Dreaming of Hawaii

Hi everyone!
Wow, twice in one weekend!  I never post on weekends, so this is a change for me.  I can't guarantee it will continue, but I had so much fun making these cards this week that I wanted to take the time to share them all with you.

I shared one of these cards on my Instagram feed earlier this week.  You can find me HERE if you wish to follow along!  I'd love to have you join me!  I'm really trying to stay consistent with posting there...social media is a little tough for me because I always feel a bit stupid sharing things in my life that I'm sure no one is really interested in (how many cat photos can one person handle in a day?)...but I'm working on it :)

So for Christmas, Matthew bought me the super cute Polynesian Paradise stamp set from My Favorite Things.  Ever since our vacation to Hawaii this past August, I have been drooling over this set and dreaming of the day when I could get my little fingers on it.  I was so excited to open that gift!  And couldn't wait to get around to playing with it!  I did use a few of the flowers in our Christmas card this year but that was all I had done, until I saw the sketch this week at My Favorite Things and knew I had to play along!

Don't you just love this card!!  I am over the moon excited about how it turned out!  I started by cutting out the frame with my Silhouette and then taking each of the rectangle inserts and coloring them up with some soft beachy colors.  I splattered them with a little water so they had some fun flecks to them and then set to work coloring up the flowers. 

I used my Inktense pencils for them...totally addicted to those right now!!  I added a little bit of shimmer to each flower as well.  The tucan in the set actually comes facing to the left..but the way I wanted to position him on my card needed to have him facing the right.  So I did a little mirror stamping by inking up the stamp, pressing it down onto the backside of a larger stamp and then pressing that onto the paper.  The lines don't come out super bold, and it took me a few tries to get the whole image to fully stamp.  But it worked well enough so I could go back over the whole image with the outliner pencil in the Inktense set and darken the lines up.  Then I colored him in as well :)

I finished this card off with one of the awesome sentiments and a scattering of Sparking Clear Sequins from Pretty Pink Posh..of course!!

My next card is the one I gave a sneak peak of on my Instagram.  I couldn't resist sharing a little bit of it because it's just so cute!!

When I created the first card, I actually cut out two of those frames so I had one ready for a second card.  So I decided to use just the rectangle inserts on this card.  I lined them up the way they should fit into the frame, and then stamped them with a woodgrain background and heat embossed that in white, so it's a fun white on white design.

The background colors are Hickory Smoke, Blueprint Sketch, and Twisted Citron distress inks.  These colors come together in the mini set and I thought they would work so well together on this card...which they did :)

I got those all blended together and then once again splattered it with water and some shimmer mist to give some fun texture and sparkle.  While that dried, I colored in a few more flowers and the sweet Chameleon.  You can see that just the tips of his little toes are turning pink from where he's standing on the flower, but the rest of him matches the background.  So much fun!!!

I wanted to make this a birthday card, so I stamped a few tags from Lily of the Valley and used a little coordinating twine to tie them all together.  And then finished it all off with the Clear Droplets from Pretty Pink Posh.

I'm in love...this stamp set is my favorite and I am so excited to keep playing with it!!!

I'd like to enter these cards into the following challenges:
    Crafting When We Can #110-Something New
    My Favorite Things Sketch #262
    Simon Says Stamp-Something New
    Word Art Wednesday #217-Anything Goes

Thank you so much for stopping by!