Shabby Chic - CASE

Hello!  Here's a card I made, inspired by Nina B Designs here.  I loved her cards - the shabby chic feel was so pretty, and the soft colours and the beautiful stamps.  I didn't have any of the stamps she used, so I had to improvise (and add them to my wish list!).  I used a large flower stamp from Stampin' Up for the background, stamped in Hero Arts Soft Pink.  Then I added solid leafy stamp at the top (Stamping Bella) and the border stamp at the bottom (Papertrey Ink).  These were embossed in Seafoam white before sponging the card with Antique Linen, Vintage Photo and Victorian Velvet.  The ribbon is silk, from my stash and the dotted accents on the border are Orchid liquid pearls.  The main image is matted on kraft, then vanilla, and the card base is a pretty pinky purple from Papertrey Ink, and is stamped with the same flower as the background. Sauron the Scanner squashed the ribbon, but in real life it has a nice lively bounce to it.

Well, I'd better sign off for the evening.  I have to get to bed - I have two very special stampers coming over tomorrow morning for a stamping playdate!  I can't wait.  I've cleaned off my stamp table to make room for visitors and tried to remind myself where everything is.  I have my stamps in all different places, paper in all different places, it's a bit of a crazy system but it's a combination of where things will fit and what things I need to keep separate, etc.  Also, the time I spend looking for stuff helps remind me of what things I have, so I find that helpful.  And enjoyable.  It's not the sort of stamp room that someone super-organized would like.  If you are the kind of person that files your stamp according to the Library of Congress system, then you would be horrified and/or baffled by my system: Stampin' Up boxes in one cupboard, other wood mounts in a drawer cabinet.  Cling stamps hanging by clips, in binders, in Tupperware boxes, in DVD cases, in more Tupperware boxes, in a vintage metal card catalogue.  You get the idea.  The cling stamps are the wild card, but also the most fun to rifle through.

Thanks for stopping by!  Hope you get some time to stamp this weekend too.

Bellarific Friday

Here's my card for Bellarific Friday this week at Stamping Bella.  This week's theme is "Anything Goes", so I turned to one of my favourite Bella images, this dandelion silhouette and my favourite Bella sentiment stamp "life is too short for beige".  Now I know this card contains no beige whatsoever, but in the name of design, I am using gray instead of beige.  Indeed I recently read the word "greige" in a design magazine.  (Even typing that word makes me cringe!  Ick. Beige meets grey meets terrible mash-up word of even yuckier colour.)    I have been starved for colour lately.  We are knee-deep in February in Ontario, which means the landscape is various shades of grey, sleet, sludge and slush.  the trees are grey, the sky is grey, the roads are grey, everything is grey, bleak and grey.  So grey that I had to put hyacinths on the grocery list, not to eat, but to bring some colour into the house.  My DH, God bless him, brought home gorgeous fuchsia ones.  Lovely!

Ok, so enough about the bleak outsides.  We decided to go shopping for a new duvet cover and check out the new Ikea.  They just built one here that is the biggest in Canada and is approximately the size of  Prince Edward Island.  Before you get to where you can buy anything, you walk through approximately 53 km of showrooms, all done up in Ikea style.  Guess what the Ikea style is.  Yep.  Grey.  Grey with pops of colour.  so there will be a living room with charcoal couch, pencil lead carpet, exhaust fume drapes and a lime throw cushion.  Or a kitchen pewter cupboards, steel appliances, graphite counter top and a chartreuse tea towel.  You get the picture.  Everything was grey.  It seems this year's fashion statement is Bunker Living or Prison Cell Mod.  Even the bed linen store was no better, with 85 duvet covers all in shades of charcoal, graphite and oyster.  Ultimately, we settled on a duvet cover that is white with solid botanical silhouettes in lime green, greeny-beige and grey.  So, we did get some grey (my brush with stylishness) but the overall effect is green and white.  (That and my husband vetoed the hot pink and purple stripes AND the fuchsia paisley.) 

So, being inspired by recent forays into the world of home decor (usually we decorate in contemporary Playmobil and children's art), I translated it into a card for Bellarific Friday.  The stamp is "solid funky dandelion" and as I looked on the website to find that out, I discovered a very similar sample card there, with bright green and black.  Maybe that was deep in my subconscious, I have no idea.  They say there's nothing new under the sun (well, people other than Hamlet say that, and we never do find out what Horatio thinks of that!).    Anywho, that's my card for Bellarific Friday.  Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies:  ink: charcoal and gray whale colorbox fluid chalk, kiwi kiss stampin' up, lettuce colorbox pigment ink.  Zing lime green embossing powder.  Naturals white, kiwi kiss paper and grey paper from Heather's. 

