August Guest Designer for Stampingbella - Week 2

Hello Crafters! I'm back guesting over at the fabulous Stamping Bella blog and this week I wanted to highlight one of my favorite times of the year, American football season! Pre-season games start this week and with that in mind, I knew I needed to use one of the new Bella version 2.0 stamps, the adorable POMPOMABELLA.

I stamped the Bella on Copic paper using a Copic friendly black ink. Before I got started on coloring, I googled images of my favorite team's cheerleaders and used a Copic multiliner pen to modify the uniform. After coloring her, I used a Spectrum Noir Sparkle pen in clear to give her outfit a little bit of shimmer. Here's the colors I used:

I knew I wanted to give her some 3-D pom poms so I used a technique my mom taught me years ago with embroidery thread and a fork. I pulled out this really neat ombre embroidery thread from my stash that I found at Michael's a few years ago. It worked really well for this project.

Here's a little step-by-step on how you can make your own pom poms:

1. Wrap embroidery thread around the tines of a fork 20 to 50 times based on how full you would like the pom pom to be. The more times wrapped around the fuller it will be. Also, your fork size dictates how large the pom pom will be. The larger the fork the larger the pom. 
2. Cut a piece of embroidery thread to secure the pom. I always like to make sure I have plenty of length so for these smaller poms I cut about 4 inches of thread. I'd rather have more than not enough. I thread this piece through the center tine of the fork and tied a loose knot to keep it in place.
3. Slide the pom off of the fork and then tie a tight knot in the center to keep the pom together.
4. Take a pair of scissors and slip the tips through the little loops on either end of the pom snipping them apart. Be careful not to pull to much to one side or the other so that the strands don't slip through the knot. This is especially true the smaller your pom pom is. 
5. Fluff out the pom pom and use a sharp pair of scissors to snip off the uneven pieces. You can even trim the pom pom down to size if you find that it's too big for your project. 
6. Voila! You have your very own pom-pom! Easy Peasy!

Once I had my pom poms made, I cut out the image leaving a small white border around her. This included removing the stamped pom poms so that they wouldn't show under the 3-D poms. For the background, I used a piece of football field scrapbooking paper to help set the scene. I adhered it to the card base and then positioned and adhered my Bella where I wanted her. I used a liquid glue to secure the pom poms and I drew a little shadow with gray Copics to help ground her. I cut two banners from orange and blue cardstock for the sentiment which I embossed in white. 

Once those were secure, I felt like I needed some kind of embellishment so I went looking through my stash and found these cute little white and blue stars. I wanted to have at least one orange star and since I didn't have any I just colored one of the white ones with my orange Copics. I love how easy it is to alter items you have in your stash. Here's a close up where you can see the sparkle I added to her uniform.

Be sure to check out the Stampingbella Blog. Remember they have some great features such as Bellarific Fridays which is a weekly challenge in which you can be entered into a monthly drawing to win some Bella Bucks! Click below for more details.

Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday and I'll see you again soon!

Supplies Used: