Chill - Life's a Beach!

Here's another card to remind us of summer.  I thought I'd enter it into the Countryview August Challenge as the topic was Summertime.
I was inspired for the background by an idea used by Barbara Gray in her 'Strength Always' New Design Stencil Club 14 booklet.  The combination of distress ink colours that she used gave such an impression of summer and the beach - Mustard Seed, Peacock Feathers, Picked Raspberry and Spiced Marmelade.  I had had the Sheena Douglas Laguna Surf and Endless Summer stamp sets for a few weeks and thought that they would make the perfect combination with the background.  I also decided to use pearlescent white card to add shimmer.


First of all I brushed the distress inks randomly onto a piece of 18cm x 18cm pearlescent white card using my trusty Claritystamp brushes - I adore them as they are so versatile and allow you to blend colours extremely well.  I then stamped the palm trees at both sides using black Archival ink - the trunks and leaves are separate so that you can angle them as you wish.  At that point I felt that there was something missing so I used the sand stamp from the Creative Expressions build a scene 'Coast' stampset to add the impression of texture.

I heat embossed the Laguna Surf stamp (black Versafine ink and detail clear embossing powder) onto another piece of pearlescent white card and trimmed it to leave a narrow border.  Before I started to paint it, using the same distress inks as the background and a blending mat as a palette, I painted Pebeo drawing gum roughly round the edge to mask off the white card.  I also added Gathered Twigs distress ink to the palette, as I didn't like the brown that was created by mixing the other colours.  Once everything was dry I rubbed off the drawing gum and matted the topper onto a piece of black card leaving a very narrow border.  At this point I noticed that I obviously hadn't taken enough care with the drawing gum, as there was a brown 'splodge' in the bottom right hand corner of the white border - what to do? 

Out came the stamps again and the sentiment saved the day.  Heat embossed onto white card; die cut with one of my Tonic Studio circle dies; matted onto black card, die cut with the next size up and added with a foam pad for extra dimension.  The topper was added to the background at a jaunty angle and matted onto a piece of 19cm x 19cm black card before being added to a 20cm x 20cm white card blank.