If it’s Thursday… it’s time to play tic-tac-toe! Take a peek at this weeks game board and then put your thinking cap on and see what you can come up with!

Having a challenge like we have on Thursdays with playing tic-tac-toe really brings out the “Inner Picasso” within us all. Make sure you take time to pop by the challenge to see what the other designers came up with as well!

I just think it is super fun to see how we all can look at the same game board and then have so many different interpretations of it!

For today’s challenge I took the far right… Straight down  – Persimmon, dimension and rounded corners. I wasn’t quite sure about the color of persimmon so I decided to throw in two colors… I used Calypso Coral and a little peek of Peek-A-Boo peach.

The fun thing about this card is you could make it rather modern (like I did today)…you can use a multitude of colors… and you can put many different types and styles of sentiments on your card.

In the below picture you can see how I simply placed the framelits randomly on the thick white card stock before I ran it through Mr. Big. The beauty of this card design is you can use any of the shapes in any direction and also the fact that the stamp is a photopolymer it makes it super easy to stamp.

I used versa mark Ink  – the clear water marking ink that we use for heat embossing to do a very subtle tone on tone stamping.I highly encourage you to try this type of tone on tone stamping as it truly is amazing the effect that it gives. I think sometimes we just think of this ink for actual heat  embossing but it truly does give you a wonderful effect that is very subtle.

Can you see the gold the splatters of ink that I flicked all over the card?I wish you could see it in real life as it is truly stunning… sometimes the camera just doesn’t give it justice! (Actually the whole card is hard to photograph as the Lemon Lime Twist always throws the lighting/color off a bit)

I have been asked many times how I do that… I use these metallic paints and all I do is get them nice and wet with the paint brush and then tap my index finger against the paintbrush to let splatters hit the paper. It is a great touch with little effort but the WOW is there!

Now we can chat about heating embossing…I used the sentiment from the stamp set and stamped it in Bermuda Bay against the Pool Party card stock. Right after I stamped it I added clear embossing powder over top of the Bermuda Bay Ink and heat set it.

Again, the camera doesn’t pick it up wonderfully but I will say it is very pretty in person.The color of heat embossing against the pool party is just so bright and cheerful.

It’s time to pull this party together with a beautiful envelope.You can see the colors that I pulled together to take from the card. Today I decided to adhere all of the colors together and then run it through Mr. big with the Sparkle embossing folder.

I realize making your envelopes beautiful is an additional step but I do think we all can agree that it truly pulls it all together. Trust me, once you get started giving your envelopes some love –  you will never break the habit. It not only does it make you smile you, the recipient will beam with excitement to receive such a pretty piece of mail! 😀

Below you can see that I rounded to the corners of the card.This is something that I rarely do and I am not sure why and in the end I like the effect!

I find it best to use the corner rounders that comes on the envelope punch board to give the best results. Again, a little simple step that gives you a fun look and feel.

There you go…Another card for the challenge. I do hope that you pop over to the  Tic Tac Toe website to see what everyone else came up with this week. If you would like or need help in how to upload a picture please shoot me an email and I’ll be glad to walk you through the process.

Enjoy your day and I hope you’re able to find some creativity time.We all know that is the best dose of medicine that anyone could offer to us. Yesterday I felt like you all were in my house… As I was busy organizing my craft area. I felt like I was Chevy Chase in the Christmas movie as I was finding all sorts of memories –  brought lots of joy to my heart!

All I can say is… It’s amazing what we collect!