WELCOME TO BLOGABELLA

and you know what that means sistahs?? THAT MEANS… CUH razy prices on special images we have chosen!  This is our way to thank you for your loyalty over the years!  These CUHRAZY prices allow you to shop til you drop without an ounce of guilt… Imagine retail therapy and feeling GREAT about it!  WOOHOOO!!  I love crazy TUESDAYS!  When does it happen?  Every FIRST TUESDAY of EVERY MONTH!

So if you want to start collecting our images, or start a little stash for someone special.. this is the way to go.

This month’s CRAZY TOOSDAY specials are:

and after 24 hours…. POOF our Crazy Tuesday becomes ho hum Wednesday!  So don’t wait sistahs 🙂

MWAH!

This week I thought I’d share some Copic combos for colouring the adorable elephant images in Stamping Bella’s Stuffie stamp range. The image I used is I’ll Always Have Your Back Stuffies (is that little baby not the sweetest thing ever?).

I have used combos from all four of the Copic Grey families, but I just had to thrown in a bonus smooshy pink elephant at the end, I’m sure you will understand. 😉

This seems like a great opportunity to chat about the different grey families, so you can either put the markers you have to use, or so you can make better informed choices when you come to add to your collection!

• The first example shows a combination of Neutral Greys. As the name suggests, these are neutral in tone. I love using the darker Neutral Grey shades for colouring black hair (as seen in my Marker Geek Monday Copic Hair Combos post) as they give a true black look.

• The second example shows a combination of Cool Greys. These have a blue tone and work really well for colouring and shading cool colours and objects.

• The third example shows a combination of Toner Greys. These have a slightly brown tone. I often use the Toner Greys for simple grounding of characters etc.

• The fourth example shows a combination of Warm Greys. These have a really warm brown tone to them and are great for shading warm colours and natural objects/materials.

If you’re just getting started with Copic markers, I’d recommend thinking about the images you’re most likely to be colouring and picking one or two of the grey families to purchase first. I started out with just the Cool and Warm Greys, and was perfectly happy for quite some time. Now, I tend to reach for the Toner and Neutral families more often.

GENERAL TIP: You don’t need every single grey marker in a family (or in any colour family). A great way to build your collection is to leave a gap of one or two shades between the colours. You can achieve plenty of depth and variety by layering the colours together in different amounts.

The little pink elephant that slipped in at the end was coloured using the “smooshy, squiggly” texturing style discussed in my previous Marker Geek Monday Three Ways to Colour a Stuffie Bear post. After all, these little elephants are in the Stuffies range, so why not colour them to look cute and textured like cuddly plushie toys?! You could also use this texturing technique with the grey colours too, to mix the realism with a little fun! A bright or baby blue ellie would be adorable too, pair that or the pink (or a soft yellow version) with an appropriate sentiment and you would have a perfect card for a new baby!

Have a go and let us know how you got on by sharing your work here in the comments section, over in the Stamping Bella Sistahood chat group on Facebook, directly on the Stamping Bella Facebook page or on Instagram by using the tag #markergeekmonday . We love hearing from you and sharing the enthusiasm for Stamping Bella!

MWAH!

~Elaineabella

Hiya sistahs!

Hope you are having a great week and I KNOW you are probably looking forward to the weekend ALMOST as much as I am 😉

Today’s April first.. all of our new banners are up on da website and our stamp of the month is announced 🙂

Today’s also Bellarific friday of course and I CANNOT wait to show you what our BABEROONIS have been up to!  YAY for INSPIRATION! 🙂

not only is it Bellarific Friday but it’s the first Friday of the month where our baberoonis will show you how to work with LOLLY!

Here’s ALICEwertzABELLA’s card

Here’s Angelabella’s card

Danabella’s card

FayeW-Jabella’s card

Kerribella’s card

Shelabella’s card

Lesliebella’s card

Sandiebella’s card

Stephabella’s card

TracyMACabella’s card

Does that not make you wanna create??!??!?  with LOLLY??? LOL.. I want lolly to come create with me 🙂

And now for our amazing sistahood!  our theme for da sistahood was a FREE FOR ALL!  Use any Current Stamping Bella stamp and make a card and POOF you’ve entered our challenge 🙂

For any new sistahs who would like to contribute, check out our instructions HERE

Check out the amazing contributions via INLINKZ  at the bottom of THIS POST

And now for our EMAILED Contributions from da SISTAHOOD

How’s THAT for creative genius!?

Now for next week’s theme?

A MOJOBELLA sketchypoo!  Just use a current image in this sketch and submit and you’re off to da races 🙂  I so hope I have time to play along too 🙂

Mwah to da sistahs who are ready to get inky!

