Mexico Moods. . . . .

Today sees a new challenge at Our Creative Corner. We are combining our July and August challenges so you have a whole summer to create for this one!The Design Time have split into a July team and an August team so you get two doses of inspiration in the coming weeks.

Our challenge for the summer is called 'Mexico Moods' and here's what we'd like you to do:

'We want you to grab any inspiration you like from these wonderfully exotic photographs...

Go for colours, shapes, textures, objects or style - There is certainly plenty of inspiration to choose from here in this selection of glorious, vivid, colourful photographs.

Join us in the summer holiday mood....!!!'

I just love all those gorgeous colours in this image and that's what I decided to take as my inspiration. Here's what I made:

The colours from the inspiration photographs really caught my imagination. I decided to use a selection of the bright colours because they just sing together even though you may not normally think of putting them together.

I used several colours of DecoArt Media Fluid acrylics and applied them roughly to a piece of card using a brayer.

Layers are built up using stencils and stamps along with DecoArt Chalky Paints which work perfectly in this way.

Apply a thin layer of the paint to a craft sheet with a brush. Tap stamp into the paint and apply to card in a random manner. Use cut n dry foam with the stencils and paints. You must remember to clean your stamps immediately after use.

The sweet little girl is stamped onto a piece of card that I used to clean off my brayer. This 'scrap' card was stamped and stencilled in the same manner as the base of the tag. The paler colours make a good contrast to the zingy, bright colours in the background. I really like how the stencilling and stamping shows through the black archival stamped girl.

The small flowers are punched from the bright background scraps. The edges are inked and a small gem is used as the flower centre. The wings have been made using two layers and have been left unglued so they have more dimension.

The word is stamped onto a scrap and die cut into an oval. The little green studs are simply the scrap centres from a die cut which have been painted using the same shade of green from the background.

Three pieces of die cut lace are added to the bottom - again, these are cut from the bright brayered background.

A black pencil is used to 'ground' the little girl - no good to have her floating around on the tag!

The white stencilling is done with DecoArt Translucent White fluid acrylic - love how the other colours still peep through this layer from underneath.

The blue stencilling here is fluid acrylic again. The pale blue 'spots' on the left have been stamped using the DecoArt Chalky paint.

Detail shot.

Detail shot.

The stencil used is by Andy Skinner.

Hope you like how I took my inspiration from the colours in the moodboard. For further details of the challenge and the inspiration from the 'July' Design Team, pop over to Our Creative Corner.

We are lucky to have two sponsors for this challenge and they will be awarded to two lucky randomly generated winners:

As well as providing a prize for a randomly generated winner, Stampington are also very kindly offering a $2 bonus gift that can be used on e-crafting to everyone who enters the challenge'. How generous are they?!

Our second sponsor is the wonderful Tando Creative:

Looking forward to see what you create for us this summer! Thanks for dropping by.