Bella Tucker

A little while ago, I found out about 8 year old Bella.  Her situation wrenched my heart.  At Easter time, she developed a serious disease and the family almost lost her.  She had to have both arms and legs amputated.  I cannot fathom, waking up at eight years old, to find out I had no arms or legs anymore.  I get teary every time I think about it.  And the financial cost to her family to continue her care and recovery is huge, to say the least.
  Blogging friend and fellow designer Erin brought this story to my attention.  She is acquainted with the family through her local gymnastics club, that Bella used to attend.  And she is running several blog hops to flood Bella with happy cards, and to raise awareness of this family's plight.
  Please visit Erin's blog to find out how you can join in the blog hops and give a bit of cheer to Bella.  Erin has the address where you can send a card.  And if you want more information on Bella and how you can donate to the family, follow this link.
  There are lots of sponsors and prizes to be won as well, and I am offering up some digi images to the winners.
  Please, if nothing else, post the blinkie on your side bar so that the word gets around blogland and the family can be helped.
 Bless each one of you for reading this and for caring.

Challenge #6 Monochromatic (Mostly!)

Well tis challenge time again, and I am really excited about the theme my friend and fellow Crew-mate Mary chose for the challenge over at my other blog, Sundays With Crissy!  She wants us to do our cards/projects in a monochromatic colour scheme!  This sounds really challenging at first, but it actually is quite simple to do and very satisfying.  Plus you don't have to quibble within yourself over what colours go with what!  You just pick one colour family, and use it just like you would any other colour; adding the deepest shades of your colour choice in the shadows, and saving the lightest hues for the highlights.  I even left some of the white of the paper showing to make the highlights stand out even more. 

I didn't over blend with this one, opting instead to use the lines of the markers as part of the artistic expression.   I have seen it done before, and its my first attempt at it, so be gentle!  I have a long way to go I know, but it was fun to colour more "loosely" and not worry about whether or not all the lines were blended out. 

The image is a digital one for Whimsy Stamps and  is called "Daddy's Heartbeat."   I am super proud of this one.  It was an image I drew that was inspired by fellow blogger and friend Tracey.  She let me use one of her gorgeous photos that she took of her  daughter and hubby for my inspiration! Thanks Tracey, waving!!

These are the Copic blues that I used:

B91, 93, 95, 99 and for the rose I used R12, 14, 17 and 27

Some use of the blender pen as well.

The saying is also a digital from Whimsy, designed by Ann of Raindrop Echo Designs.  She has a marvellous collection of digital sayings at Whimsy that are beautiful and value priced too! Go check em out!

I used my new Stormy Sky Distress ink to ink around the edges as well as to stamp all the flourishes on the lighter blue dp.  Those flourishes (in rubber) can be found in the carousel horse sets I did for Whimsy as well.

I am entering this into the following challenges (besides my own of course!)

Incy Wincy: One for the guys

One Stop Craft Challenge: One for the boys

Ooh La La: Flourishes and Pearls

Here is your close-up of the colouring:

 

 I hope you will visit my challenge blog to see what the Crew has done for you in this monochrome theme!  It is rather a break-away from the norm and quite exciting to venture into!  So I do hope you will join us!

God bless you today, and thank you for stopping by! 

Mother's Day Card

This was a Mother's Day Card that I did for my step-Mom this year (just got around to posting it now).

 I am a huge fan of jewel tone colours and I just love how this turned out!    "Proud Momma" is one of my favourite carousel horses that I did for Whimsy.   I love stamping with Whimsy Stamps - they are so deeply etched, I get a perfect image every time.  I stamped on 140 lb cold press water colour paper by Canson (I get pads of it from Michael's or Curry's).  I have found it to be the best wc paper to stamp on, as the grooves and dips in the paper (or "tooth" as it is commonly called) are not too deep.   I water coloured the image with Twinkling H20's, and sponged some blue ink around the outer edges while it was still in the SP die.   

