Hi, crafty friends. Today’s the last day to take advantage of the 30% bundled discount offer for the new Charmed by the Sea release from Purple Onion Designs. The design team and guest designers have shared lots of amazing cards over the last two weeks featuring stamps from this release, and if you haven’t purchased this collection yet, I have another card for you today that I’m hoping will inspire you that little bit more.

Meet Slumber. This little mouse taking a nap in a hammock tied to palm trees won me over as soon as I saw it. Can you imagine relaxing by the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves rushing to shore? Heaven! I stamped and masked the surf board from the beach accessories set, the crab and the bottle from the seaside accessories set, then stamped Slumber, did more masking, then added the shoreline background, all using Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things. With the masks still in place, I stamped the sunrise sunset background using Fadeout ink from Inkon3 for a soft, no line look.

Whenever I color scenes like this, I always start with the background elements. For this card, I started with the sky and sun, then colored the ocean, the sand and the palm trees, leaving the accessories and the mouse for last. These are the most colorful elements. I even opted to color the crab blue. I didn’t want it to be brown and not show up in the sand, so I decided a blue swimmer crab was a good fit for this scene. It stands out against the other elements in the foreground, but still works with the overall design, because there’s already lots of blue on the card with the ocean and sky. Three completely different blue combos, but they work together still. Also, the blue swimmer crab makes me want to move back to Australia, even though it’s winter in Australia at the moment, and soooo cold (at least winter’s cold in Adelaide, where I used to live)!

I’ve used the sunrise sunset background on more than half the cards I’ve made with this release, and I’ve tried to color it differently for each card. I love love love the versatility of this stamp, and never in a million years did I guess in advance that this would wind up being my favorite stamp of them all, but there you go. It’s just THAT good.

To finish off the card, I stamped a sentiment from the coordinating Seaside sentiment set using Classic Kraft ink from Papertrey Ink, and I also used a white Sharpie to add dots to the sand to mimic foam.

Lots of colors used for this one, and I realize I’ve even left out a few in my graphic. I used W3, W1 and W00 for the mouse, in addition to R21 and R000 for his cheek and ears.