Rain or Shine

This is a perfect card for today's weather here. It's been gray all day, threatening to rain since early morning. The rain finally arrived this afternoon and hasn't stopped since. I made this card for the My Favorite Things Stamps guest designer challenge. The challenge was to use background stamps in ways other than for a background. I may not have come up with the most creative of ways, but I like the way this turneout anyway.

I used the Rain or Shine stamp set in combination with a background stamp image from You Take the Cake. I started with the girl and umbrella image and colored it with Copic markers. I used a sponge to add a soft blue sky and some muddy brown ground. The rain clouds were stamped on the panel in blue ink, too.

It's hard to see all of the details I added to the image because of the acetate overlay I created. I stamped the raindrop background image in Staz-on ink on the overlay to make it look like you were looking through a window on a rainy day.

The coat is paper pieced and is one of the places I used a background stamp/image. I stamped the coat image twice and on one of the images, I stamped the circles image from You Take the Cake. I colored just the coat on this version of the image, then cut it out to attach to the image panel. Adding the circles to the coat made it match the boots perfectly. I traced around the edges of the circles with a Stardust glitter pen. I also covered the puddle with some Crystal Effects to make it look glossy and wet.

I cut out a frame and attached it to the image with dimensionals. I stamped the sentiment along the edges of the frame and added a tiny self-adhesive half pearl to each corner of the frame. These were a great find in the dollar spot at one of the Target stores near my house.

Materials Used:
Rain or Shine and You Take the Cake stamp sets (My Favorite Things Stamps); Graphite Black ink (Brilliance); Azure ink (Staz-on); white cardstock (Georgia Pacific); markers (Copic Ciao); ribbon (American Crafts); self-adhesive flat back pearls (Target); Stardust pen (Sakura); Cool Caribbean, Taken with Teal, and Creamy Caramel Classic inks, Taken with Teal, Pretty in Pink, and Regal Rose cardstock, Loves Me designer paper, corner rounder, sponges, Crystal Effects, dimensionals (Stampin' Up!)