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.

12 Tags of Christmas #1

I recently discovered Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas feature. Wow! It's really amazing. I fell in love with them and wanted to try my hand at them. One of the techniques featured was on how to make plaid backgrounds with alcohol inks so I set to it. It's really easy and I have a tidy pile of them on my desk (tidy used figuratively here of course).

I used mostly reds, golds and purples for this background, and stamped on some wintry images from the Winter Post set (SU). I even tried out my new scratching tool - aren't I getting grungy here! I used versafine ink, which seems to be wearing off. Ink that rubs off is a bit more of an extreme distress effect than I was going, so I will need to be gentle with this card until I try a replacement panel. I will have to try a different kind of ink next time, and just hope for the best.

I also scuffed up the edges of the tag (textured cardstock, named similarly to the irascible hotelier at Fawlty Towers). A bit about how I made my tag. In the absence of the elusive #8 manila tags, I made my own from cardstock and trimmed the corners at the top. For once they are even, a fluke that will never happen again! I also punched a circle from burgundy, but punched across the edge of the paper to get a flat side. Then I added an eyelet with my crop-o-dile. I stamped it a few times with a snowflake from Winter Post and edged in plum and artprint brown. The fibres are from my stash and I just love how they add texture and interest and a hit of colour. The layers are various colours of Mr Fawlty cardstock, edged in artprint brown. The brown one was run through my Big Shot for some texture, and the light burgundy has been stamped with a non-SU Christmas tree in bronze. The main card has been stamped in snowflakes in gold and versamark. The brads are square and spell "joy". They were silver so I tinted them with my alcohol ink applicator while I had it out. They're not so stark now and blend better. When all was said and done my hands were filthy but I was very happy with the result. I loved the tag, but I needed to put it on a card. I'm not so assimilated into the TH cult that I can just make tags for the sake of tags. I'm also a few steps away from doing large amounts of metal work in my papercrafting. Please pass the koolaid!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheerful envelope

Here, by popular demand*, is the envelope to go with the thank you card in my last post. White on white is not a great way to showcase this, but I forget how to change my blog settings. (No doubt it's somewhere in the settings menu, but it's post or fiddle, and I'm choosing post!)

I stamped it on a white envelope using a big and juicy ink pad (primary colours). Still lots of room for the address and return address, though I'm not sure how much Canada Post likes this sort of thing. But they have never, not once, asked my advice on anything, so I don't think I need to ask them either. None of the envelopes have been returned to me yet. Not like the year that I got about 30 back because I forgot to put stamps on them. They must love me there....

I did go on a tour once of the sorting facility (very interesting!) and they did mention that their machines don't like red on envelopes, so never use red ink or things will have to be hand sorted. It was very tempting to think that for 52 cents (or is it more now???) a pop, the delightful people at Canada post should be hand sorting my hand made creations. (One would think that it would brighten their day to come across some handstamped creation to add music to the poetry of postal codes...)

At the risk of sounding very Hyacinth Bucket, I'm tempted to think my hand made cards should be hand sorted, and possibly even hand delivered. On a silver salver. By a liveried footman. And definitely not, most definitely not, subjected to the indignities of a superbox.

*100% of blog comments requested it! How could I resist such a clamour from my following?!?

Cheap and Cheerful Thank Yous

At last! I did a "clean and simple" card! And it was simple! And most of them were clean! (They are going, by and large, to 7-year-olds, so I am not too worried about the couple that got smudged.)

My daughter's birthday was last weekend, so I needed a batch of thank you cards (13!) for friends and family. I hemmed and hawed for a bit about what to do. I was tempted to try to use up stuff from my scraps stash, but that always takes a long time. Instead, I went to designer paper and coordinating cardstock and ink, for guaranteed wow and speed. I love how it all came together.

The "thank you" image is one I picked up at a beautiful stationery shop here in town (along with too much (????) Japanese paper). I told myself it would be handy to have a circular thank you stamp, and lo! I was correct. I love it when that happens. (I'm still waiting for the ideal moment to trot out my scrimshaw stamp, and appropriate occasions may be less frequent than birthdays and thank yous. Still, it was a gap in my stamp collection....)