Em

Hiya sistahs 🙂

Just thought I would share a little bit of DIS and a little bit of DAT with you 🙂

I’ve been journaling a LOT lately :).. keeping up in one of my favorite planners called the HOBONICHI.  If you haven’t heard of it, BEWARE.  ENABLER ALERT and I CANNOT be blamed.  N’uh uh… Nope.. not taking responsibility for this one :).  The shocking thing about this Hobo (as I refer to him) is that I actually have been using it almost EVERY SINGLE DAY.  The beauty of the size I bought (A5) is that it has the month at a glance (which I love)… the Week at a glance.. Which I love.. and Daily pages which I enjoy collaging and scribbling in  ( I actually decorate all of my pages :)).  Ive mentioned it here before but I love documenting life.. taking and printing little pictures.. writing about the good, the bad and the UGLY.. and basically leaving a legacy for those around me.. to maybe understand me more.. to create my own “history” by gluing things in that are current but that won’t be so current in 50 years.. LOL.. does that make sense?  I won’t be so current in 50 years.. HAHA. I make me laugh!

Another thing I love about this journal is the paper… ahhhhh… the paperrrrrrr…  It’s called Tomoe River paper and it is GLORIOUS!  It’s super thin and can take a lot of abuse.. it takes fountain pens beautifully without much show through.. you can stamp on it.. you can even watercolour and collage on it too.. It’s OUTSTANDING. Bella’s stamp of approval fo’ sho’.

Here’s my page from yesterday.. where I treated myself to an OMBRE (where your hair is darker at the top and gradually gets a bit lighter towards the bottom)…. my hair was so grey that I couldn’t even look in the mirror any more! not that there is anything wrong with grey… but I no likey on me.  So I decided to do something a little different.. change things up  a bit.

On the TOP RIGHT of the page you will see our JAVA SPILLS stamp… this is my GO TO stamp to make backgrounds, to fill space in my journals.. etc.  it’s AMAZINK.

I was speaking to my friend today and confirmed my journaling portion on this page with her.  It’s not only me who feels HIDEOUS at the hairdresser.  I LOATHE looking in the mirror there.. LOL.. why do I feel so yuck there? My friend also said she feels the same way.. she thinks there’s something in the lighting and that there should be photo filters everywhere as soon as you walk in LOL.

Another great thing about this journal is that you can use all your scraps in there… you can swatch your coloured pencils, inks paints.. It’s about life and what’s important to you.  It’s YOUR place to play.

LOVE.

Another thing I shared on social media today was that our very own FAYEW-Jabella got our Tiny Townie Penelope has a pencil on the right hand side of the COVAH of Making Cards magazine.  WOOHOOOOOO!!!  Take a lookie.

I also didn’t do WONDERFUL WEDNESDAYS WITH PAULA yesterday!  Here’s her STUNNING CARD using Tiny Townie Blossom loves BALLOONS..her colouring?  sigh.

Mwah to da sistahs who “make their own journaling history”

Em

Hiya sistahs!

So I treated myself to this JUICY DSLR camera/video camera.. Ryan build me this jig thingamajig to mount my camera on.. and I am stuck figuring out how to work everything LOL.  Does that sound fair?  I think NOT.

I decided to shoot a VERY basic video which shows that I need a manicure DESPERATELY.. ( who has time? ).. and which is shot SOOOOO close  (things I need to play with re. jig).. and I was also playing and trying to teach myself how to edit (please ignore blank paper for 9 hours).. but I had to start somewhere right?

This is a BASIC video on how to ink a stamp.   If you have friends who are interested in stamping but don’t know how/what/where/if/why.. this is the first step to making someone understand how magical stamping really is.  Inking and stamping and feeling like an artist… sigh.. what could be BETTAH.

So I hope you enjoy this TOTALLY AMATEURISH video…  and would love to hear in the comments what you would like to see and if I can do it for you, you know I will!

Mwah to da sistahs who have time for manicures.  I’m jelly (what my daughter says for JEALOUS).

Would also LOVE it if you subscribed to our NEW YOUTUBE channel 🙂  Would make me SO happy!

Em

Hiya sistahs!

Here’s today’s Marker Geek Monday!  Enjoy!

Since Spring is here I thought it would be a good time to share some Copic colour combos for the Woodsies range from Stamping Bella. I absolutely love these little characters, they are so soft and sweet yet full of that character and fun we all love Stamping Bella for.

The graphic below shows five different combos for colouring the adorable Petunia seen in the Especially For You Petunia stamp. Of course, these work for any piggy image, including the other Woodsies images and the Stuffies range too.

You will notice that I don’t necessarily stick to colour families when colouring with alcohol based markers like Copics. By playing and mixing shades from different groups you can get a greater variety of results. Learning what works is a case of trial and error, and a good colour chart like Sandy Allnock’s Hex Chart really helps too (I’ll talk in depth about this in a future post, but go grab one – it is a great investment for Copic colouring).

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that your results will look different from mine. Not just because digital representations of colour will not be an exact match for “real life”, but because your results will be affected by a variety of factors: the paper you use, how heavily you lay down colour, the amount of layering you do, the order in which you use the colours etc. The aim of these posts is not to get you replicating my results, but to encourage you to try different combinations, play with your markers and gain more confidence in experimenting. The more colouring you do, the more colours you play with and combine in different ways, the better you will become at colouring in your own style!

Have a go and let us know how you got on by sharing your work here in the comments section, over in the Stamping Bella Sistahood chat group on Facebook, directly on the Stamping Bella Facebook page or on Instagram by using the tag #markergeekmonday . You are also welcome to share your own favourite combos. We love hearing from you and sharing the enthusiasm for Stamping Bella!

MWAH!

~Elaineabella