Desert Sunset

Dear crafty friend,

Amanda here again. Summer has finally arrived, and here in the Southern California desert, that means warm days and beautiful sunsets. It’s hard to capture their true beauty, but I tried with my ink blended background in today’s card. 

I started by blending a rainbow of colors across the top of a Bristol Smooth panel, adding yellow in the center, then working out with orange, red, purple, and dark blue. I gave it a few minutes to dry, then used a torn piece of tape to mask off the horizon. Using the same purple, and dark blue, I inked up the sand. It was a little too cool of a color, so I blended in a dark red ink too. With the top still taped off, I splattered water and concentrated ink onto the panel to add more texture to the ground. I removed the tape and added a few tiny white dots in the darkest part of the sky with my trusty Posca pen. 

To complete the scene, I die cut several cacti in the Mini Succulent Terrarium set. Intending to ink them up as well, I placed them on the background to see how many I would need, and decided that they were quite lovely in white. I know the sunset would back light them and cause them to be silhouetted in real life, but I took a little creative license here. I layered them up and glued them to the background, adding a heavy coat of shimmer pen on top. 

To get perfect sentiment banners, I like to die cut them from a rectangle. Then I can line the rectangle up in the corner of my Misti, and pop the banner back into the hole. That gives me a jig to perfectly realign the banner if it shifts while stamping. For this banner, I curved a sentiment from Scattered Thoughts and stamped it several times, using the same colors as the sand, so it would match. Then, I embossed it with clear powder. I popped it up with foam tape and adhered it to the scene. 

To finish the card, I glued the scene to a piece of fun foam, and then glued that to a textured white card base. A few flat-backed gems and another coat of shimmer pen over the cacti add sparkle. With clean and simple cards, you get better results if you use nicer papers. Small details, like texture and shimmer, really get a chance to stand out.

Of all the places I’ve lived, Southern California is my favorite, and will always feel like home. The warm summer nights remind me of being at camp, so I thought I’d write you a letter, like I used to when I was a kid. I hope you are ready for an awesome summer this year, because we all got short changed this spring. And even though we’ll probably stay home for most of it, at least we don’t have to homeschool for the next few months, right?

I hope I’ve inspired you to create some quick and easy scenes like this. You can find the sister post to this on my blog. Head on over for more inspiration, and links to the specific products I used. Don’t worry, if the summer sunset at your house has more flowers than succulents, you can swap the Terrarium set out for the Floral Garden set; that would be equally lovely. I’ll write again soon…

Crafty hugs,
Amanda