This was a very punchy card, and very quick to come together. If you want to recreate it at home, and why wouldn't you, here are the dimensions: standard card base (I used a sturdy white cardstock, 5 1/2"x 8 1/2"), the patterned paper (Razzleberry Lemonade) is 4 1/4" x 2 1/2", the "thank you " is punched on 1 1/4" circle, and matted on a 1 3/8" circle (Rich Razzleberry). The scallop circle is a 2" scalloped circle, punched from coordinating patterned paper (also Razz Lemonade). The ribbon (crushed curry grosgrain) is about 4 3/4" long, trimmed with a notch to overhang the card (I love that!).

I also whipped up matching envelopes, feeling very pleased with myself. I have a nice funky flourish that I stamped with a very big and squelchy (juicy?) multicolour inkpad in the same bright yellows, pinks and oranges. I just love how those turned out. It's sometimes hard to get a nice matching envelope with a card that relies so heavily on patterned paper. I can't (a) bring myself to "waste" patterned paper like that lining an envelope and (b) be bothered to do it. In this case, the perfect stamp again presented itself as did the ink. There was a tricky moment when I wondered if I could find that ink pad since it's so big it doesn't fit any of the places I keep my normal inks. But I just said to myself, where is the first place you would have stowed it, and lo! there it was, cozily snuggled between my watercolour wonder crayons and my wood veneer. I must have filed it with the "W's" for "Wow-these colours match perfectly".

Well, thank you for stopping by and bearing with the horrors of my organizational skills and my overzealous use of interjections.

NSR: I went to see the Group of Seven Nutcracker with my SIL, niece and daughters on the weekend. It was fabulous! It was Ballet Jorgen, and their Canadian interpretation of the story was wonderful. The toys that came to life were woodland creatures and the dance of the loons was particularly magnificent. They are touring various places, so if they are coming to a stage near you, I would recommend them. I am no connoisseur of The Ballet, but they seemed quite good.

Partridge in a Bare Tree

Here's a Christmas card I finished up tonight. I've been plugging away at my Christmas cards. At this rate, I will be done in good time for Easter!

I fell in love with this image when I saw it at my LSS and I inked the tree with a dark brown marker and added colour to the bird with a couple of shades of twinkling h20 so it has a lovely shimmer. I added a tiny dot of marker for an eye, and swishled in some grey at the bottom to ground the image. I didn't know what to do with it, but I really loved the white space (actually off-white space) and it sat on my desk for a while, long enough to get a bit of an aged look and some smudges on the nice off-white space (sigh). Still, the smudges aren't fatal to the overall look, and tonight I decided it was time to make it into a card. I won't describe all the dead-ends, other than mention I have a fantastic border made of Glitter-ritz and pears. It's gorgeous, but didn't fit here. It will get turned into something lovely. I am totally enamoured with my new Glitter-ritz glitter! I also have a bunch of SU glitter, so I am going to see if it works with similar techniques because I know my club ladies would love that!

Anyway, back to this card. I spend quite a lot of time on the red background, and was a little dismayed that it is almost all covered up, but am coming to terms with it. I started by stamping the solid pear in gold on chili cardstock, heat set, then felt it needed some texture so I pulled out my marble effect cube. Boy is that thing ever cool! It is going to be my new go-to stamp for a nondescript texture background. I used artprint brown and soft suede for the stamping. Then I dithered for quite some time on the middle layer. I had a sheet of the perfect colour of Bazzill, but it's my last one and I don't know what colour it is and it is the perfect colour for every single card I am making (probably the reason it is my last one) and I couldn't bear to cut into it. That's when I discovered that the bluey-grey piece was, in fact, even more perfect. I dithered another while on what size and shape to make it and the stamping force drew me to my Christmas stamp drawer and this greeting leaped into my hand and it really worked. That layer needed a bit of something so I stamped the leaf & berry down one side in a medium blue chalk ink (Aegean blue). The greeting is stamped in chocolate chip craft ink and embossed with chocolate brown ep. I think chestnut ep would have been really good too, but my LSS was closed this evening so I couldn't do an emergency embossing powder run. You may be admiring the grunge effect I achieved on the greeting. It's very subtle, but not hard to do. First, ink your stamp with craft ink, and stamp. Realize you didn't ink/press hard enough and there is no way on God's green earth that the embossing powder will stick to that feeble attempt. Consider the folly of trying to re-position, but figure, what have you got to lose - it's not working as it is. Carefully reposition stamp and press harder this time, intently channeling the universe's stamping force. Lift away and presto, only misaligned on the bottom. Looks like something you'd pay money for in the grunge stamp aisle, so emboss it anyway. This is why I like edging everything in Artprint Brown - it gives that grungy distressed look to everything that disguises smudges on vanilla and ghosty greetings. It all looks like it was meant to be there.

