Flourishes' Celebrating Home Challenge

Welcome back!  What a busy week this has been.  Between work and some other "secret" work, I haven't had a lot of time to just sit and surf the web to see what's going on out there.  Luckily, tomorrow is a PD Day and my secret work is done so I'll be able to sit and craft without many interruptions ALL DAY tomorrow!!!

I was checking out Laura's blog a couple of days ago and noticed that Flourishes is releasing three new sets this week.  To celebrate, they have organized a "Celebrating Home" challenge.  To participate all you need to do is find something in  your home as a point of inspiration for a card creation or altered project and let the creative juices flow!  I immediately knew what I was going to use.  A few months ago, my partner-in-crime, Lori, and I were out shopping.  We went into this little crafty/knick-knacky store in town to see what they had.  I was checking out the ceramic travel mugs when THIS one screamed my name:

Isn't it adorable???  The colors are SO me, I love the dots and the saying is just right.  So, I picked it up, showed it to Lori and she just HAD to have the same one!  LOL  One of the very first things I said to her was, "This would make a great card!"  Isn't it funny how differently we look at the world when we create cards on a regular basis???  Anyhoo, I found some paper and CS in my stash that matched fairly well and went to my stamp cupboard to find an image that was kind of fun and a sentiment to match.  I started off thinking it was going to be a birthday card with a "Happy Bird-Day" sentiment but quickly decided that I just wasn't in a bird-day mood.  I dug through my My Favorite Things stamps and found this one that I bought before Christmas (again, with Lori!).  A perusal of the Splitcoast Sketch Challenges gave me the layout (SC83 F.Y.I) and this is what I came up with:

Recipe: Stamps: Chill Out (MFT)  Paper: American Crafts DP, CS - Real Red, Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip, watercolor paper  Ink: Image - Versafine Onyx Black, Coloring - Real Red, Tangerine Tango, Summer Sun, Baja Breeze, Old Olive  Accessories: Blender pen, versamarker, clear embossing powder, adhesive pearls, paper piercer, ticket corner punch, Nestabilities, Cuttlebug EF (Swiss Dots and Circle Dots?), Real Red ribbon, sponge dauber

So I started by stamping the main image on watercolor paper with my Versafine Onyx Black ink and colored it in using my classic inks and blender pen.  I went over the bathtub with my Versamarker and then used clear embossing powder to make the tub shiny like an enamel bathtub would be.  I cut it out with my curved rectangles mega-nestabilities and mounted it on a yellow rectangle I had run through my CB in the Swiss Dots EF and ticket corner punched.  I took the guide off of my ticket corner punch to punch the spaces in the middle to mimic the opposite scallop.  I mounted that on Tangerine Tango and added some red, adhesive pearls to the corners and spaces I had punched out.  I paper pierced around the image and used dimensionals to pop it up.

Here's a pic of the mug and card together:

I had fun with this challenge and I think I did a pretty good job of carrying the "feel" of the mug onto the card.  I love inspiration challenges because everyone has such a different interpretation of what inspires them - it's so enlightening and inspiring to see what is created.

Thanks for stopping by - see you tomorrow!