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Nothing is better in the summer than a tropical sunset.  I live in the tropics or at the beach but a mountain sunset is an amazing sight as well.  That was my inspiration for today’s card.  Every time I see a beautiful sunset I immediately start thinking about which inks I could blend together to capture that beauty.

I wanted to pair the flamingos from Flamingo Together with my sunset because I thought the pinks of the flamingos would go perfectly with the colors I had planned.  I started by die cutting a piece of distress watercolor cardstock with the largest of the Small Cross Stitched Rectangle dies so that I could have a nice border around my panel.  I blended distress inks on the cardstock starting with scattered straw along the bottom, followed by dried marigold, worn lipstick and wilted violet at the top.  I tried to mimic the curve of the Simple Hillside I cut from Black Licorice cardstock. I also curved the sentiment to match the hillside and white embossed it with versamark ink and white embossing powder.

The flamingos are colored with copic markers. (Editors note: 25% off Copic Markers sale with code markersale going on NOW!)  I wanted to color them slightly different so they weren’t exactly the same but I was sure to pick colors to match my background.  Finally I stamped the palm trees with Versafine black ink for a nice crisp silhouette and layered the whole scene on a Mermaid cardstock card base. I added a little aqua eye shadow with a gel pen to my girl flamingo to tie in with the aqua card base as well as bit of Spectrum Noir Clear Sparkle pen glitter to her wing.

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Summer is here and this week on the  Monday Challenge we are heading down to the water with a Nautical/By The Sea theme. I am lucky enough to live on a small island surrounded by the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean sea, and like nothing more than snorkeling and admiring the bright colors of the fish and corals. I also enjoy a nice day out on a boat, bobbing along in the waves and enjoying the sea breeze while sipping a long cool glass of something sparkly and refreshing. We will be looking forward to seeing which option you choose for your project!

Once you have made your creation just go ahead and upload it into the linky on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog! 

As always, we’re offering a chance to win a $50 Gift Voucher to Simon Says Stamp!  All YOU need to do is join in with the challenge!

Below are three projects created by the design team, that showcase this weeks theme! You can visit the challenge blog  to get all the details and see the amazing cards and projects that the design team has created this week. If you click on each designers name, you’ll be taken directly to their blog where you’ll get more details about their project! Be sure to give these talented ladies some comments!

Cathie Cowles created a fabulous sailing plaque:

Cathie used:

Kath Stewart made this lovely holiday travel journal:

Kath used:

Meihsia Liu made this gorgeous tag:

Meihsia used:

So now it’s your turn to get out your inks, stamps and papers and have fun!

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Do you use Instagram?  If so please add  #sssmchallenge to your challenge entry uploads so we can see them on there too!

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