Bellarific Friday - March Stamp of the Month

Hello Crafters! Where is this year going? I cannot believe it's March already. Well the good news is that a new month brings a new Stamp of the Month over at Stamping Bella. This month's stamp is one of my favorites called UPTOWN GIRLS BELINDA AND BERNADETTE BENCH BUDDIES. It's just the sweetest friendship stamp and I really enjoyed coloring it for this week's Bellarific Friday challenge. And remember it's 20% off all month long! Click the link below for more information. 

This week's challenge was "free form" so I decided to just dive right in and start coloring with no plan other than that! I stamped the image onto X-Press Copic paper with some Simon Says Intense black ink. I used quite a few different markers for this image. I wanted to make the two girls standout from one another in both skin and hair color. 

For the clothing, I decided to do a little paper piecing for the girl on the right. I selected a bluish purple polka dotted paper and stamped the image onto it. I then fussy cut the shirt being careful to stay on top of the black ink line. This ensures when you adhere it to your image that it blends into the original image smoothly. Once adhered in place, I took a corresponding Copic marker to make some shadows and pleats on her shirt. This is an easy way to give a paper pieced item a bit of dimension.

For the scenery, I chose a handful of greens for the grass. I just kept layering swipes of colors over each other to give it a wispy look. For the sky, I decided to use my Copic airbrush. First I created a mask to cover the two girls and the bench. Once that was in place, I chose B91 for my sky color. I lightly airbrushed around the image and made sure that I had both light and dark areas so that it gave the illusion of soft clouds. I'm still getting use to airbrushing and I'm having fun experimenting! It's no longer just my "cloud" machine as my boyfriend calls it since that's all I was creating with it, lol!

Here's a peek at all of the colors I used in this image:

After the coloring was complete, I cut a scalloped frame from a piece of silver foil cardstock. I then cut the image down to fit within the frame. For the base, I used a piece of white heavy weight cardstock cut to a top folding A2 size and adhered a piece of pattern paper that coordinating with my image. When I adhered down the image and frame, I decided to off set them a little bit to the right. I liked the way this looked versus smack dab in the middle. A little extra interest for the eye!

I love the sentiment that comes with this set but it was not the right shape for my card design so I had to get creative. I decided to stamp it out in Versafine black ink and heat emboss it with clear detail embossing powder. I then carefully snipped the sentiment into four separate pieces so that I could layer them over the image. This is a great way to get more out of your stamps. As you know I can't resist adding sparkle so this time I was restrained and only used a little bit of stickles on the girls hair clip and the little flowers. Here's a closer look of the details:

Hop over to the Stamping Bella blog and see what the rest of the BellaBabes created with this month's Stamp of the Month. It's so fun to see what all of us come up with for the same stamp. Also, if you would like to participate in Bellariffic Fridays for a chance to be entered into a monthly drawing to win some Bella Bucks click on the link below for more details.

Next week's Bellariffic Friday challenge is the fabulous (MOJO)bella sketch below! Hope you join along and create something with us! Have a wonderful day and I'll be back soon!