Holy Holly Batman!

Hello!  Here's my card for the December challenge at Inkurable Stampers, theme of Holly.

Well, here's where my near fetish for holly stamps came into its own.  I used a Penny Black brush stroke holly stamp for the main image, a Stamping Bella holly stamp for the background, and on another version of this card I used the Heather's Stamping Haven solid and open holly stamps. 

I started off by using a layout and technique idea from my stamping friend Mary, but changed up the colour scheme a bit.  I coloured a panel of watercolour paper with Tombow markers in shades of light yellow, light blue, and many greens, just scribbling on randomly.  Then I spritzed generously with water and let it blend around by itself, getting a fair bit of green on my hands.  (It washes off eventually.  I don't want to say how long because it all depends on how much you wash your hands.  I guess if you are neither a compulsive hand-washer or a germophile, it will wash off in about a day, unless you are very neat and don't get any on your hands in the first place.  If you are that person, I would watch for other miracles too, like Virgin Marys in your watercolour puddles.)  Ok, let the watercolour panel dry, and help it along with a heat tool if you want, once it's stopped sopping and dripping.  I set it aside to drip onto my crafting rag, which helped contain the mess, and added a cheerful green to the rag.  Once it was dry, I stamped with the Stamping Bella solid holly in Evergreen Bough distress ink, and also some music (Cornish Heritage Farms) in the same green.  Then I ironed it to seal the deal and stamped the Penny Black brush stroke holly in black and embossed in black.  Next was the message (from the Darkroom Door Dear Santa collection), but I wished afterwards I'd embossed that too.   I accented it with my sparkle pen, but I still wish I'd embossed it - next time. The card base is a medium gray linen, stamped with the same Penny Black holly in Ice Jade chalk ink.  The front side of the card is cut short by about 1 1/4", and a gold edge strip applied.  On the inside of the card is a black linen strip, stamped with my current favourite stamp, a scripty background from Impression Obsession.  I am using that stamp on everything.  Everything.  It works everywhere!  It is the little black dress of stamps.  Not that I have ever had a little black dress, or needed one, but I use the term to indicate a wardrobe staple, that can be dressed up or down, go uptown, downtown, day to evening with the right accessories, etc.  Only the stamp version is much more gratifying and requires neither pantyhose or high heels.  Once everything was all put together, I put some Patina stickles on the holly leaves and some Xmas Red and Candy cane stickles on the berries.   Yay holly!  Yay stamps!  This will be a quick one to do a batch of, maybe later tonight. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Bellarific Friday - White Theme

Hello!  Here's my card for Bellarific Friday this week at Stamping Bella and the theme is white.  I used the three ornament stamp, stamped on white linen with gold Delicata ink (fabulous stuff - so gold and great detail - I have used it on everything for the last two weeks).  I re-stamped it on cream linen and cut out the ornaments to pop up.  I accented with a white gel pen and then added some tape around the edge of the white linen panel topped with warm highlight glitter ritz.  I accented some of the ornaments with glitter ritz too, to tie it in.  Also, the polka dot ornament is paper-pieced with white linen.  the panel is mounted on gold metallic and the base card is a slightly textured white metallic with gold iridescence.  I stamped the base card with Stamping Bella solid holly using alabaster chalk ink.  In real life it's totally fabulous but Sauron the Scanner bears me some monstrous grudge and refuses to capture its beauty for you.  Trust me.  Even my DH said it was really beautiful, and he's not one who's normally lavish with praise.  I think I will make more of these as they are quite quick to do (minus the fiddly paper piecing, which could be achieved more quickly with the gel pen in future).  I will use the narrower tape for the glitter frame next time too, but again, live and learn.  I'm not displeased with this, but now that I want the narrow edge, I will fixate on that until I get a chance to try it. 

I'm in full Christmas card mode right now, and finished a small batch (6) of cards from Krista's Copic class this fall (the stained glass nativity scene).  I hope to post that soon, but I make no promises.  I have a lot of things to do.  In fact my friend and I were talking (on the chat feature of Facebook Scrabble) about how we're so very far from being ready for Christmas.  I said I have to battle perfectionist tendencies and so far lowering my standards and eliminating unrealistic (i.e. any) goals has been the secret to my success.  She said she will stop procrastinating.  I said I planned to do that as well, but not just yet.  And for the record, Facebook Scrabble doesn't take that long, I usually play a quick word before my morning shower.  That's hardly encroaching on laundry-shopping-wrapping-cookie baking-gingerbread house building- tree decorating - Advent meditating-Christmas card writing time, now is it?  And also for the record, I put "make Christmas cards" at the top of my To Do list every year.  Stephen Covey says to prioritize, and I find that a very helpful secret to success. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I must go and see if I can play my X and Q!

