More Bellas

I've got some more Bellas to share today. I feel like I've abandoned my Stampin Up! stamps lately because I've been so obsessed with my Bellas...but the Bellas are just so much fun to color and so stinkin cute!

I know a lot of stampers like to use Copic markers to color in their stamped images, especially Bellas....BUT I can not justify paying anywhere from $3-6.00 for ONE marker especially because you need several shades of one color to get the "shaded" effect. So I've been using a combination of Stampin Write markers, colored pencils, and the real secret weapon Bic Mark-it Markers. 

I've found that the bic markers really get a nice shaded/watercolored effect similar to the look of Copic markers but with a tiny fraction of the price. They come in a pretty good range of colors too. The only thing that the bic markers don't do well is flesh tones...so that is one area where it may be a good investment to get a few flesh tone copics or prismacolor markers...personally I've been using the Stampin Write marker in Blush Blossom for the flesh tones and I'm pretty happy with it. 

While I'm doing commercials (haha) I'd also like to mention a wonderful basic black ink pad that I just got turned on to. It's called Momento ink. OMG it's soooo good. I get a perfect stamped image with it 99% of the time and the other 1% is mostly due to my own error. The best part is you can color the image with markers immediately with no drying time and there is NO bleeding! It's a truly wonderful ink and it's only about $5.00

Anyway here are the cards I've been working on. I used the Bic markers I was talking about on each of these cards.

The first one  is a "just because" card I made for my friend Amanda because she is a "Savvy Shoppah"

The next one is for my friend Katie, because she just got engaged last weekend! Yay Katie!

And the final one is a card front that I did for a "winter bella" swap. This was the first card that I used Shimmerz on and I looooove it.