Hi, crafty friends! Today’s card is all about the beach, featuring some cute critters from the Charmed by the Sea collection from Purple Onion Designs, illustrated by Stacey Yacula.

Thea, Thaddeus and Taylor are enjoying their day at the beach. I added the sandcastle from the Beach accessories set for Taylor to play with, and I also used the Ocean background in the front, the Cabana Row at the very back and even the fences from the Fences & Boardwalk set. I stamped all the images in Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things, except for the cabana row, which I stamped using Memento Espresso Truffle ink.

I packed a lot of stamps into this one card, which is actually an A6 size card (4 5/8 x 6 1/4″). Whenever I create cards with new releases from Purple Onion Designs, I let the design of the card dictate the size of the card, whatever that turns out to be.

I colored the scene with my Copics. I’d managed to overfill a marker when I refilled it, creating a big drop of blue ink on my peach colored cabana when I went to color in the window. At that point the sky, fences and beach were all colored, I only had the critters left and didn’t want to start over, so I made the fences darker and made the cabana darker too. It’s still visible, but I  wanted the focus to be on the critters enjoying their time at the beach. If it had happened on a main element of my card, I probably would have started over.

I used a white Sharpie to create foam from the waves coming in, and stamped a sentiment from the coordinating Seaside sentiment set using Classic Kraft ink from Papertrey Ink.

Fairly muted color palette for this one.