Be Calm...

It's already Monday evening of Memorial Day weekend 2009. I can hardly believe it! We had a nice day starting out with our yearly tradition of sitting on the wrap around porch of my sister and brother in law's beautiful old Victorian home which is in an old town in central NJ. The town holds a parade each year for Memorial Day, and it starts right in front of their house. It's an old fashioned thing with many fire trucks, marching bands, bagpipes... I just love it. I love the nostalgia of these holiday celebrations. I love that my boys can experience this and appreciate what the holiday really means in addition to the way it has become all about the BBQ's, the sales and getting out your white shoes!! Hee hee... Of course, it's the unofficial start of summer, which is a beautiful thing too.

This card is for this week's MFT sketch challenge: MFTSC82. I love this little "Be Calm" stamp from MFT by Annie La Pointe. I thought it would be perfect for this sketch. The base of the card is white and sponged around the edges with Elegant Eggplant ink. On top of the base is a layer of Elegant Eggplant that is embossed with the Scor-Pal to give it texture. The horizontal and vertical panels are both from SU's Tea Party DSP.

The image is stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Solar White paper and colored with Copic markers. The pipe and shower head are colored with a Zig Painty oil-based paint marker to give it lots of shine. I stamped with image again, colored the hydrangeas, cut them out and popped them up with dimensionals. I added a little sparkle to the hydrangeas with my Atyou Spica glitter pen. The white oval is cut out and embossed with oval Nestabilities. I used sponge daubers with Creamy Caramel and Baja Breeze ink to create the background for the image. I cut the stamped image out and glued it on to the oval. I die cut the scallop edged oval from Wild Wasabi textured paper and pierced the scallops with my mat pack and piercing tool. The whole oval piece is popped up with dimensionals.

I inked the sentiment only from the same stamp, cut it out with the Word Window Punch, embellished it with a yellow button from my button stash and tied it with linen thread. The picture does not really do the card justice - it came out really nicely. Thanks for stopping, and happy start of beach season (well, at least here in NJ anyway...).