Navy Bouquet

Hey y'all!  I DID enjoy my day off yesterday.  I watched an episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and then I made 8 cards.  I took pictures of a bunch of scrapbook layouts but I was having a terrible time with getting pictures to look good yesterday--I didn't retake the scrapbook layouts yet, but I did take pictures of the cards THREE TIMES before I got a set I thought was acceptable.  So here's one of the cards I made yesterday:

Wrapped Bouquet is a super cute stamp set (with coordinating dies) that will be retiring at the end of the month when the Occasions catalog expires.  I used the brand now Color Throwdown palette:

Which I interpreted as Smoky Slate, Coastal Cabana, and Night of Navy.  I paired that with this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I picked out the two challenges before I decided what stamps to use, and for some reason this combination really took me a while to wrap my brain around.  I almost did something with snowflakes even though the image on the CTD palette is definitely summery ;)  I inked up the main bouquet stamp with Versamark and Night of Navy ink, stamped, and then embossed with clear EP so I could watercolor it.  Took me three tries to get a good image--my Night of Navy ink pad is pretty juicy and it kept getting excess ink in some of the fine details of the stamp, so on the third try I inked it up and then pounced a sponge on top of it to take off some of the extra ink.  One of my favorite stamping tricks :)  I inked up the newspaper stamp with Versamark and stamped it on the card base for a bit of subtle background texture.

Summer has finally arrived in Germany and now I'm questioning the wisdom of not getting an AC unit for our bedroom at night...we've been sleeping with the windows open, but German birds never sleep and one of our neighbors has chickens.  Guess it helps me get up early to work out!

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wrapped Bouquet
Ink:  Versamark, Night of Navy, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Smoky Slate, Coastal Cabana, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Wrapped Flowers dies, Nature's Thoughts dies