Summer Cards

I have been on a card making kick lately and I saw a challenge to make a card with circles.  I have always wanted to enter some of these challenges and so I decided to do it. =)  As I was thinking of what to do I thought of summer as we are smack in the middle of it. And I love summer.  It means not getting up early everyday and playing with the kids.  It means summer movies and working in the garden.  It means mowing lawns and sprinklers and lots of water fights.  It means summer walks and bike rides. So much fun.

So back to the card, I love dot stencils so I definitely wanted to do something with that and I have been loving coloring with Tim Holtz Distress Markers and water.  So here is what I came up with.

This was the first card.  I designed the rectangle with a circle cut out with Cricut Design Space.  I'm loving my new Cricut Explore and Design Space.  I welded and circle and square together for the layer under the stamping and for the top layer I just used the same shapes that were smaller and not welded together.  For the greeting I also use my Cricut and found the two words in my library of shapes and welded them together to make one image.  I cut some tiny hearts with the Cricut and covered them with Glossy Accents.  The image is a stamp I had from my days of being a Stampin Up Demonstrator.  I loved this little girl.  She reminds me of my girls. I watercolored her with Tim Holtz Distress Markers.  I love using these markers.  The background is a stencil I created again using my Cricut and the new Design Space.  I just duplicated a circle about a million times and carefully with many math calculations put them inside a rectangle then I attached them all so they would cut how I arranged them.  Then I had this awesome stencil.  I actually cut it from some scrap card stock but I intend to cut a more permanent one from some acetate or stencil material later.

After the first card I wanted to make another so this is it.  This time I cut the background from some watercolor paper and stamped right on it instead of adding another circle.  I like the coloring on this one a bit better. (She looked more like me, white even in the summer.) This time I used some enamel dots for accents and not sure which embellishments I like better. OK both! =) I also inked around the edges more with this card.

Hope you enjoyed these cards.