The Blessing of a Friend

Oh how I enjoy these Mystery Image swaps.  In case you aren't familiar with what I am talking about a group that I belong too: Stamp Girls Gone Wild (SGGW) host what is called a, Mystery Image swap.  The Hostess of the swap picks out an image and then stamps several copies of it to send to each participant.  We are each assigned a partner and mail our card to that person.  The object of this type of a swap is to show how unique and diverse it can be seeing the same image stamped by different people.

This time around our hostess was, Rose Kerry and she chose to send out this adorable little Elzybell image.

These can also be purchased in the US at various places. -  They are just the sweetest images and make me smile whenever I see them.

The inspiration for my color scheme came from a piece of Polished Stone background paper that I had laying around in my UFO (Un-finished Objects) piles.  -  I wasn't the first to claim the UFO phrase but for the life of me I don't recall where I heard it first but I liked it so I've adopted the phrase myself.  I'm sure most of us have UFO piles in our stamp rooms just waiting to be used on a project when the right inspiration hits.

For my Polished Stone piece I believe that I used Orchid Opulence, Pretty in Pink and Bliss Blue (retired now) plus a Metallic Gold reinker (Tsukineko).

I colored my little ElzyBell girls with Copic Markers.  I am still getting the hang of using them but I like how they turned out on this card.  The colors I used are: YR24 (Pale Sepia)

E00 (Skin White), Y15 (Cadmium Yellow), YG00 (Mimosa Yellow), BG45 (Nile Blue), RV17 (Deep Magenta), BV000 (Iridescent Mauve), and V17 (Amethyst). I also used an SU Certainly Celery Marker on the flower stem as I didn't have the shade of green I wanted in my Copic set.  - I colored my image and then cut out the dress on the girl in turquoise and stamped the dots from (Itty Bitty Backgrounds) and added a few more with a Basic Black marker.  The purple dress was also cut out and then colored with a purple Spica Glitter pen.  I also colored both flowers with Spica Glitter Pens and the pink punched flower as well.

My card base is: Orchid Opulence layered with Tempting Turquoise and my Polished Stone piece.  Then I added a strip on TT and a piece of Pretty in Pink that I ran through my Cuttlebug using the Swiss Dot Embossing Folder.  I cut my image out using a circle Nestabilites Die and layered it onto a scalloped circle. The sentiment was punched with a circle punch (McGill) and layered onto the Nestabilites scalloped cirle.

I used the 3 For You flower punch and punched out a Pretty In Pink flower and 3 Tempting Turquoise flowers.  I added mini brads (Queen and Company) to the centers.  My image and sentiment were mounted using foam mounting tape.

PS - How do you lik my NEW WATERMARK! - Yep, I figured it out thanks to help from Beth and Kim Howard, who recommended the GIMP program to insert my watermark with.  Thanks both of you ladies for all your help.