Lavender Bittybloom

How is everybody on this Canada Day! I'm pretty happy because it is a holiday and I have a couple extra days off to make for a nice extra long weekend!


Little miss Lavender Bittybloom was part of the haul of rubber that came home with me on my trip to Stamping Bella. I pulled out the copics and colored her up to match this Basic Grey wisteria paper. I used pencils and gamsol to create some nice soft shading and then sponged Versamagic Vanilla ink on the edges. While I had the pencils out I used the white pencil to add some lighter highlights to her skirt and hat. And of course, no bittybloom is complete until you add some glitter. The ribbon is something I got at Archivers a while back and I picked up the ribbon slide in the clearance bin at Pickle. I think it might be Maya Road.

For inquiring minds, these are the copic colors used on the image:
G20, 40, 21, T1
BV02, 04, 08, B60
E0000, 000, 00, 11, 13, 15
E30, 33, 35, 39
R20

Thanks for stopping in! I'm off to enjoy my extra super long weekend.

Chick it out!

If you are a Stamping Bella and Emily fan like me you KNOW that she just had a birthday on Thursday and she is one hot chick! WELL....Nicky, Shannan, and Christy Croll (aka Tiddlyinks) came up with this fun b'day surprise for Emily. Cristy created an image just for Emily and Shannan emailed the babes and a few friends to see if they wanted to play along and create a b'day card for Em using this 'personalized' image! How could I say NO...just thinking of Em's wonder as these cards came rolling in was enough to make me wanna play!


If you are interested in reading her post you can do that here. Nothing better than a good Emily story to make me smile! This one was worthy of reading to the hubs. I have a handful of memorable Emily posts that have given me a good LOL chuckle and this one goes into that area of my eternal memory. The two others that are top of my list are when Nicky pulled out her personal fan in a meeting and when the baubles arrived! Priceless blog post memories! (yes Em, I've been reading your blog for a VERY long time!)

So here you have it...my impression of Emily...classy and fabulous! I colored her with copics, added just a bit of shading with pencils, and of course some jewelzzzzzzzzzzz. We all know how Emily likes her bling and I certainly didn't want to disappoint her!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of making the trip up to the BOO-tique with Paula (yup...that would be the uber-talented Paula), Mary, Dana, Pauline and Shannan. We had a total blast, Paula and I gave pencil and copic tips and we met a ton of Bella fans. I even got to meet Christine Dol. I'll be she doesn't know it, but I anticipate reading her comment as much as she anticipates seeing my post! Funny the way it is, isn't it! Here is a pic of Paula doing her thing with Emily, Nicky and Carolyn looking on.

After all the colorin' was over I did some shopping...like a LOT of shopping...I may have come home with a pound of rubbah. I also have a new love...that would be the Bella paper. OMG! If you are a copic fan like myself you MUST try this paper. It is amazing! I stamped an image in memento and got right down to coloring. No smearing, no bleeding and it is a lighter weight paper than papertrey so you don't need as much ink to get the paper wet enough to blend the colors. I couldn't find it on the website, but I'm sure it will be coming soon!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, what's left of it!

Out of this world!

It's Bellarific Friday folks and this week I chose something totally different for me, you might say Cakey WATT is out of this world different! I'm really a girly girl at heart...you know...shoes, bags...that kind of thing. I'm somewhat high maintenance. But I do have a couple young nephews on hubs side who will be in need of birthday cards this summer and I thought these little robots would be perfect and they are so STINKIN' cute. If you were with me last year you might recall I gave them Tyler the jock and high tops.


I colored this guy up in copics in the following colors, but shading was done with pencils and the sponging around the edge with Versamagic Aspen Mist:
BG10, 72, 75 and blender
R24, E08
E44, 47
Y000, 11, 13, 17
E50, 51, 53, 42, 43

I even managed to follow the sketch pretty closely this week using Basic Grey offbeat paper for my color scheme and the Special Boy sentiment that was split into two lines to fit into my nestie oval. And since he is a robot I used lots of eyelets to mimic rivets. I will fess up, I was so anxious to get the picture taken I forgot the finishing touches which I added after and that would be glitter on the candles and a dot of gell pen on his rivets. It added just that little bit of texture to make it special!

Have a fantastic weekend everyone and don't forget to check out Emily's blog today to catch a glimpse of all the submissions....they are getting better and better each week...you go girls...can't wait to see them! As of now, I have NO plans this weekend except to color up a storm!

Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday to you...
Happy Birthday to Emily...
Happy Birthday to you...


Be thankful I'm only typing and not singing...eeeeks! I sing worse than I draw! LOL! This is the card I made for Emily's Birthday blog hop. AND....this is my first hop! Shocking, I know. I would love to play more but my schedule just doesn't permit it.

If you just happened to pop in here, you might want to start at Emily's blog because she got to be first since it is HER birthday afterall! And if you hopping along you can go to the uber talented Julie Masse's blog next.

For those of you who are still with me and haven't hopped off yet you are lucky enough to get the nitty gritty! I used presentahbella, stamped her up in Brilliance Graphite black and colored her up in these copic inks:
Y000, 00, 11, 13, 15
YG13, 25, 17
RV00, 10, 02, 32, 25, 29
E000, 00, 11, 30
E33, 35, 37, 59
C0 and blender

The polkadot paper is Scenic Route that I've had it in my stash for a while and I thought the tiny polkadots were too perfect to pass up. The paper was also my inspiration for the copic colors used. The sentiment is appropriately called Wish Big and I shaded it with a bit of yellow pencil. The final touch is one of my kajinker felt flowers that I have had for so long but never had a perfect place for it until now! You might also notice that there is no glitter on this card...YIKES...but I did add a few layers of clear glaze pen on the dots on her dress just to give it some texture.

