Oceanfront Card

Hey friends!  It's just been a little crazy here.  Because Carson had a weekend-long baseball tournament going on, Nate spent last weekend with us.  Of course, there was much running around with baseball practices for him, but we had still had a great time watching movies, putting puzzles together, and baking.  I do love spending time with my grandsons.  They each have such different personalities, but both of them are so much fun to be with.  And that's my very good reason for not posting in a while.  It's hard to post something when I haven't been creating much at all.  Today I sat down with the Oceanfront stamp set.  I've been struggling to coming up with something different than everything else that's being shared on Pinterest.  I think I managed that with today's card.

I finally figured out that I'm happier with this stamp set when I'm stamping on a skinnier piece of cardstock.  The Basic White cardstock piece I used measures only 2 1/4" x 3 3/4" for this card.  There's a layer of Misty Moonlight cut at 2 1/2" x 4" to frame the stamped layer.  

Stamping starts with Balmy Blue ink on the stamp that I think of as "sky".  Play with this stamp a little to get a feel for it.  One flat side stamps a little heavier and the other side is lighter.  Each of these will give you a little different look.  For this card, I wanted the lighter sky at the horizon line.  The "water" stamp was stamped with Misty Moonlight ink.  This already has the waves etc. in the stamp so it's easy to get a great look.

Next up was the "land" stamp.  This was stamped with Soft Suede ink.  I actually stamped it several times to fill in the area.  I had to flip it around upside down and then back again to fill in.  I wasn't too sure how this would work out, but surprisingly it was fine.  I figured if it looked bad, I'd just trim down the white cardstock piece a bit to get rid of whatever I didn't like.  😁

So far, the created scene looked a little boring to me and needed some extras added.   To add some interest to the scene, I grabbed the On The Horizon stamp set.  The seagulls were stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink in the sky.  Then I thought that some grasses would work on the dirt.  They were stamped with Old Olive ink.  Those two additions made the scene much more interesting to me.  

After stamping, this was layered onto the Misty Moonlight cardstock that was cut earlier using adhesive.  Seeing how it would look on the Crumb Cake cardstock base that I was planning on using, I decided to add some of those same seagulls across the front of the card.  They were stamped in on each side using Crumb Cake ink.

On a 3/4" strip of Basic White cardstock, the sentiment from the On The Horizon stamp set was stamped with Misty Moonlight ink.  It was then trimmed up close to the ends of the words.  There was a small strip of Misty Moonlight cardstock that measured about 7/8" high and 2 1/2" long.  This was just a little shorter than the white strip.  I liked how it accented the words on the top and bottom, even though it didn't totally frame around the words.  

Both items on the front of the card were attached with Dimensionals.  A double strand of Linen Thread was tied into a small bow.  This was attached to the bottom of the scene using a Mini Glue Dot.

To keep with the simplicity of the card, a white layer was added to the inside of the card.  The only stamping here were the seagulls going across the top of the layer.  These were stamped with Crumb Cake ink to match.

I was really happy how this card turned out.  I have been playing with possibilities of different colors and layouts with the Oceanfront set.  So far, this is the best scene I've made, but I still have more ideas tumbling around in my head. I'll keep playing with this stamp set and share with you whatever else is created.

That's it for today's edition.  I know most of you have been taking advantage of both the sale items on the retired list and the shipping costs before they go up April 1st.  I thank you for supporting me.  You are so special, and I appreciate you immensely.  Please get those stamps out and play around.  It never hurts to try something new.  If you really don't like the outcome, it's only paper!  You can either turn it over and try again, or pitch it!!

Happy stamping and creating!

Sharon