Lots of SP dies used on this one, and I used a metallic paint to decorate the edges of the turquoise die cuts, and around the outer edges of the card.  The red dp is Basic Grey. 

I'm getting some fresh new designs ready to share with you soon, so I'm going back to the ole' drawing board.  Ha!  I love that I can say that and mean it.  :-)

Hugs and blessings to you!

Challenge #5 Relish To Embellish and LSL Diversified

Hey fellow bloggers, I just found another fantastic store recently called LSL Diversified.  They are Canadian and in Ontario. Since they are only online (not brick and mortar) they can keep their prices low. I have ordered from them three times now, and am I ever impressed! They have the lowest Copic prices I have found in Canada - $5.50 per each sketch marker!
And great sales every week too.  Also, if you don't see what you want in her catalogue, she'll try to order it in for you!
Not only are her prices low, the service is exceptional. I have ordered and received my packages from her within three business days.  Of course that would be different for U.S. or International orders.
So, I have approached Lora, the owner of this fine Canadian company to be our very first sponsor at Sundays With Crissy, and she agreed!  Go check out what she has up for grabs at my challenge blog!

Anyway, this is the card I made for my "Relish to Embellish" challenge at Sundays With Crissy.  If you'd like to join in, feel free to interpret the challenge any way you'd like.  I always relish to embellish, so that was a given for me, lol!  I would be hard pressed to NOT embellish my cards with oodles of "stuff".  It seems to me, the more stuff, the merrier! 

I used my "Rupert's Gift"image from Squigglefly for this card.  I printed him on Fanboy Manga Drawing Pad by Canson.  It is 150 lb card stock and it is so easy to blend on with Copics.  I coloured him with Copics awhile ago, so I don't have a colour list today.  I was not completely happy with the job I did, and so I tried painting overtop of my Copic colouring using the Copic White.  Copic White reminds me very much of "White Out" that typists used to use back in the day before computer word processors! I'm talking about manual type writers here (ok, now I am really dating myself!!).   Anyway, Copic White makes for a great opaque white to put on top of your Copics if you want a true white coverage.  I used little flicking strokes with a small water colour brush all over Rupert to mimic fur.  I like how it turned out! 

I did the dotty background again, which I really enjoy doing.  Here is a link to a video tutorial on how I do the dotty backgrounds.

When I was done colouring, I covered the image with Versamark Clear ink and then Ultra Thick embossing powder and heat set.  I had to repeat the process three times.  You have to prepare to let your image yellow a bit when you use UT powder.  

The blue and pink roses are from Whimsy Stamps (very reasonably priced!) and the off white rose next to them is a hand made flower by Yours Truly.  I am still very much in the experimental stages with making my own flowers, but I aim to get better!

Anyway, nuff said.  Any questions you can e-mail me and I'd be happy to answer!

You have two weeks to enter my challenge so there's lots of time to play.  Don't forget to check out what my gals of Crissy's Crew have done for this week's challenge!  

Thanks for coming by today! God bless you!!

New Digi Release for Whimsy!

Today is the first of the month, and that means a new Digital Image release for Whimsy Stamps!  These are my contributions for this month. I didn't have time to make a creation with them yet, so today I'm just showing you the images.  

Many thanks to Tracey who sent me some more beautiful photos of her gorgeous daughter Maya and some of Maya and her Daddy together too.  They were wonderful models for me!   I think the two of Maya and her Dad would make great Father's Day cards! 

 There are also many more digital images available for immediate download today from Whimsy's other artists:  Melissa Jenkins of MelJen's Designs, Whimsy's Digital Stamps, Katie's Digital Critters and Ann of Raindrop Echo Designs, Digital Sentiments.   So head on over there and check them out!  

Also, there are two events going on today, a new Whimsy Challenge and a short and sweet Blog Hop is on, with prizes offered as always!  Go check em out and have fun!

Bless you big time!