Card of the day-Wednesday

Happy Wednesday!

Today's card of the day for the Enjoy Michael Strong Stamps Yahoo group

was inspired by a Hawaiian shirt I saw at Summerfest music festival last Wednesday.

As I was sitting waiting for the show to begin,

I pulled out a post it from my purse and made this sketch:

I thought Mike's mini flowers,  leaves and little fish from the mini creatures stamps

would be fun to use for my water scene.

I used colored pencils to draw the mountains, palm trees, shore and the water ripples.

The flowers, leaves and fish were stamped then fussy cut and attached with dimensional foam.

Added some gemstones to jazz up my simple card.

Stamps: Michael Strong

Inks: distress dried marigold, abandoned coral, shaded lilac and broken china.

SU certainly celery ink.

I'm not claiming to be an artist. 

I just had a lot of fun trying to sketch the scene and make a card later.

Maybe my feeble attempt will inspire someone else! 

If you do something like this, I'd love to hear about it and see your creations!

Thanks for visiting!

Mountain and Ocean Direct to Paper Technique

While surfing Pinterest I ran across a fun and easy direct to paper tutorial by Michelle Zindorf.

Since I didn't have all the inkpads Michelle used, I improvised.

On my first card, I used Stampin' UP's so saffron.

Then I sponged some distress spun sugar on top of that for my sky.

Also used spun sugar on my paper ribbon.

Used distress stormy sky and salty ocean for the mountain

broken china for the bottom of the page.

Added distress mowed lawn at the bottom on top of the broken china, 

then a little distress black soot on top of everything at the very bottom.

I stamped the SU Nature Walk  and clear Dimensions Happy Birthday

in Versafine black onyx ink.

This card for my son-in-law was made pretty much the same as above.

I switched to distress scattered straw for my sky.

A friend suggested I make the Nature Walk stamped image less bold

so I used an old Versafine inkpad that was dry. 

Otherwise I would have just stamped off once before applying.

I like how this looks. What do you think?

I changed the colors a little on my third card, continuing with the scattered straw for the sky.

Used distress peacock feathers for the mountain

tumbled glass for the ocean

rusty hinge instead of the green at the bottom

and vintage photo instead of black soot at the bottom edges.

The Stampscapes frond #3 was stamped multiple times with pine needles, 

stamping off a few times to vary the intensity of color.

Thanks so much for visiting!