Santa's naughty boy list

Ooooh, Sassy Stella has her mind on all kinds of ways to warm up on a cold winter's night. I hope Gus is ready! If you are new to my blog, these characters are some of my favorites. They come from a stamp company called Bugaboo and are available as a digital stamp. You can spend hours browsing though all of their images. So many cute stamps and funny sentiments.

I love to color these stamps because they are simple. I usually dont do too much blending or shading on them since they are so cartoonish. I always add bling by way of stickles to give them some added oomf. PErfect stamps for the beginner cardmaker who is a little overwhelmed with the shading that I generally do on the whippersnapper animals.

My friend and card making buddy, Kathy, used ther versitility of the digital stamps to resize them to a larger size and is creating the cutest calendar out of them for 2012.

Happy Stamping!

Fa-La-La-Land

About a month or so ago Simply Scrapbooks started carrying a new line of stamps called La La Land stamps. I have to be honest, I wasnt a big fan when I first saw them. They sort of reminded me of Greeting Farm which I am just so-so on.

When I was picking out my papers to begin the Christmas card samples, I decided to pick up this La La Land stamp, hoping I could help with the sales of the new stamp line. Around the same time, I started watching some YouTube videos to get some pointers on coloring hair and skin with my Copic markers. I happened upon one of the videos and she used a La La Land stamp for her tutorial.

This video totally changed my mind about these stamps and really helped me with my coloring techniques. When I finished coloring this little girl stamp, I was nearly jumping up and down. This was the best result I have ever had with blending and highlighting with Copic markers. I am thinking of applying them to a class, possibly in January, to share these techniques with you.

Sadly, I misplaced my note where I jotted down the exact Copic colors I used.

Happy Stamping!

Have yourself a cozy little Christmas

Ahhh, wouldnt it be nice to just sit in your jammies, sir cocoa, and watch your favorite Christmas movie? For me it would be Elf. I just love that movie! "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?"..."Go ahead, call me elf one more time!" If you havent seen it...where have you been???...and go rent it!

I would love a day like this but who the heck has the time??? My tree isnt up, I have cookies to bake, presents to buy and wrap...uggh!

So to dream, I made this card. The little girl is a precious Pure Innocence stamp. I just cant seem to use one of these stamps without paper piecing the clothes. How do you do that? It's simple. Just restamp your image on a patterned piece of paper (say that 3 times fast) and cut out that part you want to paper piece. This is a fantastic way to do clothing. It coordinates your stamped image to your background paper and pulls everything together.

The Copics I used are: yg05, yg06, r27, e02, e01, r02

Happy Stamping!

Santa Called....

I know the office Christmas parties are probably scheduled and happening soon...I dont know why but this one really reminded me of an office admin giving a message to her boss...hmmm, now where in the world did I ever come up with this idea...Lol!

What many of you probably dont know is that I decided to give up the mortgage business. I worked in this field for 13 years and was ready for a change. Our bank was closing our branch which led me on the job search. I was blessed to find one in the mortgage business and one in a totally different field. I opted for the new adventure and am working as a registrar at our children's hospital.

My stress level has gone down significantly and I no longer have a boss that's on Santa's naughty list.

Now onto my card...It's Stella from Bugaboo making another holiday appearance. This time I used the following Copics: c3, c5, c1, e57, e11, r02, e01, r46, y17.

Who's been naughty???

It's the first of many cards from Bugaboo stamps with my Stella and Gus friends. I went to a scrap booking retreat a few weekends ago and I went a little crazy designing Christmas cards. I designed 14 of them so you will have plenty of inspiration this holiday season.

Sure, I made cute cards, religious, cards, animal cards...but my favorite are always the funny little nasty ones. "Be naughty, Save Santa the trip". Maybe this one would be good to leave under the mistletoe for your sweetie (wink, wink)

The copics I used are: y38, 100, e35, g17, r02, e01, r02, r46, c5, c1

Happy Stamping!

I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Okay, who doesn't love this song? I saw a set of Inky Antics stamps with this hippo and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had to make a card that went along with the Christmas song. Inside, the card says "Hippo Holly Days".

I did a sneak peek of this card on my facebook account and it got a lot of compliments.

I think this card would be perfect for all ages. I know a lot of kids love the song. I decided to give it some extra dimension by stamping the image twice and colored and cut the head of the head of the second image so I could pop it. I also added some white flock to the border of the hat and the snowball on the end so it would be fuzzy.

The copics I used were: w5, w3, w1, g28, r46, g21

I did learn something interesting about choosing colors. As you know, Copics makes both warm and cool grays. Warm grays are for living creatures and cool grays are for objects. Keep that little tip in mind when choosing your colors. Of course, this is only a tip and not a hard fast RULE.

Hope you get your hippo for Christmas!
Happy Stamping!

The greatest gift of all

Inside verse:
Some packages come wrapped in bright papers and bows,
The greatest of all came wrapped in swaddling clothes

I thought I would begin the Christmas season with a card that celebrates the true meaning of the holiday. Tina Wenke designed this stamp that is available at Simply Scrapbooks. She does such a darling design job with all of her images. She has a ton that incorporate really cute cats and dogs.

I double stamped the image so I could *fussy cut* the banner and pop it out. I actually just pop dotted the middle of the banner and adhered the ends with regular adhesive so the banner actually bows.

I used a ton of copic markers for all of the details in this stamp: b39, e53, c1, r02, e37, e01, y17, yr23, c3, r46, b12, g99, & e35.

And then....

I went totally crazy with my stickles. I sparkled EVERYTHING and it turned out beautiful!

Happy Stamping!

Christmas shopping is underway...

And that means it is the season for Psycho shoppers!

Proudly, I am one of them! Before we dive into the details of this card, let me just vent on a few things...first, I wasn't digging the 9pm start on Thanksgiving. I liked it so much better when my first stop was about 5am. That was Black Friday. I could spend more time with family on Thanksgiving Day, sleep on my turkey, and spend most of Black Friday shopping. Starting at 9 pm means I am about toast by 7am. Not to mention it's much colder in the overnight hours.

This year, I headed out at 9pm to go to Toys R Us...no way! Got there and the line wrapped around the shopping center. Instead, decided to stand in the Target line for hours til they opened because I "needed" more stuff there. Target does an excellent job with crowd control and organization. Walmart should take a lesson. Now there is a place for Psycho shoppers...how about that lady who pepper sprayed a crowd...over a barbie car...seriously????

Okay, now onto my card...Stella is the perfect lady to voice her opinion on the psycho shoppers. I got this one on the bugaboo website right before my last retreat.

The paper is from the doodlebug line and the Copics used are: c7, c1, rv06, 05, e01, bg01, & r35.

So if you have time to paper craft at this time of year, stop by the bugaboo site and send it to your favorite psycho.

Happy Stamping!