know everyone anticipates receiving one. Hopefully they won't be disappointed this year because I decided not to watercolor them...I opted for embossing. With work, plus the uncertainty of having to be on call, and weekly classes at Pickle I just couldn't take on the added pressure of watercoloring 30 cards!

This card is a take off of one I did for World Card Making Day. One of the challenges was to use a tree and I did it in golds. It looked a little blah to me, so when I saw the new Basic Grey Wassail paper I had a new vision to use red! A simple card and easily mass produced. The tree is embossed in Sparkle N Sprinkle Japanese Laquer and I added red stickles to the partridge and Star Dust Glitter on the border over top of Krylon Gold pen. Mom likes glitter so it was the least I could do since I didn't watercolor them!

Now I just have about 30 more cards to do for me, many of which I have already done and just need to reproduce so hopefully I'll have those done in the next week! So if I am MIA, you know I am heads down working on my Christmas cards!