Papertrey Ink June Blog Hop

If you say 'summer' to any one of my kids, they will instantly thinkof Empire, Michigan. Our most special family vacations have been spent there near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

The beaches are gorgeous, the sand dunes spectacular and the memories irreplaceable. I choke up every time I look at my inspiration photo, we always have good times there.  

For the PTI June blog hop we were to choose a picture or representation of summer and recreate that in card form. This is the sunset over Lake Michigan. You see two people kayaking in silhouette and my son walking along the edge of the water. There are no words to describe the colors in a Lake Michigan sunset, the photo shows you best. 

I tried to recreate the mood with a variation on the wrinkle free distress technique. Using a piece of wax paper, I swiped a strip of color from Ranger Distress inks using first Broken China, then a thin strip of Dusty Concord, then a bit of Dried Marigold and Spiced Marmalade. Then you spritz it with water until the ink beads up. I laid down a piece of white cardstock to capture the colors and then dried them with a heat gun. For a more traditional technique I would have swiped the cardstock again, for a more mottled look, as I did in the CDS card in a post below, but I wanted bands of color to represent the sunset. 

The water really shimmers in the photo, so to recreate some of the shimmer I mixed my own blend of soft sky reinker drops with Perfect Pearls in water and a spray/mister bottle, masked out the top part of the image and sprayed the water portion with homemade glimmer mist. In the closeup photo you can see the shine. I used waterfall stickles for some of the wave action. Then I stamped the Life images in black craft, embossed them and did the sentiment. That was tricky I have to admit.

 

First I inked half of the sentiment in black and stamped it, wiped it off carefully and stamped on scrap paper to make sure the ink was off, inked the second portion of black, lined it up using the grid block, stamped again, then inked the last word 'moments' with a Kaleidacolor Desert Heat pad for the fiery yellow and orange and stamped the last word. This is one of those cases where I was soooo tempted to add ribbon or twine or a button or something and decided to leave well enough alone. Thanks for looking. 

Stamps: Papetrey Ink Life

Cardstock: PTI white, SU black

Inks: Ranger distress ink pads in Broken China, Dusty Concord, Dried Marigold, Spiced Marmalade, SU black craft, Kaleidacolor Desert Heat

Other: SU Soft Sky and Bordering Blue reinkers, Perfect pearls powder, mister spray bottle (to make homemade glimmer mist), waterfall stickles, clear EP