Summer Card Camp Week 2

Hello! Here's my card for Summer Card Camp, Week 2, featuring this week's colour combination (pale yellow, rusty orange, poppy, lime, grass green). I'm also using this card for this week's Bellarific Friday at Stamping Bella. I placed the three daisy stamps on an acrylic block and stamped them down the length of a 3"x6 1/2" piece of Bella's Bestest paper. I chose Copics in this scheme, or as close as I could get. I don't have a juicy yellow green like that - all mine are a bit greyer. I love that juicy lime colour - you can almost smell the lime zest! Anyway, I coloured it and then had to figure out the layout, which has to include ribbon for this week's Bellarific challenge. You know me and ribbon (love-hate releationship - I love ribbon, it hates me). Anyway, I finished off the card by matting onto some So saffron (SU) and Poppy Parade (SU) in an oblong card. I embellished the flowers with matching stickles (lime green, yellow, copper, Christmas red) so they're quite sparkly in real life.

NSR: Two notable family achievements today: DD2 (age 5) rode her two-wheeler today for the first time, no one holding on, no training wheels, just free-wheeling down the street and pleased as Punch. She must have gone up and down the street a dozen times (Hubby's going to be sore tomorrow - jogged alongside). Second notable achievement, different scale, different continent, different generation. Grandpa is due to reach the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro at sunrise, which is some time in the middle of the night tonight my time (see earlier post on baffling nature of timezones). He was going to try to send a text, but wasn't sure whether it would work. Part of me hopes that at least mountain tops are unsullied by digital traffic. But part of me hopes it works. Apparently he's having a great time and really enjoying himself.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bellarific Friday

Hello! Here's my card for Bellarific Friday this week at Stamping Bella. I used this wavy flower border, stamped on white linen, intending to mat on a blue piece then white card. I flubbed that up, so cut out the flowers and started over. I like this better, so that was a serendipitous mistake. I've stamped and embossed in blue metallic (Zing). The words are stamped in Faded Jeans, which was too pale, so I went over them with a glaze pen. I couldn't find my crystals, so I went with these A Muse sticker rhinestones coloured with copics to make them a little green to go with this Key Lime card (Memory Box), which is white on the inside. This was very quick and easy, and I'm quite pleased with it. Now there's time to go watch a bit of TV with hubby before bedtime. Nothing funny tonight - I'm worn out. This little bit of stamping therapy has really helped, plus just heard The Ramones on Studio 93, which is always fun. Off to watch The Office - nighty night!

Thanks for stopping by!

PS All stamps are Stamping Bella.

Happy Easter!

Hello! I really shouldn't be blogging as there are still a million things to do before bed, but I've been bustling all day and I'm ready for a break. I thought I'd post another Bellarific Friday challenge card, even though I missed the challenge. It was an anything-goes challenge and I used the circus tent and sentiment (Stamping Bella) with June Bug paper (Basic Grey). The image is coloured with Tombows and has some stickles added too. I was sure I had the new Paprika stickles, but perhaps not. They would have been perfect here.... I used the new dark blue stickles though, and I love them! I sponged a bit of mustard seed and wild honey distress ink onto the sentiment, forgetting I'd stamped with markers so it smudged a bit. Final accent was some buttons. Naked buttons. Deliberately naked buttons. If Blogger doesn't shut me down for the word "naked", the button vigilantes will. But they will have to drag me down, kicking and screaming, because I really felt like those naked buttonholes echoed the polkadots of the two papers and the main image. Tying string or paper through would have insulted the whole endeavour. So, button vigilantes, lynch me with crochet cotton if you will, but I will defend my design choice to my last breath!

In other news, we had a fabulous time today decorating Easter eggs. I'm sure I'm not the first person to try it, but Twinkling H20s make absolutely gorgeous eggs. I bought flowers in green and purple, so I got out shades of green and purple twinks and my daughters and I had a great time painting them. My youngest (almost 5) had to wash her hands a lot ("They're a DISASTER!") because she's very fastidious and can't abide dirty or sticky hands. Three rounds of dishwashing later and my hands are almost presentable for church tomorrow. But the eggs are gorgeous. The lustre of the twinks and the perfect curve of the egg are matchless. I tried stamping and embossing on them first, and early trials showed it would be possible, but it would have drained my reservoir of patience and made a significant dent in the back up tank. I felt it unwise to face the next few days with patience on "E", so I abandoned that particular effort. If you're not facing 2.5 days of chocolate-fuelled youngsters, it would be worth a try.

