Don't Faint! It's Bellarific Friday!

I know what you're saying..."Holy Cow, two posts in one week!". :) Don't get used to it. My goal for the year (that I've already failed miserably at!) is once a week. I'd love to be able to do twice and if I can knock out some challenges, I may hit that. It's early yet though so I'm not making any promises!

In my blog cruising, I repeatedly came across what I first thought of as "Sup'd Up Stick Figures". I found them to be kinda cute in the first few instances, but over the course of the past couple of years, they've really grown on me. As I mentioned in a previous post, I got some excellent $$ in Christmas gifts this year. So when it came time to start spending my pennies, I went and took a serious look at Stamping Bella. Within a few minutes of browsing, it went from "should I buy a couple" to "which ones can I absolutely not own without breaking my budget. It turns out the answer to that question was 7. I limited myself to just the Bellas for that order and to be honest, I can't wait until I've got a few more pennies so I can order more. Next time I'm getting some Huggabugs (Tiddly Inks) and some Chichiboulie Fairies and definitely a couple of the Turtle Tots. I'm a "sistah" for sure these days. :)

Recently, Em started up her "Bellarific Fridays", which means, she posts a challenge on Monday and the resulting cards get posted on the following Friday. As 99.9995% of all my crafty, scrapbooky, cardy stuff is done in the 53 hours that fall between getting off work on Friday and going to bed on Sunday, I figured this pretty well not in my realm of existence. I was a bit surprised when I saw the challenge this Monday -

Bellarific Challenge for Feb 27

(excuse the code...I stole it from Em.)

I really loved the color combination, but even that would not have gotten a card done. To be honest, I'm not sure which fold in the fabric of time swept across my house that allowed me to not only find the cardstock and coordinating papers, but got it all assembled, photographed and actually emailed off to Em by 9:00am this fine morning. I'm hoping it will pass through again soon. I can't blame a rift in the time space continuum for the stamping. I actually had the image stamped on a bit of Gina K's Pure Luxury baseweight for a week or so. I just ran it through my nestabilities and added a bit of Prismacolor pencil and a smidge of paper piecing.



The card is destined for the last in a long line (9!) of fire station baby showers. As I knew this little gem wasn't going through the post office, I made it a bit oversized at 5 3/4 x 4 3/4. It worked better with the largest size of nestabilities in that set. Paper is My Mind's Eye, ribbon is actually some hem tape. I had just barely enough for this card, so the tiny snippet I trimmed off the bow ends is stuck to my shopping list to see if I can get more. The "sup'd up stick figure" is miss Pregabella. Doesn't she look stinkin' cute, just in from her baby shower? The sentiment is from a 2001 Stampin' Up! Sale-A-Bration Set. I think it was a gift as that falls smack in the middle of my stamping drought and I don't remember buying anything around that time period to get it. The set is called Year Round Celebrations.

As a side note, I did discover during the paper piecing that my one and only glue stick had molded. Excuse me? Mold on a glue stick? Can you say "seriously gross"? I knew you could. :D It was moldy a good 1/4 of an inch down into the stick. (bleh!!) Needless to say, new glue stick and something in the way of liquid glue for paper piecing is also on my shopping list.