Wonderful Favorites | The Maui Stamper

It’s nice to be home.

I’ve been on the Mainland for a couple of weeks, enjoying the change of scenery and pace. We spent a week relaxing, hiking and eating in Northern Wisconsin in towns with an average population of 350, and a week charging through the city of Chicago – shopping, visiting museums, sightseeing, eating fabulous food and attending a baseball game (well, once the Civil Defense sirens finished and the tornado warning was lifted and the thunder, lightning and pouring rain stopped.) It’s funny…when people find out we’re from Hawaii, they always ask “What are you doing HERE?” It doesn’t matter if “here” is the middle of nowhere or a the middle of a big city. Somehow, it seems incomprehensible that we would want to leave. Ever. We do enjoy leaving – but we also enjoy coming home. I’m happy to be back, happy to have the laundry done, and happy to spend a few hours in my stamp room.

Artistic Etchings, Wonderful Favorites and En Francais stamp sets
Whisper White, Early Espresso and Marina Mist card stock
Marina Mist and Early Espresso Classic ink pads
Piercing tool and mat; Stampin’ Dimensionals; retired enamel brad

I finished this card weeks ago in order to have it with me and ready for Father’s Day giving to my wonderful husband. He’s a fabulous dad, and I realized he would be very early in our relationship when he did his best to teach me to ski…but that’s a story for another time.

Artistic Etchings is one of my favorite stamps from the new 2010-2011 Stampin’ Up! Idea Book and Catalog. The images are beautiful enough to stand on their own, but they also work well in collage form and I’m finding that style appeals to me the more I work with it. There are a number of complementary stamps, wheels and papers that follow this style in the new catalog and I’m looking forward to experimenting with all of them very soon.

Didn’t think I’d give Green Galore it’s own day, did you? Not after yesterday’s bashing…that wasn’t very nice of me. Poor Green Galore. {snort}

Wonderful Favorites, Eastern Blooms and Embrace Life Stamp sets
Whisper White card stock
Bravo Burgundy, Green Galore, YoYo Yellow and Tangerine Tango Classic ink pads
Aquapainter

I had to try that Colour Q challenge again…can’t really explain why. That’s the mystery of playing challenges, I guess. This time I chose to make the card a single layer to avoid the dilemma of balancing colors. I did a fair amount of masking and used both solid and line art images to keep the sense of lightness that a white card provides. As you can see, I couldn’t resist using the Aquapainter to blend some of the color.

There’s so much color and so many images that I’m not convinced this card is truly Clean and Simple, but with no layers OR embellishments I think it comes close. The style is growing on me…one of these days I’m going to take it to another level. Just not today.