Shameless Attempt at Duplication

It was love at first sight. I tingled all over. My knees became weak. I opened my mouth, but nothing come out. . . when I saw this card. OK. So it might not have been that dramatic, but I'm sure that at the very least, I drew an extra breath. Rarely these days does a single card make me have to have a stamp set. The moment I saw Julee's card, however, I knew I needed Abundant Blessings.

Several times in the two months I've had it, I've made an attempt to duplicate her card but never got beyond the flower. Her flower is colored with Copic markers. My markers didn't do it justice and neither did my Prismacolor pencils until today when I laid the color on a little thicker and finally came up with something I deemed acceptable. What you can't see in the photo is the sparkle. I used Orange Peel Stickles on the flower and Diamond Stickles on the punched pieces. Oh, and it was this card that pushed me over the edge on the Martha Stewart Branch punch, too. I stamped all three flowers and layered them with foam mounting tape. For the background, I stamped the botanical elements with first and second generation Olive ink on Bamboo cardstock. I punched the branch/fern pieces from Garden Green and New England Ivy to variegate the color a bit. I used a sponge dauber and Bamboo ink to distress the background. I don't know if I did such a great job describing what I did, but what can I say? I tried! Last, this is one of my all-time favorite stamp sets. There's more to come, too, as there are some very cool stamps in this set that have yet to see ink!

Materials & Tools: Colonial White, Bamboo, Cocoa, Garden Green, and New England Ivy cardstock; Cocoa, Bamboo, and Olive ink pads; Verve Stamps Abundant Blessings stamp set; Prismacolor colored pencils; Gamsol odorless mineral spirits; Blending stump; Ribbon from Walmart; Orange Peel and Diamond Stickles; Sponge dauber; 3M foam mounting tape.

That was so long, I'll try to keep it short. My stamp class met tonight. Fun! It was a great afternoon with the little boys and their daddy, too. It was so cute when Bjorn was sitting at my computer, his fingers moving on the keyboard like he was typing as he said, "w, w, w, dot, Street Street, org." All Grandma has to do these days is get him there. The rest he can handle on his own. It's pretty amazing to see a four-year-old manipulate a mouse and explore a website on his own. A while later, Mathias was coloring with markers and very matter-of-factly said, "Grandma, if you mix yellow and blue together, you make green." I think I knew that when I was three. Anyway, that started a discussion about color, and we ended up in the kitchen with glasses of water and bottles of food coloring having a little lesson on color theory. Cameron watched and at the end commented that if he had red, blue, and yellow paint, he could make a lot of colors. I replied that if he had white and black to go with them, he could make all the colors. Guess there's still something I can teach the big kids, too!

After a big day, I'm ready to take some cold medicine and go to bed. I've got a lot going on at work this week and will need my wits about me. Sleep helps (somewhat at least) in that department. I hope yours is a wonderful week. Take care, and I'll talk to you again soon.