NSR: Speaking of circuses, excitement is climbing to a fever pitch around here. We have made it through Lent and the girls did really well. They are really looking forward to chocolate tomorrow! We are having Easter dinner here, and I am going to try Nigella's ham in coca-cola. It's in all her cookbooks in one form or another, so I figure that if she's going to urge us that zealously to try the recipe, I should go ahead and try it. I'm also trying her chocolate lime cheesecake. I just took it out of the oven and it is the most gorgeous colour and texture. Can't wait to take a bite of that! Hubby really wanted a turkey, but I'm still turkeyed out from Christmas. That and I roasted a turkey breast the other day for a cold salad to take to a potluck so I am feeling done with roasting fowl this week. I am even going to make Kraft Dinner for a side dish, so the kids will have something they like. I must be going soft in my old age. Actually, both the ham and dessert recipe are from Nigella's "Trashy" chapter in her "Bites" cookbook, so it does seem somewhat fitting to add KD to the mix. It doesn't get much trashier than KD, unless it's KD with ketchup. We are also having green bean casserole from my Harrowsmith cookbook, and homemade coleslaw. Those two don't count as trashy since they don't start with a brand name ingredient and both are made from primarly fresh ingredients. Story, sticking to it, yada yada yada.

If you've made it this far, you are likely related to me, so this little story might make you laugh. As I happened through the dining room just now, I saw two letters left out for the Easter bunny. I don't know when the kiddies wrote them, but clearly my 8-year-old took dictation from the younger one:

To: The Easter Bunny,

Can you please get me a My Little Pony big unicorn that can go with my baby unicorn and if you cannot get me that can you please get me a Barbie like [my sister's] Barbie that has tuquois [printed in turquoise crayon] higheel boots and if you have no turquoise bootes another colere is fine. From [elaborate signature of DD2, age 4]

To: The Easter Bunny,

This year can you please get me the pet of the month webkinz and a photo of you and your little helpers. Thank you. Love, [signature of DD1, age 8]

I have it on good authority that the Easter bunny will not be bringing Webkinz or Barbies this year, turquoise-booted or otherwise. Also, yesterday DD1 asked me if there were any stamps I wanted. I hemmed and hawed, trying, and failing, to narrow it down. I eventually gave a couple of options and she said, "Just ask the Easter Bunny and you could get them for free!" There aren't usually a big number of presents from the Easter Bunny, but clearly it's worth me writing a letter....

To: The Easter Bunny,

I hope you are having a good Easter and not getting too cold and wet delivering eggs. Please enjoy the carrots we left out for you. If it's not too much trouble, I would like a set of Caran d'Ache watercolour crayons. I have seen them used to great effect. If possible, please include a turquoise one since I know some people whose favourite colour is turquoise. Thank you and Happy Easter!

Karen

Bellarific Friday

Here's my card for this week's Bellarific Friday challenge at Stamping Bella. The challenge was to do a monochromatic card, so I went with blues. I know, I know, not exactly out of my comfort zone. Never mind that, comfort was what I wanted tonight, so comfort zone to the rescue.

I started out with the acrylic block+Distress ink + water I learned on Jennifer McGuire's fabulous blog using Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire, Milled Lavender and Victorian Velvet (sssh! don't tell Bella that I used those last two - but really I think they make the rest of it look bluer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it). It turned out a bit crooked and spotty, but oh well, it's a different look every time. And after spending all day fiddling with nightmare fiddly detail horrible detail nightmare fiddly horrible things, I was not about to get all picky with my spray and smoosh therapy. The next step was to wait for it to dry (I skipped this step, just blew on it a bit and by the time I rootled out the stamps and long block, it was dry) and I stamped the branch and bird. This was the very exciting part because I got to use two new embossing powders: Cobalt (branch) and Holiday Blue (bird). A dear friend gave me the Holiday Blue (Sparkle and Sprinkle) and it is so gorgeous in real life. Very sparkly and wonderful. I am feverish for embossing powders lately, not sure why. I think it's that magic that they have when you heat them and they go all shiny. It's still magical after all these years. [soft sigh and quick stare into middle distance....] Next I stamped the sentiment in black, and then some swirly circles in Stormy Sky. They're a little dark for my taste. Stormy Sky is one of those colours that's too light when you want it dark and too dark when you want it light. It's an interesting phenomenon. Then I doodled a border, and regretted it a bit. Fiddled around a while with the card base but settled on this ice blue linen with a scrap of blue-gold metallic paper that was embossed and lying handily on my table. I added a dot of black liquid accents for an eye, drew around the bird for emphasis, and added those three little black dots and called 'er done. I feel marginally better, and may try another one to see if I can get a version that I like better. Or maybe I'll leave it till tomorrow and see how I feel about it then. Top Gear is about to start - who knows what those crazy guys will be up to next. Yesterday they were making police cars out of a Vitara, a coupe and a Lexus. Or maybe I'll go back to my book. I'm re-reading my Susan Howatch Starbridge books, which are my go-to books when I need something really good to read. Anyway, time to get off the computer! Thanks for stopping by!

