The islands are calling...

...at least it seems that way when I look at this card! Happy New Year everyone!!

Here's another creation using the Happy Hour set from Firecracker Designs by Pamela. This isn't even my January DT set, I bought it last month when Pamela had it on special and I am having such fun creating with it -- I can't put it down!!

This card was fun to make but has an *extremely* high putz factor with all the cutting. Not sure what I was thinking there...

Card specifics:

Cardstock: If you can believe it, this is all GP 110 lb smooth white cardstock except for the small yellow "Escape" oval, which is Stampin' Up!'s Yo Yo Yellow.

Stamps: From Firecracker Designs by Pamela, "Happy Hour" and "Mahalo" sets. The leaves are from CTMH Jungle Leaves retired set.

Ink: Palette Noir for the hibiscus flowers and sentiment, Green Galore and Glorious Green on the leaves. Soft Sky and Tempting Turquoise for the wave background

Accessories: Fiskars texture plate and Cuttlebug, Diamond stickles, dimensionals, Prismacolor alcohol markers, black glaze gel pen, SU oval punches and my trusty paper snips of course.

What I did:

1. Make the waves texture onto white cardstock. I'll work on a tutorial for how to use these Fiskars plates in the Cuttlebug - they have great designs and are DIRT cheap. I actually used the DEbossed side for this card, so I could rub the ink onto the paper to get a "whitecap" wave look to the background of the card. So when you open the card, the EMbossed (raised) part is on the left side.

2. Rub Soft Sky ink all over the background piece. The DEbossed parts of the image (the indented waves) stay white. Then rub Tempting Turquoise over the top of that, giving a nice gradient of blues from light to dark depening on how heavy the ink application is. Set aside to dry.

3. Stamp a bunch of hibiscus blooms in Palette Noir. It's important to use the right ink for your application! Since was planned to color with alcohol markers, it had to be Palette Noir over StazOn Jet Black as the StazOn has a tendency to bleed in the presence of the alcohol markers - yucky. See my discussion of black ink pads for more info. Color in the flowers with alcohol markers and cut out. Add diamond stickles to the flower centers and let dry. (I buy my Stickles from Scrapbook Pal and I love them!).

4. Stamp leaves in Green Galore and cut out. Decide they are too light of a green and rub Glorious Green all over them to give depth to the color and darken them up. *g*

5. Lay out the flowers and leaves over the background piece. You can see many places where they lay over the edges of the card. I did that on purpose because I thought it looked cool. heehee. I also added dimensionals here and there to add depth to the images, although it's hard to tell in the photo.

6. Punch out an oval section on the waves background using the SU large oval punch. Punch a small oval out of Yo Yo Yellow and stamp the sentiment. Add free-hand doodling around the edges with the black glaze gel pen. (I buy these from Scrapbook Pal too!). Adhere to the bottom of the open card with a dimensional so it shows through.

7. That's it! Again, not hard, just time consuming. But fun! I need a little color in my life as we are under much snow here in Wisconsin these days.