Water, water everywhere!

Wow!  With all the rain, parts of our city are pretty flooded.  Kevin said last night the river rose really fast and they had to evacuate the campground.  They expect it to rise another few feet...he's not looking forward to tonight's shift!  Here's a look at the pond by our house.

There's actually a path down there under all that water!  Our pond is a storm water collector pond, so it's made to fill up like this...I guess it's doing it's job!  I hope the water doesn't take too long to go down so we can walk through there again.  The kids are going to miss our almost daily walks by the pond.  And, all this water means that next week we will have a serious increase in the mosquito population!!!

So, last night I sat and made some gorgeous cards for a One Layer Card swap I joined.  We had to make a one layer card (embellishments like ribbon didn't count as a layer) and use some of the preorder product that us demos could start ordering June 1 (preordering new product is a fabulous perk of being a demonstrator...contact me today to see how you can get sneek peeks at new products and have the opportunity to order them early!).  The stamp set I chose to use was one of the new hostess sets, "Becuase I Care".  Stampin' Up! sent me this set free (actually the sent all demos who preordered the new color kit this set for free...becuase they care about us!!).  When I first saw the set I thought it was absolutely gorgeous and couldn't wait to ink it up.  But, when it came I found myself seriously lacking some mojo with it.  Take a look at what I did with it...I think I found my mojo!

I know...it's stunning!  It looks even better in real life because when I was done, I smooched it with the Vanilla Smooch Spray.  I can't get a good picture of the shimmer from the smooch though...you'll just have to trust me!  Let me share a few more pictures and tell you how I made it.

I used the masking technique on this card.  The most time consuming part of this card was cutting out my mask!

The first step is to stamp the image on a sticky note and cut it out.  Once you have this done, you're good for a long time...just remember to put your mask into your stamp case when you're done with it and you can use it over and over again.  After the mask is cut out, you stamp your image on your card (I used very vanilla cardstock) and stick your mask over the image you stamped (I stamped mine in Black StazOn).   Then you stamp another image over top (I stamped the En Francais background stamp with Crumb Cake classic ink).

When you remove the mask, you get this...

I then watercolored my hydrangea image with Pink Pirouette, Pretty In Pink & Old Olive classic inks using an Aqua Painter.

I finished off my card by tying a piece of Pretty In Pink Satin Ribbon around it (I made a slit in the crease with my Hobby knife so the ribbon could go all the way around) and then stamped a thank you (from the Because I Care set).  Take a look at the thank you.

It was a happy accident that it turned out like this!  First I was going to stamp the thank you with Crumb Cake, but it just didn't pop enough.  It actually kind of blended in with the card.  I wasn't pleased with it, but didn't want to remake the whole card, so since it was just my prototype, I decied to just stamp over the original thank you with black ink.  I was trying to get it lined up perfectly without having to go find my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig (I should know better...that never works!!!) and ended up with the shadow effect.  I love it!

Happy stampin' and have an inspired day!