PS. All stamps on project are by Stamping Bella.

Bellarific Friday

Here's my card for Stamping Bella's Bellarific Friday this week, challenge is polka dots. I used that great flower (Stamping Bella), which has some dots in the design (oh, how it pained me to hide some under the ribbon, the ribbon nearly didn't make it!), the solid grey piece has embossed polkadots and the patterned paper has large and small dots (SU). I stamped the flower on shimmer paper using India Ink and painted it with stamp pads (Baja Breeze, Old Olive, Not Quite Navy - SU; Willow - Adirondack; Brushed Corduroy, Peeled Paint - Distress). I also added a bit of a doodle-y frame with my Micron .05.

I made this for a colleague at work who is coming back after an extended maternity leave. It will be nice to have her back and I'll bring this in for the team to sign. I'm even going to stamp the solid version of this flower on the inside - so cool. Other bits and bobs - the ribbon is the double sided kiwi kiss ribbon from SU and the black dots are the Ranger liquid accents in black, the perfect finishing touch for a polka dot challenge! Did anyone else out there play along?

Thanks for stopping by!

Bellarific Friday

Here's my card for Bellarific Friday this week at Stamping Bella. It's a sketch challenge and I was just fooling around with the copics while trying to catch up on video debt. Here's what I coloured while good old Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis cleaned up Oxford. It's such a cute image!

I didn't set out to make a card in primary colours. The scanner doesn't do it justice - it's much more virulent in real life. And I haven't even stickled it yet. (I'm not allowed to get any more stickles on the scanner. Some people just don't appreciate patina and distressed/altered surfaces....) I didn't set out to make an orange card. It's just that once I had the image coloured and matted on bright blue (again, how did that happen?), it seemed like a good way to use up my orange paper. That way I can combine the virtuous feelings of actually using my Basic Grey 6x6 packs without having to use any of the paper I actually like. That's not quite true, I do like those circles on the green background, but I'm not sure why I thought they looked good on the orange. In real life it does look a little better. The blue frame is bolder and anchors the eye on the centre. I just couldn't convince Paintshop Pro to darken only the blue scallop mat.

NSR. Well, the girls have been enjoying St. Patrick's Day. They spent two days making decorations and I left them homemade broccoli soup for lunch - nice and green! They were overjoyed when I came home and announced that St. Patrick's Day was a feast day and we could have dessert. They literally danced for joy. We've given up dessert for Lent as a family (all "40 weeks" of it, according to DD2, age 4). The girls then took to the calendar to scout out any other upcoming saints days where Lenten strictures are lifted and were very happy to see St. Joseph's Day on Saturday and the Annunciation next week. Two budding hagiographers, or just two girls keen to find the Lenten loopholes??? Well, happy St. Patrick's Day to you!

Bellarific Friday

Hello! I'm finally back! It's been a while. Thanks for the lovely comments of encouragement. I'm at 2/3 workouts this week and have my eye on a ferny collage stamp from Magenta. I hope it's still there.

I made this card for Bellarific Friday, theme is Aquamarine this week. I was clearing off enough room on my desk to stamp and found this lovely scrap of Ecoline paper in, wait for it, aquamarine! Wow - it was meant to be. Stamping serendipity. It was just a scrap, so it's the little backdrop piece. I used a flower stamp and double stamped it to be able to pop up the flower, embossed it, and coloured it with Tombow markers, accented with stickles. The card base is Cool Caribbean (can never remember if it's two r's or two b's...) with another Bella stamp stamped in Azurite chalk ink. This morning as I looked at it, I felt it needed something else, so I doodled a border around the focal immage. I think that's better, but I still feel like it needs something else. Oh well, on to the next project tonight - this will have to wait. I want to get this sent off to Bella land since I've missed a lot of Bellarific Fridays that I wanted to play along with.

