Beautiful You

This is a card I made using the sketch Julee is featuring over at the Verve Forum. You see, Julee is the Verve diva being featured this week in the ongoing thread called Meet the Verve Diva!

If you go over to the forum, you be able to learn all about Julee; how she and Mark got together, what her favorite foods are, what kind of books she likes to read, etc. In addition to learning more about her, Julee is also featuring a sketch challenge....if you participate in her challenge, you have the chance to win some Verve Bucks!Uh, free stuff? Gotta love free stuff, hmmmm? Get over there today to play along and learn more about the amazing Julee.

Well, this is my take on Julee's sketch. I used stamps from Beautiful You. Do you see the background paper? That actually started out as Very Vanilla cardstock, if you can believe it. I really wanted to show you how you can take one big image and use it to make your own designer paper! First of all, I stamped the flower from Beautiful You onto Very Vanilla cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink (BTW, if you haven't tried this new ink, you MUST! You'll never go back to another black again, especially if you use Copic markers). Then I painted the flower using my Twinkling H2O paints (and very bright colors at that....teal, hot pink, lime green, yellow). Then I outlined each flower with a gold gel pen, which took away the strong black line of the image. While I love brights and black, for this application, the black was too strong. At this point, I liked the bright look of the background paper I had just made, but it was just a bit much, even for me (ha, I never thought I'd hear THAT come out of my mouth!).

So the next thing I did was rub Ranger Distress Ink in Frayed Burlap all over the flower images. Doing that really took the brightness of the colors away (yet didn't take it away completely), and gave it a really antique-y look. You can see it a little better in this close-up shot:

I love how my background paper turned out! This flower image from Beautiful You is soooo fun to color. There are so many different sections to it that you can use as much color or as little color on it as you want to. Julee made a card with this image the other day, but she kept it all one color.

I had a very relaxing day yesterday, but amazingly, I did not stamp one thing! Akkkk! I just didn't feel like it, if you can believe it. I read alot. Right now I am reading a series by Karen Kingsbury, who is a Christian fiction writer. Her books are definitely tear jerkers, and definitely faith inspiring. So that's what I did instead of stamping. I read, which, honestly, I haven't done too much of for a very long time. I love to read, so I am relishing in the time I am taking to rekindle this love.

Today I plan on stamping (finally) and we're heading to the Newby's for Lauren's 17th birthday party. The weather we perfect yesterday, so I am hoping for more of the same today.

Hugs,
Amy

p.s. Please don't forget to vote for me in the JustRite Stampin' Hopefuls contest over on the JustRite blog! Here's the link to vote, and here's a link to my post yesterday explaining a little more about the contest....big HUGS to all of you who are voting!