Father's Day at the Beach!

Being raised in the Pacific Northwest near the ocean, spending at day at the beach, means the ocean is definitely the scenery.  I thought I'd give my youngest son a day off to enjoy some ocean scenery; after all, he was the only one of the four children who never lived in Hawaii where ocean beaches were very much a part of everyday life!

I used the Stampin' Up Waves of Inspiration stamps and the coordinating Waves Dies with Balmy Blue, Pacific Point, and Night of Navy inks.  I brushed and ink-blended the white cardstock top panel with Balmy Blue giving it a filtered blue sky look (a light blue sky with wispy white clouds blended into the blue).   

My wave was next, which I built with the Balmy Blue, Pacific Point, and Night of Navy inks.  I stamped my colors in layers using these three inks one on top the other...over-stamping...but stamped-off with the two darker colors.  I kept adding over-stamping until I got the look I wanted. I used my Misti to aid me in this process. My last stamping was done by applying Night of Navy on the lower portion of the waves only by using a Stamp Write marker inked onto the bottom of the stamp surface.  After it was completely dry, I ink blended with Balmy Blue until I was satisfied with this lighter color mixed into my waves. 

Then, I had an accident...while trying to stamp my seagulls where I wanted them (before popping on the clouds), my stamp block got ink on its edge, which transferred to my card front next to two of my seagulls!  Whoa as me...not the first time I've had this problem with tiny stamped objects!  So not to lose all my carefully ink waves, which I thought turned out rather spectacular, I fussy-cut the wave off and after preparing a new card front with my Balmy Blue brushed ink blending, I glued my waves to the bottom of my new card front.

I decided not to re-stamp my seagulls, as I just didn't want to chance the same problem, so I practice a little of drawing my own seagulls with a fine mechanical pencil and then flicking over with Copic markers in T5, T4, T2.  It worked so well, and I could make them larger or smaller as desired! I found adding them with Copic markers works best for me! I die cut the clouds and cloud edges, which give the clouds more texture and dimension; I popped the clouds off the card surface; and overlapped two the smaller clouds and popped them off each other.

I originally started this card thinking to make a birthday card for my stash, as I never have enough birthday cards. I pulled out my Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set (retired) and stamped with Night of Navy ink onto Balmy Blue cs and die-cut it with the narrow die that I knew would work well for sentiments.  I attached Linen Twine through the open ends to the sentiment strip and added it to the middle of the card.  Taking a look, I realized it would be a great masculine card, and I still needed another Father's Day card for our delayed family Father's Day get together, which would be taking place next week-end.  I didn't want to re-do the die-cut with the twine, so I carefully made a new sentiment on the computer that I could carefully cut and paste over the happy birthday stamping.  It worked perfect...take a look below:

(NOTE: When I say spatulated off, I used an OLD Cricut spatula, which is irreplaceable and works wonders when for this purpose because of its narrow, thin blade,  Unfortunately, Cricut re-designed their spatula over 10 years ago so these old ones are almost impossible to come by!!)

Ingredients:  Stampin' Up:  Night of Navy, Balmy Blue, Basic White cardstocks. Stamp/ Dies--Waves of Inspiration/ Wave Dies; Teeny Tiny Sentiments (retired). Inks--Night of Navy, Pacific Blue, Balmy Blue, *Basic Gray (seagulls). Linen Twine.  Other: Copic markers--T5, T4, T2 (*Handmade seagulls, rather than stamped). Fussy-cutting. Chatterbox sentiment/ verse. Size--4-3/4" x 6."