Seriously? How beautiful is this? The orange sky is just amazing! I think it is pretty obvious how I was inspired.

To do my background, I used a technique that Nichole Heady at Papertrey showed us a few weeks ago during a Make-it-Monday tutorial (mim58). I chose to do a partial background instead of covering the whole panel. To soften my edges I went back over them with the colorless blender.

The palm tree stamp is one my hubby picked up for me a couple years ago during one of his trips to Guam. He’s the bestest

Thanks for stopping by!

Make sure you check out the other design team members:
Debbie
Debby
Michelle
Rochelle
Rudlis
Sara
Steph
Sylvia
Vicki

I hope you join us at For Your Inspiration!

A Little About the Challenge: The For Your Inspiration challenge is posted the first and third Thursday of each month; each challenge is open for two weeks. The first challenge of each month has a sponsor – and prize! To play, create a card based on the current challenge photo – however the inspiration hits you! Make sure you tell us in your blog post how you were inspired!

Debbie Standard is on the For Your Inspiration design team and she has a special birthday this weekend! The design team wanted to honor her with a birthday blog hop. Please make sure you check out the rest of the team’s blogs for more birthday goodness in honor of Debbie!

Happy Birthday Debbie – hope you have a fabulous day!

This card is for my mom. Since she’s a StampinUp demo I always try to make her cards with only SU stuff.

I was so happy that Apothecary Art carried over to the big catalog – I hadn’t had a chance to play with it before now.

I stamped the image in Early Espresso and then watercolored it. Of course, the green leaves got muddy because espresso isn’t waterproof, but I think it adds to the vintage feel.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Another Mother’s Day card. This one is for my step-mother who likes blue.

I actually cased the layout of one of my own cards (Simple Pergamano).

My original plan was to stamp the image twice, but there really wasn’t a good way to do it, so I added the butterfly to take up a bit of the open space.

I was inspired by the latest PTI Make-it-Monday video (mim65) where Dawn showed us how to create a pattern-paper background.

I started with just the Egg Hunt paper pack, but couldn’t get the look I was going for. I decided to pick the flower pattern and find other papers to go along with it.

When it came time for stamping, I tried Summer Sunrise and Orange Zest for the butterflies but neither were right. I pulled out the old Orange Zest and that looked better (but my pad is dry and I wasn’t getting a great impression) – so I tried off-stamping the new Orange and liked what I got.

I had a similar problem with the new Avocado ink. It was too dark for what I wanted here, but off-stamping was almost non-existent (weird…I think I need to try that again). Instead, I pulled out the old ink – and it was perfect. So the flourish is old Avocado and the sentiment is new Avocado. I think the (new) darker ink works better over that pattern.

My final touch was adding orange rhinestones to the butterflies.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Since I wasn’t really sure how either of the recipients felt about handmade cards, I decided to keep them very clean and classic.

For this first card, I wanted to use a hibiscus-like flower and this image fit with what I had in mind.

The sentiment is from the complimentary set that PTI distributed at the end of 2011.

I used the same sentiment for the second card as well.

The pattern on this card was inspired by a rug I found on Pinterest, but the colors came from a recent PTI Make-it-Monday (#64).

I was going to add a bow, but that detracted to much from the relatively flat card/sentiment – so instead I added a string of pearls.

Thanks for stopping by!

My hubby is off again today on another week’s business trip. This will be the third in a row (and there is still one more next week). I’m just glad he gets to come home on weekends!

I recently won this Hero Arts stamp set and I am so happy I did – it is perfect for cards like this! To play off the sentiment, I stamped the clock hand multiple times along the clock face.

I die cut the Tessatina border out of wood veneer and left in the cut-out pieces because I liked the more solid effect.

Thanks for stopping by!

Next week is Mom’s “last chance” stamp camp (where she celebrates those sets that are retiring). My task was to make a teen card using Grunge Rock & Extreme Elements. But not just any card – a gift card for a graduate. Whew!

Now this isn’t overly “graduation” but it still qualifies

This is my first time doing grunge and thankfully it wasn’t too hard. I did place the melon splashes in their spots purposely. Also, I added a bit of turquoise to balance the ribbon bow.

To decide on the type of gift-card card to do, I did some searching – looking for a type that we hadn’t done yet, but that was also simple. Thankfully I ran across this card.

I ended up using the Rounded Tab and Word Window punches to make my opening.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’ve been admiring the latest Retro Sketch (rs9) for a week, but only just now got my idea for a card (which of course is after the deadline, lol).

I used some new supplies – Celebrations set and Notched Flowers die. I chose a bright color scheme.

Thanks for taking a peek!

I’ve been trying not to order stamp sets the day (or month) that they are released. I have a habit of getting caught up in the hoopla. However, the Strawberry Patch set could not be ignored for long. Last week when I put in an order, I added the set to my cart. I got my box yesterday!

I used Copics to color the image and may not do that all the time as it is time consuming to go around all the little seeds, but I do love how it turned out. I think I did pretty good on shading the strawberries, but one day I really want to learn how to do leaves!

Thanks for taking a peek!