Millie day one...

With the last release, Emily gifted us with some wonderful new characters in the Stamping Bella family. Millie is one of them. Actually she has a twin (or is it her brother?) anyhoo she comes in a set with Milo (Millie and Milo Exchanging gifts). Neat thing about these two are they can be stamped alone or together and either way they are cute as a button. So, this is Millie's day one for me...I can see many more cards in her future!

Next note is her hair. You'll notice that it's blonde, dirty blonde actually, just like my daughter and I. My daughter (Jess) has professed that I color too many brown haired girls. We recently moved Jess back into the house and she looked at all the cards in my craft room and declared that I needed to color more blondes. Funny thing is that I rarely see pure blonde and with copics and prisma pencils I don't think the bright yellow is very realistic. So I like to create blondes with golden highlights and sometimes even light brown to tone the bright yellow down. I will typically color a base of Y11 and then add strokes of Y21, Y28, E23 and a little YR14. Now you'll know why you're seeing a few more blondes on my cards.

Ok and the last note is polka dots. You'll be seeing lots of them too. I have an order for 20 cards and all of them have to have some form of polka dot paper. Now the funny thing is when you give me a "rule" like that, I usually have a hard time incorporating it into a card. It's like the Bella challenge this week, to use polka dots, I could very easily make a card and polka dots find their way in but when you stipulate that it has to be there I can't decide how to work them in. But I have some help, the new My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline design paper 6x6 packs have an assortment of complimentary polka dot paper. In fact, I made 5 cards this weekend and each and every one has polka dot paper. Neat thing is that some are soft and subtle like in the middle panel here but they're still there.

Now onto the card details. You know I stamped Millie onto Bella's Bestest paper using Memento Tuxedo black ink. Hey when the formula works, I stick with it! I then colored her with copis and added a touch of shading on her shirt with prismacolor pencil French Grey 50% as well as the ground shading but added French Grey 90% too. Oh and I know I pulled a turquoise for the balloon too. I didn't add shading around her...I really wanted a clean and simple look about this. The layout is from this week's I Spy sketch challenge. They come out on Friday so I find them to be another great resource for my weekend crafting. I did alter the sketch, big surprise huh? They're minor changes though. First, I moved the scallopped edge from the middle panel to the image panel. Millie needed some height so I added it to her border matt. And then I had to place the sentiment in the upper left corner as there wasn't room in the lower right. Finsihed card is 5x6.

Hope you start your week off well. Thanks for stopping by.

Cath

Prized Fruit

This past fall a couple of the Bella babes created masterpieces using Lulu's sets of fruit. They colored up the apples. Now I think apples say fall as much as falling leaves. And as it's my favorite season, I fell in love. I added the set of four stamps to my last Bella order. Today I decided to color the strainer full of cherries for this week's iSpy Sketch challenge. I had the perfect Graphic 45 design paper to compliment the stamp.

Before I get into the details of the card I have to share that my card was chosen last week as one of the top 2 cards for the sketch challenge. Thanks Kim and crew for the honor. I love a good sketch to get my creative juices flowing and am thrilled to have such great inspiration each week. Here's this weeks sketch ISSC03. True to Cath form, I altered it a little. I decided to make it look more like a prized ribbon so I aligned the 4 pennants along the bottom of the main image panel instead of along the bottom half. I stamped the image onto Bella's Bestest paper using Memento Tuxedo black ink and colored with copics. I added lots of shading on the strainer with cool gray prismacolor pencils blended with gamsol as well as beige surround shading. A little machine stitching and some green brads finish this off.

Hope you're having a great week. Don't forget that this week we have with another Sketch for the Bellariffic Friday challenge. Take a look here and give it a try. Then be sure to send a photo of your card to Emily@stampingbella.com by Thursday night. Can't wait to see what you create!

Thanks for stopping by.
Cath

Baby Congrats!

I've got a quick post to share with you today. I'm playing along with this week's iSpy Sketch challenge. It looked perfect for this sweet baby image I needed a card for. My co-worker finally had her baby boy and I'm heading over for a visit. Can't wait to cuddle with the little guy.

So now you know my motivation, let's get to the details. I stamped Julias diaper bag onto Bella's Bestest paper using Memento Tuxedo black ink and colored with copics. I also added shading with prismacolor pencils blended with gamsol. The design paper is Baby Boy by K&Company. Nesties were used to make the pennant and image panel. Seam binding ribbon was added with brads to make this appear more like a team pennant. Yea - team boy! Woo hoo!

The sentiment is also from Stamping Bella. I stamped it and made a banner anchored with yet another brad. Pretty easy and minimal machine sewing.

Don't forget that this week's Bellariffic Friday challenge is ANYTHING goes! Yup color to your heart's content - just use any Stamping Bella image. Remember that there are Bella Bucks up for grabs for sending an image to Emily@stampingbella.com by Thursday. Double your chance and link to SCS use code BELLARIFFIC0612.

Enjoy your week - but especially your Valentine's Day!

See ya again soon,
Cath

I Spy...

Girls if you are anything like me, you search blogland in the hopes of finding something new to catch your eye. Maybe it's a layout, a color scheme, or a new embellishment to adorn your cards. I often look for new ways to shade my images or for that matter, images that have stared me in the face but never seemed to call to me until I saw how someone else made them gorgeous. Today's image is one of those. I've colored Cuddly Owlies a Cristy Croll image from Stamping Bella. Last year I spied this card made by Kim Teasdale using this stamp that called to me. Funny but she has started a new blog called iSpy Sketches using this practice...ya know something makes an impression on you and you go from there only it's sketches not images.

I have to tell you that at first sketches scared me to death, but now I love them! They are the starting point to making any card for me. Yeah you choose an image and paper but how you're going to showcase it usually comes first for me. It's like do you always put your pants on one starting with the same foot first and if you switch it up you feel goofy. Ok maybe that's just me but you get the picture.

So using Kim's new sketch and visions of her gorgeous card I set out to make a card. I also used a couple of things that have been collecting dust in my closet like the Cuttlebug heart die, the Love sentiment stamped using a Stampin' Up! alphabet set I bought in 2003 and have never used! Yup you should see some of the stuff I have that I never get to use. So let's get on to some more details.

You know that I started by stamping the Owlies onto Bella's Bestest paper using Memento Tuxedo black ink. I then colored with copics and shaded with prismacolor pencils blended with gamsol. The shading along the edge is Tim Holtz Tumbled Glass distress ink applied while the image panel was still in the Nestie Petite Oval die. A double matt of teal and then brown cardstock was made using Nestie Scalloped Petite Ovals in Small and Large. I wanted to give a little more depth to the image so I actually colored the larger owl again, cut it out and popped it up on dimensionals. The red hearts were glittered up with a Sakura Jelly roll pen and then topped with clear Glaze pen but I don't think you can see that very well.

The papers are October Afternoon Farmhouse. Finished card size is 5 1/2 square. If you look close you'll find a heart border using a Martha Stewart punch. There's also some teal hemp cording and a button topping the heart die. There's a little bit of a coutry feel from the papers and I guess that would be a likely place to find an owl anyway right?

Enjoy the rest of your day!

See ya back here soon.

Cath