Bee Thankful (ESS #135, CR84FN35, PTI: MIM)

I hope you all had  a great day today!  It was finally hot and sunny here in the Pacific Northwest.  I think we actually hit above 80 degrees!  It's ironic that it happened on the first day of summer.  Hopefully it's a sign of good things to come. :)

My card this evening is based on a several challenges.  The first is the PTI Make IT Monday Challenge on Nichole Heady's blog.  It begins every Monday morning and ends the next Monday morning.  This week's challenge was reverse masking.  I punched a scallop circle from my Eclipse art masking tape and temporarily adhered the negative (what was left over) to the circle I die cut with my Nestabilities circle die.  I used the small flower stamp from the Snail & Co. stamp set from A Muse Studio and stamped the flower all over within the mask.  When I lifted it up there was a "flower ball".  I had seen this technique with the "flower ball" before on Julie Ebersole's blog, but I couldn't find the specific post for you.  I used bermuda ink from A Muse Studio for my flower.  I drew the stem with a Copic marker.  The patterned paper is from Basic Grey's Urban Prairie paper pad.  The beautiful green ribbon is American Crafts.  The sentiment stamp is one I picked up a couple of years ago from the Stamp Convention and it's from Eccentric Images Rubberstamps.  I bought a couple other ones from them and they are super cute!  I had always wanted to try this "flower ball" technique when I saw it on Julie's blog and I'm really glad I got the chance.

The layout for my card was inspired by this week's sketch at Eat Sleep Stamp.  I pretty much followed the sketch almost to the letter.  I chose to use ribbon where the vertical line on the left is, but decided not to put my image circle over it.  Other than that my card looks like the sketch.  The colors for my card came from the color challenge this week at CR84FN.  The color board is just below.  These three colors were very easy to work with and the first thing I thought of was a flower or something summery.  It could be because the sun is shining outside my window and I have the a/c on for the first time all year. :)  I hope you all enjoy this card.  Once again I tried something new and I really like the results.  Happy Crafting!