In other news, I have a couple of classes at Heather's coming up: March 19th I'm teaching a class on some new ideas with my all-time favourite favourite Stampers Anonymous stamp. Then on the 26th I'm doing my Distress book again.

Bellarific Zombie

It's not too often you need a zombie Christmas card, but I thought this Penelope with her prezzies (Stamping Bella) would do just nicely. I "enhanced" her with some stink lines, bugs, beetles, worms, and patches and coloured her up in grungy reds, golds and greens for a seasonal colour palette. The layout was for a Bellarific Friday sketch challenge, so that took care of that. The background paper is from last year's BasicGrey Christmas line (Wassail) and distress stickles finished off "the look". She's stamped in memento black and coloured with Copics.

Now wouldn't this look nice on Miss Havisham's mantlepiece this Christmas????

By the way, I do realize it's after Christmas, but technically, we are now in the season of Christmas, it being the third day of Christmas today. So I am uncharacteristically timely. Happy stamping!

More Christmas Cards

Hello again!

Here are a couple of Christmas cards I made recently. I made quite a number with this image (Stamping Bella), coloured similarly to go with my pack of paper (Jovial line by BasicGrey). I used Copic markers, and then sponged on Antique Linen distress ink to tone the paper from bright white to off white to go with the paper. I also used stickles (Candy cane on birds, patina on dots) and crackle accents (Ranger) on the "boards". I love this image, and it is quite quick to colour up. These were fun cards to make, and good for using scraps of the paper. I edged all the paper with Memories Art Print Brown as well. Well, that's almost it for my Christmas cards this year. They are all (but one, which needs a letter which is only part-way done) in the mail. Now on to the Christmas cleaning and baking. I also want to make some cashew brittle and peppermint bark this year. We'll see how that goes. I also need to wrap presents, but hope to do that while watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I love that movie! Speaking of Christmas shows, I have been watching the Jamie Oliver Family Christmas shows and they are so wonderful! The food looks delicious, and he is such an engaging presenter. I've also really been enjoying watching his series called Jamie's American Road Trip, which is very interesting. Well, time to throw another load of Christmas laundry (not really holiday laundry, but calling it that makes it feel more special).

Thanks for stopping by!

Bellarific Friday

Here's a card I made for Stamping Bella's Bellarific Friday, which is a sketch challenge (all stamps Stamping Bella). I like this cute owl image, with his plaid wings and polka dot tummy. I chose the patterned paper first (Blush, BasicGrey) to get my colour scheme. I used Tombows to colour the owl and mounted him on a scalloped circle (Nestabilities for both cuts). This is a 5 1/4" square card, and the red mat is metallic paper.

I'm not sure what occasion will call for a plaid/polka dot owl card, but doubtless I will recognize it when it comes up. Maybe I'll donate this to the church bazaar and someone will pick it up as the perfect card for someone heading off to an ornithologists' golf tournament. Niche market to be sure, but I would imagine that people have a hard time finding that perfect card for the owl fanciers in their lives.

Thanks for looking!

Doesn't this stamp just make you want to don a wide-brimmed hat and retreat to the hammock with an extremely girly drink? I needed a beverage-related thank you card, so this stamp seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I coloured it using my coloured pencils (Prismacolor, Derwent and Bruynzeel) and blended with odorless mineral spirits. It is heavily embellished with stickles as well. This card was begging for glitter! I stamped the butterfly wings so I could pop up the wings. I chose my colour scheme to coordinate with this fresh paper from BasicGrey (Euphoria, a state not unrelated to stamping/exotic bevvies!). The ribbon and circle punches are Stampin' Up, and the TY stamp is Sylvia Wu for Rubber Soul. I pinked the edges of one of the strips using edged scissors for a bit of an accent. I feel like I should have sewn on this too, oh well. The recipient will never know. I was able to add ribbon and forced myself to leave it on ;-) I am really bad for fiddling with ribbon endlessly, only to take it off in the end. The card base is an old one I had in my paper scraps, with some really ugly stamping on the front and edged in purple. Needless to say, it has been a bit neglected, since I seldom require a 5 1/4" square Cool Caribbean card edged in purple. However, this situation did call for it, so my tendency to hoard even the most unlikely paper scraps has been positively reinforced. (See also yesterday's post with the scrap-punched flowers!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Funky Dandelions

I made this card for Bellarific Friday and for a friend of mine who is anything but beige. She could use a little TLC right now, so this should be just the ticket.

