Cleaning day!

This morning I uttered the most dreaded words known to husband: we need to clean the bathroom. Oy! I'm sure his heart sank into his toes! :D So, yes, we did clean. Both bathrooms and the horrible pit of despair that is the laundry room. Now it (practically) sparkles!
Of course that meant that I couldn't be crafty today. I would much prefer stamping to cleaning - but I sure do love the feeling of having a clean(er) house. Perhaps I got into the cleaning groove because of this card? As I've said before, I have some hispanic roots, and let me tell you - my abuela could have put Mr. Clean to shame!
This certainly reminds me of the style of colors you often find in Mexico. Lots of bright blue with touches of orange & pink. While I don't often create with this color palette I find it almost soothing in a way. Not that you're likely to see me *wearing* this combo! :D
The base card was stamped with a circle stamp from Recollections using Brilliance gold ink. The two background pieces are from Basic Grey and the main image is from Inkadinkado. Both pieces from BG were roughed up around the edges and then inked. The brown piece was inked with blue and the white with green (both colors were used on the flower as well).
The flower was stamped on regular white cardstock with VersaColor ink (in Pinecone?) then colored using Distress Inks and a water brush. Once it was dry I trimmed it out and added some glossy accents to the underside to give dimension. (I added GA to the tips of the petals, the stem & at the base of the leaves. The best part of doing this is that you can vary the height of the GA while you apply it. Once dry you get a more natural, gradual dimension which I find works well with things like flowers. Also, it's almost impossible to tear the finer pieces once the glue is dry! After it dries, just add a little bit more GA, position it on your paper and let it dry a second time - it should only take a minute or two.)
I really felt that this needed a little more sparkle (shocking, right?) so I went over all of the brown ink with my clear Spica pen. I loved the effect so much that I had to take a close up picture! If you look closely at the brown parts of the image you can see what looks like little flecks of white -that's not dust! It's a little more pronounced than glimmer mist, but not as 'in your face' as a glitter pen. I really like this in between sparkle.
Finally I finished off with the sentiment in Brilliance gold and some brown dew drops to ground the background panel.
Although this isn't my usual style, I love how it came together in the end. And, to be honest, it makes me feel a teensy, tiny bit like home.
Hope you like it too....
Thanks for stopping by!