Now that I'm done blabbering...go off to the next post and Emily, if you are reading this...I WISH YOU A WONDERFUL DAY!

Sunshiney days

That is what we are having this week here in Chatham. I think summer has finally arrived and we expect a high of about 90 tomorrow! While I had Anise's Flowers out for the last challenge I decided to make this card that I have had in my head for ages. A while back I even bought a sizzix fence die in hopes of doing it but the die was nasty to use and didn't cut all the way through. So when I spied this picket fence Martha punch at Michaels I was all over it. A nice picket fence with bright sunny flowers behind it.


Anise's flowers and the sunshiney day sentiment were perfect for my vision. I stamped the flowers and drew in the stems and leaves. I can't draw to save my life, but I thought this was within my reach. They are colored up with Lyra pencils and blended with gamsol. I then sponged on the chalk ink. I even masked off a straight line on my picket fence paper and sponged more green ink below the fence so I would have continuity of color.

I'm so glad that I finally got this card out of my head and on to paper so I can move on to other things!

Those other things could possibly be a card for Emily's birthday blog hop on SU..hmmmm...yup I'm playing along in that...and did you know she is gonna release some goodies for her birthday! Or it might be the Friday challenge card with Nicky's faboo sketch! You are gonna be suprised folks, my challenge card is all done up and it's not a bella, stella, ketto, chichi or flower...hmmmm what could it possibly be???? I'm super excited about it and can't wait to show you. If you want to play along, check out Emily's post here for all the deets and mail your entry in by Thursday at 5pm.

See ya at the hop!

Simple Sunday

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there! Hope your kids are doing something extra special for you today...I'll be making a delish dinner tonight, Saltimbocca chicken breasts with sage wine sauce and creamy arugula pasta! YUM!


But, before that can happen I absolutely HAD to finish the thank you cards that I want to send to everyone who helped me ring in the big 5-0 b'day party. I had about 25 to make so I wanted to keep it simple but fun and funky so I used Tripletree Ketto with the just wanted to say sentiment. To keep those trees REALLY bold, I stamped them in black pigment ink and embossed with black detail embossing powder. Then I filled in the empty spots with my copics using the The Sunshine Crate paper to guide the color choices. Just a tip when using black embossing powder...you MUST use a static bag on your paper first, otherwise those little tiny bits of black powder will stick to everything you don't want them stuck on!

It looks like it might rain, so I'm off to get a bit more gardening done before I get busy in the kitchen.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Bellarific Friday Andy Warhol style

It time for another Bellarific Friday challenge and this sketch was brought to us by the uber talented Paula. Leave it to her to give us something to really made us think! Now, I'll admit that I really didn't think about it too long because if it has four squares it screams Andy Warhol. So keeping with that theme I got to work and stamped Anise Ketto's flowers onto four scraps of white paper with memento black ink. Then I punched them out into circles. Each 'background' was colored solid (yes...NO shading!!!) with copic markers and the flowers were all colored the same. Next, I punched out four squares and mounted a flower on each one. If you are familiar with Andy Warhol's work, it is typically very vibrant so I thought the life is too short for beige sentiment was very appropriate. Because the sentiment was so long I did have to improvise a bit on the sketch and move it down. Now hop on over to the Bella Blog later today because I'm sure you will find some inspiring work over there!

And a little Bessie update! The little pooch is doing well, however, she is having difficulty adjusting to the lifestyle changes that she must endure for the next 4-6 weeks. She DOES NOT like being confined in the kitchen...NOT AT ALL...and it's not like I'm leaving her in there all alone, I'm with her...but she stands there and whines and cries and desperately wants to perch herself on the back of the couch like she is used to. I won't let her do that, but I will let her on the couch if she is supervised so she won't jump off. I tell ya, it's more work than a baby! But it is forcing me to relax a bit myself so that is probably a good thing.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone...It is the Cancer Relay for Life here in Chatham tonight so I'll be getting up extra early to volunteer in the food tent! Hopefully it won't rain too bad on the those who are walking tonight.

Puppy Love

Hi everyone...yesterday my baby girl had surgery to repair a torn ligament in her knee. Poor thing, I get to pick her up after work today and I just cannot wait to see her and snuggle her up. It is going to be a rought next couple of weeks though because I have to keep her from running and jumping. That means she must stay confined to the kitchen while I'm at work and won't get to lay in her fav spot on the front sofa watching the world go by. I'll put her little bed in front of the garden doors and with any luck a squirrel will run by to amuse her! But then again, chasing squirrels is what put her in this condition so maybe it is best that they stay away until she is 100% again. This is a pic of her doing what she does best, chasing one of little fur devils up the tree and standing guard.


Dogwalkabella is dedicated to my little fur baby Bessie and the simple pleasures sentiment is so appropriate because going for a little walk is one of the small things that can give a pup so much joy. I used the Marrakech paper to guide my color scheme and colored it up with copics, but used pencils for shading and grass. No glitter on this card...shocking...instead I layered some buttons and tucked in some ribbon, the border punch you see peeking out is Martha Stewart.

For inquiring minds, these are the copic colors used on this card.
E0000, 00, 11, 13, 15, 35
E40, 42, 43, 44, 50, 51, 53
BG72, 75, 93, 96, 99
R21, 22, 24, C0, C1, blender

Now for some Bella fun. Did you know that this week's sketch is brought to us by my BFF, fellow babe and stamper extrodinaire Paula! This is her VERY first sketch so how 'bout showing her some love and playing along. Not only will she be thrilled but if you submit a card you also get a chance at $20 Bella Bucks! Check out Emily's blog for all the details.