Whirlpool of Imagination

Turtle Sketch

When I first saw this week's sketch challenge at Splitcoast, I didn't think I would give it a try. Then, I saw all the wonderful examples everyone created and had to give it a go myself.

I decided to ink up one of the new turtles from Stamping Bella. These poor critters are too cute NOT to ink up! The image itself is colored with copic and prismacolor markers. In this picture, my coloring of the shell is not the smoothest. As I practiced, I think I've gotten a bit better with that.

I followed the sketch pretty closely and went for the semi monochromatic look. I had all the various greens in place and then went back and decided what shade to add in as a contrast. The twill is from Taylored Expressions - she's got some great little extra embellishments in her store that I like to use.

Happy Spring by the way! You wouldn't have known it here yesterday - it was freezing!! I'm a bit worried about my tulips. The stems have sprouted from the ground and now we are supposed to get several days of night temp's in the low 20's. I'm hoping they will suvive so I'll have pretty flowers in front of my house. Any flower experts - should I do anything to them?? And in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that my thumb is the exact opposite of green. If you want a plant to survive, do not give it to me! I guess I should be asking if you have any advice that I can pas on to Mo - he's the one that has the luck with the nature surrounding our house.

Have a fantastic weekend! We'll be busy checking scores and our basketball brackets. How are you doing so far?

Birthday Girl

Did you miss me? This weekend we've started our St. Patrick's Day celebrations early. Yesterday was a glorious day for a parade and we reveled in it. Meg marched with her step dancing school while I walked along with them. The crowds were enormous and vocal. Every time the girls stopped to dance they got a rousing cheer of approval when then finished - how cool is that for these girls? People waved to them and gave them high fives along the way. Then it was over to my in laws for a family meal. Great day and lots of fun.

Today I have the card I promised you a couple of days ago. I was shopping at Stamping Bella last month and when I saw this little card, I just had to buy her.

She is stamped with palette noir ink and colored with prismacolor and copic markers. The sentiment is stamped with night of navy SU ink and is from TAC.

I finally pulled out this CB embossing folder and really like it as a background. Now that I've finally used it once, I'm hoping I'll find more ideas for it.

Everything else is pretty much cardstock and layers. Most of my cardstock comes from California Paper Goods and the majority of the stock on this card is from there. I really like the Arcobalano line that they sell. It is not super strong for a stand alone card base but for layering, its fabulous.

It's shaping up to be another great day here again - hope yours will be lovely too!

One Stamp, Two Ways

I had great plans to blog and blurf last night but the allure of a glass of red wine, some chocolate and the black hole known as VH1 countdowns beckoned. And I gave in. Mo and I had a great time with the Top 100 Hard Rock Songs countdown. I'm an 80's hard rock/hair band/heavy metal kind of girl.....if that describes you too, watch this countdown - lots of fun!

And back to blogging on this beautiful Sunday morning. Today's entries actually came about by mistake. I had the first card designed and you know me, I never just make one, I always make several cards to add to my inventory as well as to send to pen pals. Here's the first one.....

During the last Stamping Bella sale, I picked up this little girl stamp. She reminds me of Meghan, especially with the hair off to the side so I had to buy her.

She's colored with copic markers and the flower has a little stickle center. I thought she was cute so I went about making the sections to make several more. When I repeat designs, I work assembly line fashion, making each separate part in multiplies and then putting them all together at the end.

So I went to add the image section to the green section when I had realized that I had cut the green blocks all too SMALL. Yep, didn't look good at all. So those green blocks went into the use at another time pile and then I had to do something with these already colored girl images.

Here is what a came up with the second time. The girl is colored in the same way. I just decided to change the paper and ribbon and go with another size card.

Having made the mistake, I now like the idea of taking a stamp and creating two different designs with it in one session. Now granted, if I had purposely started out to make two different designs, I would have colored her differently but that will be for next time. I have a list of monthly blog ideas I try to work in and this one stamp two ways is definitely going on the list.

Hope you have a fabulous day!

Starting to go Green

I missed you all yesterday. Mo had to work from home and he took the computer ALL day long - no breaks. While I missed checking out all my blogging friends, I did get a chance to work on the SCS sketch challenge for the week. I originally started work on this one on Wednesday but couldn't wrap my head around it. So I put it aside and yesterday things started to click a little better.

 I have had these bella (Stamping Bella) images colored for a few weeks now so I pulled them out for the challenge. I hemmed and hawed about colors and the paper I would use but I really liked this paper from Basic Grey, I believe, so I kept coming back to that.

Bella is colored with copic markers and everything else is just a matter of layering.

Stamping time was limited yesterday. I was using my newly sharpened knives for chopping when yep, cut my thumb. My taping thumb. It's not deep enough for stitches, just more of a nuisance. Today it feels better so I should be back at it with no problem!

Have a great day!

Meg is sketching again

Last year Meg did up a couple of sketches for the blog and my job was to make something with those sketches. Then she went through a dry spell where she was overthinking them so she gave it up and just started to draw things (meanwhile, I have some fabulous Star War scenes that she has since created!). Last week I gave her one of my stamped penguins from TAC to fool around with. Before you know it, she comes up with a card created. I really liked the layout so I challenged myself to create a card with her design.

