CASEing Genius: Brandi Hall

 Hello Crafters! 

Oh my goodness I feel like I'm playing crazy card catch up and I'm losing. While I was on vacation I did manage to get a bit of coloring done and thank God because I would not want to deprive you of today's talented genius. 

It's Brandi Hall!!! 

Brandi is also known by her blog name Yankee Belle Stamper. Brandi has such fun fresh designs. and cute! Oh goodness gracious the cuteness goes on for days. Clearly, the cuteness extends to her littles, I mean she's pretty adorable herself but did you see his cheeks above?! Gah.  

I adore her style for sure but I love how she lifts up other crafters. She's honestly excited for other crafters when they pull out a fabulous card or make a design team. That's awesome. She's awesome. 

Let's find out more about her awesomeness  . . .

The Interview: 

1. Who are you and where do you live?

My name is Brandi Hall but in blogland I'm known as Yankee Belle Stamper. I live in upstate New York with my husband, son and two westies.

2. How would you describe your style?

I would mostly describe myself as a clean and simple style crafter with a little bit of layers, a dash of patterned paper and a sprinkle of sequins.

3. Name one product you're completely crushing on right now?

Right now I'm crushing on anything watercolor. I love using my watercolor pencils and blender brushes to create unique backgrounds and colored images.

4. What is was your first crafty purchase? Would you still buy it now?

My first crafty purchase was ink pads from Stampin' Up. I still buy them today because they ink really well and have a great selection of colors.

Fun Stuff:

5. What is your current favorite song?

That is a tough one but if I had to choose just one song it would be "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding. I sing it to my son every night before he goes to sleep.

6. Who would play you in a movie?

I would have to say Kristen Bell would play me in a movie because she is small, spunky and a little quirky.
 

7. One random thing about you that people would never guess?

Besides being a crafter I'm an avid golfer. I love hitting the greens with the hubby any chance we get. 

A love of Kristen Bell and Otis Redding. We can be friends. 

Let's see some cards!

Beautiful flowers, bold sentiment, a bit of pattern, and some scattered sequins. Perfect. 

I love this watercolor background and bright blooms mixed with the graphic pattern paper. It's like soft, soft, tricked ya, hard! Gorgeous! 

This blocked off sentiment is super fun. She incorporated tons of pattern without it feeling busy. That's pretty hard to do. Kudos to you my dear. 

The CASE:

Undoubtedly, those flowers were going on my card. Period. Brandi used bold scripty sentiments on everyone one of her cards which I puffy heart. I really liked the blocked off sentiment on her last card. It's so fun! In her second card she added a bit of pattern paper to the side of her card. I opted to do both sides but the inspiration came from there. 

I have a love hate relationship with solid images stamps.  Brandi used solid image flowers for two of her cards and I wanted to try and stay true to that. BUT you know I had to tackle those stamps my way. First, I masked out an area for my sentiment. I second generation stamped the large solid flower from Hero Arts Hello Flowers using some WPlus9 inks. The pink was stamped in Cranberry Crush, the purple in Bloomsberry and the yellow in Wild Mango. The leaf is from the same set and was stamped second generation in Appletini.  I did mask the pink one to stamp the yellow. 

I shaded right on top of that with my copic markers. I should note the original stamp has a line in one of the petals. I think it's meant to be a petal curling up? Maybe? Anyone? Bueller? 

Anyway it was ugly when I tried it with no line coloring so I just nixed it. It's difficult to keep those white breaks in when you're coloring and let's face it with no line coloring you need them. Anywhere I got a little crazy I just went back in with my white gel pen to reestablish those lines.  

I stamped my sentiment from WPlus9's Hand Lettered Thanks set and then added a line around my sentiment "block" to frame it in. I chose this sentiment because of it's size. Those huge flowers need a sentiment that can hang yo.  I took a cue from Brandi's second card and popped up the smaller part of my sentiment on a little rectangle of black paper heat embossed in white. Of course I HAD to add some sequins. It wouldn't be a CASE of Brandi if I didn't :) I added the whole stamped panel onto some green paper with craft foam to finish it off. 

Thank you for stopping by! 

I do hope you'll go over to her blog and see so much more of Brandi's talent !!

XoXo