Then I toyed for a long time with a vanilla taffeta ribbon and I eventually tied the perfect bow. I was very pleased with myself. The bow looked fantastic, but when I lifted my head up away from where I was hunched in obsessive concentration, I realized the bow looked terrible on the card and ruined the whole effect of the simplicity of the bird. Off it went. I am going to have to go to ribbon university. Or sell all my ribbon. Maybe sell all my ribbon to pay for ribbon university. Hmm.

So that's this card! I really like it. I think what I like is the interesting and very textural bottom layer, the medium amount of texture on the middle layer and the very simple top layer. I should add that there is a subtle linen texture to the vanilla paper that really adds a lot of interest. And in real life the shimmery bird draws your eye right in.

I love stamping. It's been a long week at work (is it only Wednesday???) where I've been dealing with one thing an another, with only logistic regression analyses to cheer me up between the one things and the anothers. So these evenings of stamping with my radio tuned to Studio 93 (awesome 80s new wave and the fabulous DJ Vinnie White of the Whites of Brighton) are intensely and gratifyingly therapeutic.

Now I must figure out what that sheet of Bazzill is so I can re-stock. It's sort of reddish brown, but it looks like it's two-tone red with brown flecks. It's not a solid colour. It came in a darks multipack if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for stopping by! And if you are reading to this point, well done! Reward yourself with a trip to the Quietfire Designs blog hop if you like beautiful calligraphy and stamps!

Something fishy

A while back I went on a real background binge. I pounced and blended and dripped and splatted my alcohol inks all over the place. It's so much fun! But there are only so many sheets of glossy paper that can be tinkered with before I have to put them to a good use. I turned this one into an all-purpose card, which I actually recently used. (My cards have better odds of being hoarded than being given away, and I am always trying to fight this tendency, but it's hard.) I was off to a stamping play date at a friend's house (check out her awesome blog - she is one talented lady, and so so nice) and she just moved so I needed a housewarming card. A couple of fish was as close to housewarming as I had in my stash. (I know I have previously said that fish are for masculine cards, but I will also decide that they are excellent for housewarming, and if I search the internet hard enough, I might find that they are an ancient symbol for hospitality. After all, isn't there some saying about houseguests and fish????)

I was also fixated on finishing my velvet poinsettia Christmas cards that day. (Which I did finish, but the end result was that I only have fish cards for a housewarming. I love making fish cards, but there doesn't seem to be a good occasion for giving them. I'll have to hold out for April 1st, which has some sort of fish connection for the French. Now there's a reason to head off to Wikipedia, but I will try to finish this post first.)

Well, I did dash off to my friend's, we had a great night and even got some stamping in. We had a new order to play with and I made a cute holly card with button berry accents. So much fun!

Thanks for stopping by.

Anyway, I did the polished stone background with various alcohol inks on glossy paper. As I'm peering at it in the dim light, I see some vaguely flower shapes and I now recall that I had made a bunch of pieces of floral background stamped on glossy in Versafine dark blue. I didn't like them, so I thought I would try to enhance them with alcohol ink. It mostly covers them up, which considering I didn't like it in the first place is an enhancement. If I had been trying to keep it, I might be more annoyed. I should try to remember this for future reference. I had these fun peel-off stickers and I whapped those down, added some dewdrops and matting and I had my main panel. I put it on a textured base (C'bug folder with sticks, meant to evoke seaweed). A hairy bit of yarn finished it off. I like the colours and the various textures, etc. The alcohol backgrounds are just so pretty and interesting. I could just play all day!

Thanks for stopping by.

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!