Here is Meg's finished card.

And here is my version of Meg's design. The background is created using red line tape and Martha Stewart glitter. The words are from Spunky Stamps (yes, the last thing I did was stamp that crooked joy but I'll just have to learn to live with it). The bella is from Stamping Bella. She's paper pieced and colored with prismacolor pencils and baby oil and for the heart I used a copic spica pen. I wanted a bit more sparkle so I added Swarovski crystals for the corner.

Would you like to create a card with Meg's basic layout/design? If you do, please leave a comment - meg gets such a kick out of checking out your creations.

Have a great night!

Subdued Skater

This winter vacation is the one that never wants to end. Monday we had a late opening because of ice and today the kids had no school because of sleet and freezing rain. Aaaah, the togetherness. Luckily, I had this card already made up because when the kids are home, NO stamping seems to get done.

  I've used this stamp before with brighter colors but I was itching to use this patterned paper from My Mind's Eye so that dictated my whole color scheme.

The stamp is from Stamping Bella and she is colored in with prismacolor and copic markers. Meggie skates so that's why I think I always make her have brown hair. (And for those who use the markers, what's a good blonde color to choose from?)

The picture does not pick it up in the least but I used a snow writer for the pom pom on her hat to give it dimension and then stuck some white flock to that to make it fuzzy.

As always, the card is fairly straightforward from there. I'm trying to work on the glitter technique challenge from Monday that Splitcoast had. I really liked a lot of the samples but I need to think on it a bit more. Hopefully tomorrow will bring a little stamping time. Have a great night!

Bikini Bella

I was in a summer card making mood so I pulled out my bikini bella. Aaah, at one point in my life, I could wear one of those......

I tried vainly to add more layers to this card but to be honest, it just looked like I was adding just to add so I scaled it back down to my style.

The bella is from Stamping Bella, the flip flops are from TAC and the circle is from Papertrey. The blue mat that the bella is one is actually pop dotted for a bit of dimension but the camera didn't pick up on that.

I dry brushed some acrylic paint onto the bella layer just to dirty it up a bit.

The patterened paper is from my new favorite, Tutti Frutti from TAC. I think the bright colors have been matching my summery mood.

Until tomorrow...

Grads Galore

The season of graduation is upon us. Congrats to all those who have family members graduating - it's such an exciting time. I had to make two graduation cards for a girl whose school colors are kelly green, gold and white. I had a bit of a tough time initially because I never use that color combo, except for St. Patrick's Day.

I knew that for one of the cards I could pull out my trusty grad bella from www.stampingbella.com I colored her with prismacolor markers and used a bit of sakura metallic gelly roll pen for the flowers.

I used a bit of SU designer paper for the background and the circle and sentiment are from www.papertreyink.com

I'm sorry for the way that I have to add the links. Typepad recently changed their compose page and while there is a button for adding a link, it won't allow me to use it for some reason. If anyone can help me figure out why, I'd be very grateful.

Here is the second card. I went a bit simpler on this one. The graduation hat stamp is from PSX and made use of the congrats cuttlebug background to help finish off the card.

And that's my cards for today. Thanks so much for the encouragement I got from the last post. Today was tough because we went to a party but I scrounged around enough food that I could eat so I wasn't starving through the whole thing. Only two more days and I can be a little less restrictive and boy, my insides better be chemical free after all this!

A Parade of Brides

Have you ever noticed how events seem to come in bunches? Mo and I haven't been to a wedding in two years and within a two month time span, we are attending three. That, of course, means wedding showers. The funny thing is each of the three weddings has three completely different sets of people attending. Therefore, the shower cards are exactly the same, except for color.

I basically took the shower invitation to be my guide. I chose the colors from the shower invite and made the shower card to match those.

This is the basic design of the card. The invitation for this shower was lavender and white. I chose to add the black layer to give some contrast to the lavender.

This is a bella stamp from Stamping Bella. She is accented with prismacolor markers and the flowers are colored in with a sakura metallic gel pen.

The invite for this shower was pink and brown, one of my favorite color combinations. The card is colored exactly the same except for a change in color for the flowers.

And here is my third bella. The invite was, as you can see, a simple black and white. I really like the black and white combo here. The contrast just seems to pop between the colors.

There you have it, the same card, three color schemes. Now I just need to work on the cards for the weddings!

Graduation Time

It's that time of year for classes to end and graduations to begin. We don't have any big graduations in the family, although Conor is graduating preschool and heading off to kindergarten in the fall.

I pulled out my graduation bella from Stamping Bella for this one. My one complaint would be I wish a fella had been created for graduations too.

Bella is stamped with prismacolor markers and the flowers are colored with a sakura sparkle gelly roll pen. The sentiments are from the special anniversary set from Paper Trey. I have gotten so much use out of this set - love it.

The scallop on the left edge of the blue was created with one of those old Fiskars paper edger scissors. I had forgotten I had this but found it really easy to whip up some scallops with it.

Not one of the four of us had a good nights sleep last night - must be something in the air. It's early bedtime for all of us tonight! Have a great night.