The inspiration for today's card came from a beautiful sunrise that I woke up to recently.
When I sleepily opened my eyes and saw this, I grabbed my phone and took a quick picture through my bedroom window. But when I looked at the picture on the phone, I knew I had to immediately get up and go out on my deck to get a better shot. This is what I saw.
It was a beautiful way to start my day!
Since I've been using the Oceanfront Stamp Set this week, I thought I would end the week by trying to capture some of the beautiful colors in the morning sunrise.
I left off the neighbor's lake toys and changed up the trees for tall grass, but the beautiful colors of the sky and how they reflected on the water were my inspiration.
I know my card in no way compares to the beauty of God's art, but without His inspiration, I never would have come up with this idea.
Using the three large "background" stamps in the Oceanfront stamp set to create the scene took a bit of trial and error. The stamps are really sized for a portrait orientation card, but with a view like I had, I wanted to try to capture as much of it as possible. You can see where the stamping overlapped towards the center of the card, but I think it just adds to the interest of the sky and water.
The ink colors I used for the sky and water were Calypso Coral and Starry Sky. The stamps in this set are designed so they automatically create shading. To get the angles that I wanted, I experimented with inking the stamps with my sponge daubers. That is how I got the colors to be at an angle. I applied both colors to the stamps with sponge daubers to create the angles and shapes I wanted, and then I stamped on the Basic White cardstock.
For the grass, I used the narrowest of the three stamps which is somewhat triangular in shape and stamped it twice with Old Olive across the bottom. To camouflage the angle this stamp created in the center of the card, I stamped some of the small grass along the angled edge which I think made it look like a little knoll in the grass.
The tree line in the distance at the opposite end of the lake was made by making a bunch of little vertical lines in varying heights with a Basic Black Stampin' Write marker.
The front and inside sentiments are from the Inspired Thoughts stamp sets. Unfortunately, I've needed too many sympathy cards in the last several weeks. This inside sentiment is one of my favorite sentiments for a sympathy card.
I'd love to hear what you think of my sunrise inspired card!
If you would like a tutorial with more details on how I created this card, you can download a copy at this link.
A complete list of products used is shown below.
