Good morning! I hope everyone enjoyed your holiday weekend!  I had the family in on the 4th for a cookout and some together time.  Of course, it rained so I set the grill up at the garage door and everything worked just great!  Good times with my girls, their boyfriends and my mother!

Sunday afternoon I felt the need to be creative, but didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I have projects that NEED to be done, but I was in the mood to play and not be too serious about it. I thought about doing some water coloring, but silhouettes were calling me from across the room.  So I went to my SU cabinet, opened the doors, and there in front of me . . . . Inspired by Nature!

I’ve gone through so much watercolor paper recently that it was difficult, but I did find one scrap that was the right size for the images.  The first thing I did was mist the watercolor paper with water and let it sit until semi dry.  While the paper was drying, I went ahead and colored the grass with markers.  When you could still see water sitting on the paper, I misted the stamp with water and then stamped on the watercolor paper.  Because I wanted this background image softer, I misted the stamped image with more water, let it bleed a little, and then dabbed off the water with a towel.  The flowers were then inked with markers, misted with water and stamped over the background.   Oh how I’ve missed playing around with silhouettes with this technique.

• Stamps:  Inspired by Nature from Stampin’ UP!
• Paper:  Strathmore Watercolor; Prism Spring Willow Dark; SU Rich Razzleberry; BasicGrey Eva
• Ink:  Ranger Old Paper Distress; Tombow and SU Markers
• Accessories:  Spellbinders S4-218 Lattice Borderabilities; Ribbon; Brads; Tsukineko Sponge Dauber; Venture Foam Tape; Ranger Matte Accents

Now I have a challenge for you today.  I’ve been getting emails from some of you saying that you subscribe to my blog, but I never see you comment.  I love it when you leave a comment, because that is one of the ways that I get to know you!  I’ve made some great friends through my blogging and sometimes actually get to meet them in person.  Anyhoo, here’s my challenge!  Leave me a comment, especially you subscribers that are to shy to comment , and I will pick one lucky winner to receive this card!  You have until midnight EST tonight!  Can’t wait to hear from you and thanks for stopping in today!