THD Challenge 15 - or as I call it, Inspiration Sunday

So I wake up this morning, fully intending to craft all day as I had yesterday.  I opened up Instagram and, even though I had passed by this many times, I finally saw The Heart Desires Challenge 15. 

 What I mean is, I saw the photo and was instantly inspired.  This happens alot on Sundays when I devote the whole day on Saturday to creating.  I made a ton of things that I will be sharing in different posts today and tomorrow, but here is my entry into the HDC #15:

I am also entering this into the Where Creativity Meets C9 Challenge 12: Anything Goes and the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Add a Sentiment.  Whew, that was a mouthful.  

So, I had a blast making this card, it was actually my final project of the weekend.  I do not know if this will make any sense, but sometimes when I am afforded the luxury of crafting for 2 days (the husband babysits the puppy, the kids help cook dinner, etc), I get this creative "high". Like time passes so quickly and before I know it, I am sitting in a tornado of inks, scraps, stamps and dies and I have made tons of projects.  Its like a haze.  And I can tell you the exact order I did every card, because I can trace how one idea got me to the next idea and the next idea.  Has this every happened to you?  I just love it.  I hope one day to meet some of the awesome card makers from Instagram and be able to attend a craft retreat.  That would be the best thing evaaaa for my soul!

Back to the card.  I had been making some tags with my Concord & 9th stamp and die set: Orange You Sweet.  Oh how I love this set. 

First, I stamped the watermelon with some pigment inks I found at Michaels.  I really wanted the new SSS inks in the watermelon colors, but my budget is non-existent so they live in my Wish list for the immediate future. I got these inks (green, pink, orange) for $3 with my coupon, so I could not say no.

After I stamped the layers, I used Versamark and some fine Clear Embossing powder to add a layer of shine on my watermelon.  This is my new favorite thing as I tend to smudge my Glossy Accents more often than not.  For the other fruit, I used different shades of cardstock and tried to use at least one sparkle paper per fruit.  I really like the combo of stamping and die cuts as I tend only to stamp except for the sentiment.  I need to mix it up.  I propped all fruit on foam tape.  Lastly, I stamped the sentiment directly onto my card (holy cow, that is a big step for nervous Nelly here.  I tend to mess up sentiments even when using my Misti).   I was victorious!  Hooray! 

I attached my blue panel to some green Cardstock and used foam tape to attach that to a really cool paper that is made of tiny grey triangles.  Another rare thing for me - for some reason I have not used patterned paper lately.  I need to get back to that.

Sigh, so ends the longest blog post in history.  Hope you enjoy, I will be back a few more times tonight as I have tons to post.  

Thanks for stopping by!