Welcome to the July NC Demos Blog Hop!  Our theme for this month is a celebration of summer.  We all hope that, as you go through the blog hop, you are inspired and reminded of some of your summer favorites.

If you just came from Tracie’s post, I know you’ll agree with me that she is an amazingly talented stamper.  I always enjoy seeing her projects!  Thank you so much for continuing the blog hop and stopping by to see my card.

Our family is blessed to have a summer camp in Upstate New York on the Great Sacandaga Lake.  The camp has become a gathering place for family and friends.  It is a place to relax, reconnect, and rejuvenate.

My husband, Bruce, and I just returned from a two week vacation at the camp.  This year, we had a very special visitor.  My mom, Irma, spent about a week with us.  She met some family members for the first time and had an absolute blast getting to know the area.

One of my mom’s favorite places at the camp is our front deck.  From the pictures below, you’ll see that we have a fantastic view of the lake.  It is a great vantage point to watch activity on the water, listen to the birds, get a little sun, or simply read a book.

Two members of our family, our youngest grandson (Johnny) and our son-in-law (Glenn) have birthdays at the end of July.  I took inspiration from our view of the lake to make birthday cards for Johnny and Glenn.  Since they both love spending time at the camp and being on the water, I hope they’ll enjoy the picture I tried to create for them.  The cards truly remind me of summer and our camp.

The Waterfront stamp set is a unique set of stamps that allow you to create a very wide variety of scenes.  I like to use the stamp set, an Aqua Painter, Watercolor Paper, a few ink spots, and a little imagination to “paint” scenes for projects.  The best advice that I can give you for this type of project is just to dive in.  Each “painting” will have its own characteristics.  The more you play with the stamp set, ink, and Aqua Painter, the more comfortable you’ll be.  If you would like to see a few step-by-step examples, please check out a few early posts that I have made.  You can find the posts by clicking here and by clicking here.  I followed the same steps to create the cards pictured above.

The hardest part for me is to cut the “painting” down to size for the card.  As you can see from the pictures above, I decided to use Very Vanilla Note Cards for the birthday cards.  That meant that I needed to cut the “paintings” to fit inside the mat Crumb Cake cardstock.  I also decided to stamp “happy birthday” directly on the mat and use dimensionals to adhere the “painting”.  This simple design really focuses the eye on the detail of the watercolor “painting”.

I hope you give this technique a try.  You will be amazed at the images that you’ll be able to create.

Below are pictures of the main products that I used to create the birthday cards.  If you click on any picture, you’ll go directly to my on-line store.

Be sure to continue on to Sue’s post.  She always has great projects to share!  All July NC Demos blog hoppers are also listed below.  Enjoy!

Happy stamping!
Laurie

Waterfront Photopolymer Stamp Set [146386] $17.00	Watercolor Paper [122959] $5.00	Aqua Painters [103954] $17.00
Clear Block D [118485] $8.50	Stampin’ Dimensionals [104430] $4.00

This month’s NC Demos Blog Hoppers:

Toni Campana

Tamra Davis

Jo Anne Hewins

Tracie Evans Langley

Laurie Meier  <–YOU ARE HERE

Sue Root

Sue Stapp

Frances Wagner

 

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