Beautiful World Tour - Childhood

Welcome to the April Beautiful World Tour, brought to you by Flourishes! Each month the team presents a themed blog hop, hosted by our group of international designers... we are literally spread out all over the globe!  At the heart of our projects is the idea of truly showcasing beauty in card making – whether in a beautifully colored image, a fabulous way to incorporate an embellishment or a new twist on a card layout.

 If you just happened on the blog hop today because you're a regular reader of my blog, and you'd like to view the entire hop, you can start back at the Flourishes Blog - you'll find a full list of participants there, and all the details you need. If you're already hopping and linked to me from the Flourishes Blog, you're doing just fine!

Each member of the team is pulling inspiration from their childhood - I had this childhood photo on my computer, and decided to be inspired by these amazing woven porch chairs and my Dad's batik shirt. My parents spent an 8-year term with an oil company in Indonesia, which is where both my brother and I were born.  Yep, that's me!

I created a 'faux batik' panel... first I covered Neenah cardstock with blue acrylic paint, then scrunched plastic wrap over the panel - when it was mostly tacky but not quite dry, I pulled the plastic off. (There is a technique for canvas where you allow the paint to dry completely... I tried that first... and it didn't work for me on the cardstock. It stuck.) The Poppy Patch stamps were lined up on a long narrow acrylic block, and I brayered them with acrylic paint to stamp them over the panel, then brayered paint on a piece of plastic canvas and stamped that as well.

 My initial thought was to use the batik piece and the chair together, but that was a lit-tle too busy, so I decided to make two cards instead.  The sentiment above is from the Hydrangea set.

I colored the porch chair with reinkers, and sketched in and watercolored a little screened-in porch scene, like the porch we have here and the one I remember when I was little... our screened-in porch now is mostly functional (laundry and storage area) - I sure wish it had a bright corner like this!

Here's a closer look at the chair scene. The sentiment on this card is from the Magnolias set.

Leave comments for all our designers and you could WIN A FREE FLOURISHES STAMP SET!! Comments will be accepted until the end of the month, and a random comment will be chosen by one of our designers - but we're not telling which one! The more comments you leave, the better your chance of winning will be.

From here you'll be traveling on to.........

 Thanks for hopping with us today! Don't forget to leave a comment!