I got the idea for this technique from a class I took from the amazing, one and only Krista Schneider last summer. You basically just stamp a solid botanical silhouette repeatedly in different colours. Fun and easy!

I'm not sure if I could list all the colours, but here are most: Blue Lagoon, Azurite, Blackberry (my new favourite chalk ink!), Red Lipstick, Lime pastel Colorbox Fluid Chalk, SU Crushed Curry, Memories Mango. The sentiment, also Stamping Bella is embossed in black and matted on some crushed curry paper. The brads are Stampin' Up from the bold brights and earth elements collections (old olive, tempting turquoise and real red). I did a panel to match inside using just the curry and mango (ooh -that sounds yummy!) and also the envelope.

I made another card for Bellarific Friday using Wasabi Ketto in soothing shades of celadon. I'll post that another day. I had finished that one and came out to post it but DH was using the computer typing up "urgent" minutes (as in if I don't type them now I will forget everything)from a church meeting he was at. So, I was "forced" to go back and do some more stamping. I really like how this turned out. I tinkered a bit with Paintshop Pro to spruce up the colours on my monitor. Hopefully this won't blow out your retinas on a normal monitor. DH is going to tinker a bit more with our settings as he now realizes that I care that Real Red card stock displays as Pukey in Pink.

NSR: A funny daycare story. Apparently my 3-year-old daughter (4 next month yikes!) got into a singing duel with the 3-year-old boy the other day. He was singing Mighty Machines, and so she decided that the way to get him to stop was to drown him out with the Easter anthem that DH and DD1 sang on Easter Sunday. So there she was belting out "Halleluiah! Sing praise to the Lord/His kingdom shall endure forever" while he was bellowing the Mighty Machine theme song. Hilarious. This is also the girl who was singing the Alleluia chorus in the grocery store today.

PS Has anyone seen my linen twine? It vanished between now and last week. I also had a bit of a panic since I couldn't find any of my Stamping Bella stamps. I have a few and I remembered watching Midsomer Murder while I trimmed and EZ-mounted them and organized them into some new wonderful storage system. However, I totally blanked out on the new system. I found the stash of empty ziplock baggies where they used to be. I was totally stumped for (I was about to say how long, but it's too embarrassing) ******** when I remembered! I got some empty stamp cases from Stampin' Up and they are perfect for cling mounted stamps. They are the size of DVD cases and I wrote on the spines what they are. Must have been a good episode of Midsomer Murder. Actually, it was really great - the whole theme was old-fashioned photography versus digital. It was bordering on comedy, right down to this sequence of photographer 'thugs' walking in a mob, swinging their little pocket diggies in a very 'menacing' fashion. The camera duel was won by the real camera guy since the diggie-camera guy's batteries ran out and he had to leave the gala exhibit in shame.

Bella Blog Hop

Welcome to the Bella Birthday Bash Blop Hop sponsored by Stamping Bella! If you've just happened upon my blog, you can CLICK HERE to find out how to start the tour.

My main image is Penelope with Prezzies, watercoloured with markers. Her flower is accented with a little gem. I like how this stamp is versatile - I've used it for birthdays too, but coloured this way to match my Christmas paper, it becomes a Christmas card. The aqua layer of patterned paper is also SB, the Patterned Holly stamp, stamped in lime green pigment ink and embossed with that vivid green embossing powder. I accented the open portion of the leaves with some watered down liquid pearls for some shimmer. The bottom layer of paper is Eskimo Kisses, ornament pattern, blurry because my main image is so far above it and the scaner had trouble focusing. This is due to my very bulky ribbon layer, which I love. It's wide grosgrain ribbon in burgundy, gathered using a lot of tape on the back of the panel. I love how it echoes the little ruffly bit on Penelope's skirt. I will now say that this was all along part of my master plan. (It's on the internet now so it must be true.)

Three gift certificates for $100 in Bella Bucks will be hidden along the hop, but we’re not telling you where so be sure to leave some love as you hop!!! Make sure you leave comments on every post so you have a chance to win!! Click here (post #87)to find out where to check if you've won. The winners will be announced on Monday, December 7. Thanks so much for stopping by! Now it's time to hop on over to Kathleen's blog for some great eye candy on the next stop on the hop.

What's Cookin'

Wow - there's nothing like a scanner to pick up all the flaws in a watercoloured image! My watercolouring usually passes the "can you see it from the highway?" test, but clearly doesn't pass muster for the scanner. My excuse (and I will stick to it) is that all the nicest versions of the card went off to 8 little girls as this batch of cards was invitations to my daughter's birthday party. We're having a make-your-own pizza party at a local grocery store that does these sorts of things. It's our first "outside" party, and I am really looking forward to it.


