I'm Hitting the Beach, Baby!

I am getting really excited because our family is getting ready to fly out to Florida in a few days. Now... normally, everyone is ready to go on a vacation -- but I'm REALLY ready. I haven't had a vacation in over 8 years! I know! It's crazy! My last vacation was my honeymoon. Since then, my husband was in school finishing his degree, going to class all year round. And -- both of my boys were born in the summer. So I guess time has just passed and we are all WAY over due for a break! I wasn't going to get to go anywhere this summer either because of my work schedule. We have to sign up for our one week of summer vacation in October. It turned out that everyone had other commitments, so we had to stay at home. This card is for one of my coworkers. It's a giant 6 x 6 card... and she deserves every inch of it! I was mentioning at work that we were offered a free vacation from my in-laws... but it could only be for this certain week in July. The nurse that had that week reserved for her family's vacation offered to work in my place! Isn't that AWESOME! So.... we're going!!!! I can't believe it!

This card is a combo challenge. I worked late today, so I wanted to make a bang for my buck.
1. Caardvarks' Challenge today was to make a 6 x 6 card (check!)
2. SCS's Color Challenge today was to use these colors: Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, and Green Galore (check!)
3. Julee's Blogger Bingo (Sketch #1) (and check!)

I started off by gathering together my challenge colors. I knew I wanted to use my new MFT's stamp set Hit the Beach as my theme(from Eclectic Paperie or All That Scraps -- see shopping section of blog). Then I rummaged through my paper pile and found some 'beach-like' patterned paper. From there, I looked at the sketch and started putting everything together. The bikini chick was colored with Prismacolored Pencils and blended with mineral spirits. She's popped up with dimensionals onto a scalloped rectangle. The Giga rectangle was too short, so I punched two and put them together to create the size that I needed. The red ric rack camouflages the seam perfectly! I made a background piece with the Green Galore cardstock by stamping various images from the stamp set with versamark.

I wanted to secure the velum piece of printed paper and found some bright red eyelets. I haven't used an eyelet forever, but I like how it turned out!

I'm sure I'll be posting some more Summery cards in the next couple of days! Cross your fingers for us that we'll have a nice trip!

Stamps: MFT Hit the Beach, SU Much Appreciated
Paper: Real Red, Green Galore CS by SU; 'rippling waves' paper by Karen Foster; Beach Fish Vellum by American Traditional Designs
Ink: Versafine Onyx Black, Versamark
Accessories: Apple Green Grosgrain Ribbon (SU); red eyelets (making memories); Coluzzle; dimensionals (SU); red ric rack (Michaels); Marvy Giga Scalloped Rectangle punch; Black Stampin' Write Marker (SU); Crafter's Tool Kit (SU), Prismacolor Pencils & Mineral Spirits, blending stump