My last entry for the Summer Party at The Outlawz

Well, it appears that summer is here to stay for a while... a very loooonnng while! Ugh!  Beginning in June of each year, I wonder why it is that I choose to live in Texas! This year summer arrived a couple of weeks early and has brought with it temperatures in excess of 100 degrees! The heat kills me and I really should move to the mountains somewhere. I actually would seriously consider relocation if I could make a living in the mountains but seeing how much trouble I'm having finding a job in a place as big as Dallas/Fort Worth, I imagine there are slim pickin's in more remote locations.

Anyway, I have a summer-inspired card for you today. The theme of the Copics/Promarkers challenge at the Outlawz for this week is summer backgrounds. I took what seemed like an eternity to decide what I would do because I didn't have any summery background stamps. I also didn't have any summer photos around which I could build a layout. So I started  by going through my many stacks of paper, looking for something that I could at least work with. Time was growing short if I wanted to enter the challenge so I had to get moving.  Fortunately I stumbled across a paper that looked like water in a swimming pool, all turquoise and ripply. I thought that would be perfect to use for a summer background but I didn't have any pictures, digital or otherwise that would go with a swimming pool or water in general so I started looking for a digi stamp I could use. I found the cutest little beach baby named "Kai" and I knew instantly what I would do. So without further ado, here's what I came up with.

Kai is from the awesome pencil of Mo Manning. He's playing in the sand on the beack and has his sand pail and beach ball with him. I love creating the illusion of dimension in my projects so I paper pieced little Kai's feet, hat and one forearm. I also used Diamond Glaze on the water, the adjacent sand, the beach ball and bucket to make them shiny. 

I nearly forgot to mention that I created the beach by tearing 2 layers of thin tan cardstock and colored the edge next to the water with a Copic marker a shade or two darker than the paper itself so that it looks wet. The tufts of grass are also drawn on with Copics. It's not really an authentic representation but it's close enough to suit me.
 

The sentiment (on front and inside) is also from Mo Manning and comes with the digi stamp called "Wonder" that I used on the card I posted on Wednesday of this week. I thought it went very well with this image as well. I cut it out and colored it with pigment ink to give it the mottled appearance so it would look kind of like the water, then covered it with Diamond Glaze.

Here's the inside of the card.  

I was pretty happy with how it turned out after all the deliberation I did in the beginning.  As stated, I am entering this card into the Copics/Promarkers challenge at The Outlawz. I need to get this posted so I'm not going to give the details here but you can email me or include it in a comment if you have any questions.    There are still a couple of days left to vote on the entries for Jillian's Birthday Blog Hop and I would appreciate your vote if you haven't already given it.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy crafting!
Anniebee