Buttons and Bows at Sundays With Crissy

Good morning friends, and happy Friday to you all! It's my turn to share a card with you for Sundays With Crissy. Our current challenge is "Buttons and Bows"...have you been keeping up with the posts by my fellow Crissy's Crew members? Each lovely gal has a designated day to post each month...that way, we hope to keep the inspiration flowing throughout the entire month!

This month, our wonderful sponsor is Stitchy Bear Stamps and they have very generously offered five digital images as a prize...this is in combination with Crissy's prize of three of her digital images! Somebody is going to be a very happy digital stamper this month. :)

For my card this month, I chose to work with two of Crissy's newest digital images available from Whimsy Stamps. These two adorable little tykes are "Anna's Halloween" and " Bobby's Halloween". Crissy captures kids so beautifully...I just adore her artwork. These two remind me of my kids in their Halloween costumes when they were little. Nathan was a big orange dragon Pokemon (Charzard) when he was in grade one, and Ainsleigh was several different princesses over the years when she was younger. Since I wanted these images to reflect my own kids, I resized "Anna" to be much smaller than "Bobby"...Nathan is almost seven years older than Ainsleigh. The design paper is from Graphic 45 (love this paper). To fit in with our challenge, I added some black satin ribbon and tied two layered buttons to the middle of the bow with twine. The little "Trick or Treat" sentiment is from Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps "Halloween Sentiments".

Anna and Bobby (or Ainsleigh and Nathan, lol) were printed on Neenah cardstock and coloured with Copic markers. Before printing them, I measured the Spellbinders die that I wanted to use and tweaked the size of the images until they would fit nicely inside the die. This ability to resize and flip your images to suit your specific project is one of the best things about digital stamps! While the image was still in the die, I used my Inkssentials Blending Tool to apply Distress Inks in Antique Linen and Bundled Sage. Finally, I added some Stardust Stickles to parts of the image.

Copics: Skin: E000, E00, E11, R20 Hair: E50, E31, E33, E37, E59 Orange Dragon: E50, YR00, YR02, YR07, E08, E59, Y21, Y23, Y26, E33, E37 Princess Dress: BG75, BG72, BG11, Bg10, BG000, BG0000, B60, C00, C1, C3, R30, R32, R37 Hair: E50, E30, E31, E33, E37, E59 Pumpkins: E50, YR31, YR07, YR16, Y17, E33, E37, E99

We'd love to have you join in with our Buttons and Bows challenge this month. You can link up your project on Crissy's post from October 1...you can find that HERE (just look for the little blue froggy at the end of her post).If you would like the chance to win the fantastic prize this month, then please make sure that your project features a digital stamp from either Crissy Armstrong (available at Whimsy Stamps, Squigglefly or Wags 'n Whiskers) or from our sponsor Stitchy Bear. You have until midnight on October 30, 2010 to play along!

If you have not yet become a follower over at Sundays With Crissy, then make sure to sign up! That way, you can keep up to date with the posts by each member of Crissy's Crew...these ladies are so talented and I know that you will not want to miss a single project.

I thought I would share a few pics of the kids from past Halloweens (back when I used to have time to make more elaborate costumes!). Here's Ainsleigh as Belle...I think she was about four years old.

Next we have Nathan in the Pokemon costume that inspired me to colour the dragon orange on my card today...oh, and the cute little Pikachu is my cousin Derek..who I'm sure is thrilled that I'm sharing this pic. :) Nathan was about six in this picture:

And how about one more from two years ago (when costumes were not quite so "home-made", lol)...

(hmmm...Ainsleigh had a cute little black beret she wore with her mime costume, but I think it had fallen off during some pics where Nathan, with his "Superman" strength, was picking her up over his head, lol. My kids are goofs when they see a camera...this is actually a very rare picture where they are both smiling nicely!)

Have a wonderful day, and thanks so much for stopping by!

Blessings,

Melanie

Stamps: Whimsy Stamps (digital) "Anna's Halloween" and "Bobby's Halloween" by artist Crissy Armstrong, "Halloween Sentiments" from Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps
Paper:Neenah, Bazzill, Graphic 45
Ink: Copic markers, Distress Ink (Bundled Sage and Antique Linen)
Embellishments: Ribbon, buttons, twine, Stardust Stickles
Tools: Spellbinders Labels 8, Bow Easy