Lotus love and my re-discovery of libraries

If you are a regular reader, you can't have missed my rants about repeatedly getting stuck in traffic on the A14. On a good day I spend about an hour and a quarter in my car every day, but on a bad that it can be two or even three hours. And it used to frustrate the living daylights out of me. Now I have tried to be a bit more zen about it, and the thing that has really helped me with my newfound calm are audiobooks. I love reading, but it feels like these days I never have time to read a book. I guess it's more fair to say I value other things, like crafting more than sitting down to read a book. Anyhow, I borrowed a few Stephen Fry audiobooks from a friend and really got into the habit of listening to them in the car. It made is so much less annoying to be stuck, at least there was something fun to focus on. So I thought this is fun, I will just get myself audiobooks. This lasted until I got online and saw what audiobooks cost. Oh dear. I almost abandoned the idea. Until I had an epiphany. The library! So I got myself a library card. Turns out the library even has a small selection of downloadable audiobooks. So you don't even have to go to the actual library. And there are e-books as well. A completely free option for keeping myself entertained. And the best bit, I can listen to my audiobooks while crafting as well. Total win.

I had a summer job in the library for a few summers when I was a teenager. It was, to this day, my favourite job ever. I could go on and on about everything I loved about that job... The best bit was opening shipments of new books. It was so much fun to see all the new books, and register them onto the library system. The first summer I worked at the library was back in the days when they didn't even have an electronic system yet, everything was on index cards and every morning the little cards that went into the pockets at the back of the books with return dates needed to be stamped. If you are not as ancient as me, you will have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. But if you haven't done so in a long time, have a look at what you can find at your local library these days!

Wow, that was a long rant for something completely unrelated to crafting. So I shall quickly get to the main point, today's card. I loved the Lotus Love stamp set from Dee's Artsy Impressions at STAMPlorations the first time I saw it. It arrived a while ago, but I have been so busy playing with my Crazy Birds and spritzer tool that I haven't had time to play with it until today. I filled a whole scrap paper with different stamp combinations, but this was my favourite design. It's inspired by the sketch over at RetroSketches and the colour combo over at Color Throwdown. I was also inspired by two cards over in the STAMPlorations CASE playground, one from Maria F and one from Deepti. I would also link up with the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where the theme is No Designer Paper, at Happy Little Stampers CAS challenge where the theme is Colouring and last but not least over at STAMPlorations Anything Goes challenge. 

I stamped the lovely lotuses in Memento ink using some masking here and there. I coloured them in with just a few yellows and yellow-green Copics. I stamped some splotches using the Stampin' Up Gorgeous Grunge stamp set and Tim Holtz distress ink Squeezed Lemonade. Next, I die cut the "you" from black cardstock and stamped part of one of the Lotus Love sentiments. I die cut the scene using a Lawn Fawn Stitched rectangle die, attached the panel to linen textured card using foam adhesive and finished off with a few teeny tiny adhesive gems. I just adore the look of those gorgeous lotus blossoms. 

Card: Hobbycraft 160 gsm white card, 300 gsm white linen textured card
Stamps: STAMPlorations Dee's Artsy Impressions Lotus Love, Stampin' Up Gorgeous Grunge
Ink: Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Distress ink Squeezed Lemonade
Colouring: Copics Y13 Y15, Y19, YG11, YG13
Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle dies, Stampin' Up Hello You dies, adhesive gems from my stash