By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea. Oh don’t I wish! And, you can thank me for putting that little ditty in your head for the rest of the day! But, back to business — I love the Cup of Thanks stamp set from Brutus Monroe. If you’ve read my other posts you’d see that I am having a bit of a thing for little things clipped to a line — as if they are flying in the air. So, I played on that idea a bit more with this card, thinking sea breezes and beach towels.
I started with a 4.25” by 5.5” piece of heavy white cardstock for the card back — which is the same size as the finished card. With Brutus Monroe Premium Chalk Ink in Sea, using the top of the ink pad, I “brushed” color very lightly on the margins of the card back giving it bit of a “waves at the seaside” feel. I chose one of the prints from my planner sticker designs on Etsy (ECV-0149 Dots & Asters!) to use in the design. Before printing it on cardstock, I scaled it up a bit and then cut a 2.5” x 5.5”strip from the print to frame the stamped pieces.
On to the stamping — I love Brutus Monroe Detail Ink because once it dries I can use anything to color the stamped image — pens, watercolor, or pencils. This ink takes all the anxiety out of choosing the right ink for the project. I know, I’m baby stepping and still using colored pencils; but I like the idea of just one ink that works for every project. I stamped several of each component in the stamp set on heavy cardstock, and then set out to color them. Keeping with a seaside color scheme, I used shades of blue, green, red and a touch of pink on the macaron! I used a Painters pen I got at Wal-Mart and put tiny silver dots here and there on every piece. Weird, how tiny dots make such a difference. Then my favorite part — fussy cutting. Good news is that there are free digital cuts for this stamp set on the Brutus Monroe site. Since I got my stamp before the digi cuts were available and was excited to get going with them so fussy cutting was necessary.
Time to arrange the pieces on the polka dot strip. Not rocket science, I just tossed them about like they were bobbing in the waves in the ocean, trying to give the overall look a bit of balance. With double-sided tape, I taped all but the sugar packs flat to the print. I then attached the decorated dotted piece to the card back using more double-sided tape. With a bit of black and white baker’s twine I made a few wraps around the card back and tied it off with a little square knot and bow. Then I used teensy tiny natural clothespins to attach the sugar packs to the twine. (Having a few dexterity issues with my hands…the tiny clothespins are challenging at best! There should be a Tiny Clothespin Use event in the next Olympics! If I started training today…I still wouldn’t win any kind of medal!) A tiny bit of foam tape just in the middle of the sugar packs secures them to the print area on the card. I stamped the sentiment, fussy cut it and taped it in place. I realized after I taped it I did not ink the edges as I usually do…so next time Ill remember. I taped the card back to the actual card…making sure everything was going in the right direction. I have been known to tape things in the wrong way; but that is easily remedied by just cutting the card in half and then attaching the whole thing to a new card! And, hey, maybe you meant to have it on really heavy paper!
I paired this card with a set of planner stickers from my Etsy shop ECV-0133 Beach! Retro 60s. It was a fun little gift to thank a friend for helping me out a few weeks ago. I think it is a cute mix. And, since she is a displaced SoCal beach girl and planner girl like me, I thought she would have fun with both.
As you may know, I had the good fortune to be a member of the Brustus Monroe Inspiration Team in 2016. I thought it would be fun to share my posts from that blog with all of you here. Hope you enjoy.
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