There are a lot of pictures on this post, I know. I wish I knew of some better way to arrange them. This is a gorgeous set from CDS (two actually)by Laurie wilson one is Smooth Sailing, the other is Lost at Sea. They coordinate. I couldn't wait to get this set and play with it because it isn't so often you see one like this and I had nothing nautical in my collection. My mom is crazy about anything nautical, being that she and my stepdad are big boaters. If you remember from a previous post I made a horse card for my dad who is a horseman and into trail riding... hard to believe they were married for even 5 min, LOL! So I knew she would love this one and with mothers day coming up I made it for her. It started out as a card but, you can see I got kinda carried away in my layering of the image and it ended up being so deep I had my husband whip me up a frame from our wood scrap stash. I horde it almost like I do paper. I always hate to get rid of any because I might make something (or truthfully, have my dh make something) of it. finally I actually did. I included a collage of those pictures so you can see what I mean. Just please try to overlook my swollen dirty pegnant fingers! I like to become one with the paint! :) I never paint or use inks for that matter without getting covered in it. I don't know how some people manage to stay so clean! I also showed a pic of the map stamp alone before I (yikes!) cut a big hole out in the center of it. That kinda hurt, that stamp is so pretty on it's own but I had to do what I had to do! I switched watercolor paper the last time I ran out. Big mistake. If any of you are having trouble with your coloring or think your just not that good at it you might try changing paper. Watercoloring with my inks on this paper is terrible!!! They don't blend and they just wash away leaving spots. So until I replace my paper I'll be using my craft acrylics. I love them but they do take longer to paint with. The cliff I cut free hand because I thought the light house would be perfect perched up on them. The rocks and waves were cut free hand too.I even stamped the map onto watercolor paper so that I could get richer colors than on just cs. After I painted it with the acrylics I actually did some layering with my ink (su! markers). That is the cool thing about acrylics though, you can get a lot of depth through layering, with watercolors they just blend more and can get muddy. I water down my paints so that they blend easier and don't stick to the embossing. I also used one of the small stamps to stamp into a circle of fimo clay and distressed it to make a charm. I hope I'm not leaving out anything interesting, there were a lot of steps involved here! But I think that's it! Have a great Mother's Day everyone!