Scene Building With Stamping Bella

I first discovered stamping as a way to allow me to "colour in" which was always my favourite thing to do as a child.  Being an only child if my parents wanted me to be quiet somewhere they took me then the way to do it was to give me a new colouring book and some shiny new felt tip pens.  I have been a self declared pen-a-holic since about the age of 7 and my favourite outing of the year was to WHSmiths ahead of a new school term!  Stamping Bella was one of the first brands I discovered and is still my "go to" when I want a good pen fix.   Now there are people who colour in far better than I do, but with practice I have improved on those early stamping outings, even if I'll never be an Elaine, Kristina or Sandy and it still takes me out of myself for a few precious hours.

So this weekend I decided to pull out some of my Bella's and one of the great things about them is that because the style is consistent you can mix and match unrelated images and create full-on scenes with them, so I did a couple of larger (5x7) cards for Christmas.

For this first card I've used 3 stamp sets - Tina Trims the Tree, AllBoxedUpAbella and Meowy Christmas.  AllBoxedUp is not a Christmas set but it fits in this scene so its always worth checking out your non-Christmas stash and seeing how you can stretch it.

I stamped the cat first and created a mask from post-it tape and then stamped the boxed up girl over the top so it sits behind in the scene and then finally I did a partial mask for the box so I could stamp the tree behind that (no point cutting out a full mask if you know the stamps will only cross a bit of it so work out roughly where they will cross and save time on the mask)

To colour I used a couple of different mediums - I wanted to use my inktense pencils but there is no colour in them I find adequate for skin so I did the girls skin in copics and then the rest of the scene in the pencils.  To bring it all together as a "scene" rather than 3 overlapping images floating in space I drew a straight line to be the floor and added a little shadow around the images where they touch the floor.  

I wanted a sentiment about Christmas surprises but couldn't find one so put one together using a couple of MFT stamp sets "twice the wishes" for the surprise word and "winter wonderland" for the rest (this is discontinued now but we have a couple left on sale!) 

For this second one, again I combined 3 stamps - Chick Tree, FaLaLaLaLa and one of the chicks from Skating Chicks.   Again I did the same masking technique starting with the chick on the right and working back towards the tree.  I extending the snow mounds to the left of the snowman so when masking that I just used a wobbly scrap of post-it before stamping the chick tree.

This was entirely coloured with inktense pencils - if you find (as I did) that the colours are really strong and want a way to add soft colour (like the really washed out grey I sued on the snowman) then my top tip is to have a scrap of card to the side and scribble on that, wet it and pick your colour up from there with a water brush.  That way you will get a much softer shade than trying to blend out the colour direct on your image.

I just used a fine liner pen to extend the snow hills and then added a thick crust of glitter to the star using Lawn Fawn's chunky glitter which I just love for its brilliant sparkle - its fab in a shaker too.

The sentiment comes from Reverse Confetti's Sentimental Christmas and I've added the remaining 3 La's on the inside.

NEWS FROM THE STORE 

So the biggest news is our closure dates for our move are now confirmed and therefore your last chance to order before Christmas will be MIDNIGHT (GMT) NEXT FRIDAY (15th)

The store will still be live for most of that time, there will just be a day when we do essential website maintenance as part of the move, so you can still browse but CHECKOUT WILL BE DISABLED so you will not be able to make any purchases until we re-open.  We made the decision to do that as we feel opening up after not really having a break with the move will be just too overwhelming if we have hundreds of orders to come back to on day one as we'll never catch up.

The one item you will still be able to purchase will be STORE VOUCHERS.  So if someone needs a last minute gift for you, then you can direct them there.  You will not be able to spend your vouchers until we reopen on the 28th.

We will be getting deliveries throughout our closure so we should have lots of new stock for you ready and waiting on the 28th.

This week we will be getting the new release from MFT as usual and customs willing we should have it for release on Wednesday morning.

Restocks of Concord and 9th have now shipped and hopefully we will have those before the end of the week too.

Otherwise as we are getting close to our move date there will be no more new releases coming as we can't risk them coming to the wrong address (you can't redirect commercial deliveries as customs won't clear them if the invoice and delivery addresses don't match so we need to change our address before we move so have to have a cut off date)   Sorry for the inconvenience- we only plan one move ever so hopefully this is a one-time deal and normal service will resume in 2018!

That's all for today - catch you next weekend!

Tara