Stampin! with Jaydee

Hi Everyone.  Happy Sunday.

It's the fabulous Claire's turn to host our Paper Players challenge this week and she has a sketch for us:

As usual, sketches with lots of layers cause me problems :-)  After some thought, I realized I could go with a monochromatic color scheme for the layers so that it would feel somewhat clean and simple.  I began with some old SU DSP and that was perfect for the base.   I die-cut the stitched rectangle tag and was ready to start stamping the elements.

I recently purchased this Hero Arts set called Seas the Day.  It's such a cool little set and I have already made several cards with it.

I had such fun stamping the gulls and coloring them with my Comic markers.  Luckily you can also get a matching die set and I made good use of that!

Here's a closeup of the tag:

I added a little gel pen to the waves and also to his very fashionable and jaunty kerchief!  I popped the gull and the stump up from the tag and adhered the cloud directly to the tag.  I popped the tag up off the card base for a little extra dimension.

Here's my full card:

I kept the inside clean and simple.  I stamped one of the other gulls onto the card base and repeated the wave image from the front of the card.

I continued the theme on the envelope:

I hope you will join us and play along this week.  As usual, if you are looking for some inspiration, you can find some fabulous creations from our design team:

• Claire
• Joanne
• Laurie
• LeAnne
• Nance 
•  Sandy
•  Elizabeth
• Jan
• Annie

On a personal note:

The weather has been amazing the last couple of days.  Cool nights, warm days and low humidity.  Absolutely perfect.  I really do love these halcyon days of summer and it's wonderful to watch all the babies learning to fend for themselves.

Talking of babies.   A couple of days ago I managed to snap a couple of shots of the Barn Swallow's in their nest.

It was obvious by looking at them that it was getting just a little crowded in there and that they would be fledging very soon.

In this closeup, you can see some stray baby feathers on their backs and how white their gape is - all the better to get Mom and Dad to feed you :-)

A couple of days after I took this photo, Lou called to me.  One of the fledglings had taken it's first flight and had landed on the lantern on the porch and was preening itself and stretching its wings.

As I couldn't exactly go out the front door and take photos, I had to make do with taking some through the window - and the screen!

But.... isn't this the cutest little thing? :-)

He then decided it was a great opportunity to spread those wings and give them a really good clean.

Then, there were those pesky stray baby back feathers that needed to be removed:

And.... about 24 hours later... they were all gone.  They had upped and left and flown off!  I'm going to miss watching their antics and watching them fly behind the lawn mowers catching insects.  Lou and I have decided to keep their nest up (although we will spray for mites) in the hope that they return again next year!

I'll be back in a couple of days with another birthday card and some more photos.  In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight.

Hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe:

• Stamps and Dies:  Seas the Day - Hero Arts
• Inks:  Copic Markers
• Paper:  Stampin' Up! (retired)
• Cardstock:  Neenah Solar White 80 and 110#