I love this stove stamp, and I must confess that when I saw this post, I was smitten! We used to have an avocado stove, but I don't recall that it was quite as jaunty as this one. But perhaps that's only because it didn't have funky chunky radishes to back it up. I love those Offbeat little veggies - the perfect retro touch to my stove.


I got this stamp originally to go with the sentiment "I hear there's a bun in the oven", but the guy's wife just had the baby so I have missed the boat on that one. Must now make baby card, instead, maybe will try another lambie effort.


Anyway, this card was fun to pull together and I used an apple stamp with this neat ink I have that is gold interference ink. It's very cool. I used it to stamp "yum!" inside too, along with all the details for the party.


Thanks for stopping by!

Jerome and Yvonne's house

When I showed this card to DH, he said it would be perfect for his aunt and uncle, who are Jerome and Yvonne. DH cracks me up. It's a lot of fun being married to the funniest guy around. (BTW, he now claims that he knew all along that the doors spell "JOY".) I do think we should send this to Jerome and Yvonne though. I tried out some rock candy here and it has a very snowy twinkle, without being glittery.

This was another of my stamping binge cards. I coloured it up last night with this Eskimo Kisses paper in mind. I kept the layout pretty simple - my brain was tired after a big day at work learning all about multilevel modelling for longitudinal surveys. This sounds harmless enough, but it was a full day workshop on 136 (it's true!) power point slides displaying the mathematical proofs and obscure syntax for calculating some sort of something to do with longitudinal surveys. It's the sort of thing that comes with a warning label on the text book and should only be attempted by a trained professional on a closed course (in other words by raving math geeks in a padded room!). It was just as well I had large doses of high-test stamping to look forward to at Krista's classes!!! Anyway, I will blame the peculiar combination of green trees and a snowscape on my temporarily addled brain. (And I will maintain to the last that any addling is only temporary.....)



BTW, Krista's classes were fantastic, beyond fantastic. I had such a lovely time. There were wonderful stampers there, and a real highlight was getting to meet IRL one of my blog fans, possibly my only blog fan who is not related to me by marriage or blood. I'm not sure what the netiquette is on being a fan of blog commenters (seems like it could be bordering on the immodest, but I won't dwell on that being someone whose blog exclusively contains her own creations and ramblings), but if I am allowed to be a fan of blog commenters, I am a big fan of Nimmy's! She has such lovely things to say and always makes my day. Thank you Nimmy! It was such a pleasure to meet you IRL. Just like my cards, you are wonderful in real life :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: some non-SU, including stamps, buttons and paper. SU: soft sky ribbon, bravo burgundy paper, old olive (kiwi kiss?? it's dark and I can't tell) paper.

Oiler Ornaments

I have been on a stamping binge! To reward myself for a lot of recent hard (ahem) work prepping for stamp classes, I have gone on a just-for-fun stamping binge! A fellow instructor at my LSS inpsired me with her stack of Christmas cards in various stages of completion so I have been stamping feverishly, with reckless abandon, and heedless of vendor, but just lots of fun images to colour in. Fun, fun, fun! I am also so excited because tomorrow the fall series of Krista Schneider's classes starts at my LSS. I absolutely cannot wait!!!! This creative binge almost feels like the stamping equivalent of carbo-loading before a marathon (but without all the yucky running).

Here's one of the things I have been working on. I have been doing a lot of traditional Christmas colour combinations for my classes, so I wanted to do something out of the box. That DH hates non-traditional colour combinations like this is beside the fact (and the icing on the cake hehehehe).... I'm not sure why I picked orange and blue, possibly due to ornament shape triggering some vestigial after-effects of growing up watching the Oilers in their heydey. Either that or I wanted to use my pack of Marrakech paper in blues and orange. You decide....

[I just spent way too long trying to photoshop this card with the Oilers' logo superimposed on the ornaments. It didn't really work very well (and I learned I would make a terrible internet hoax artist) and I was also worried about getting in trouble with the internet police and the Oilers' lawyers for having illegal images on my website. I am sure this is a totally reasonable fear. And furthermore it seemed like a good enough reason to quit trying to photoshop it and get back to stamping. I will trust that you can picture the effect I was going for, and no one will be driven crazy trying to learn to use photoshop or get hauled off to internet jail for some sort of copyright infringement....] On the upside, I now have the perfect card to send to Wayne and Janet!