'I do like to be beside the seaside'

I love love love the seaside, I would say who doesn't but I do actually know a couple of people who don't! I spent many a happy summer as a child running around the beaches of Cornwall, body boarding, rock pooling, building sand castles, I loved it all and I still do, though living in Norfolk makes it a bit of a trek to get to Cornwall, there are some nice beaches here but it definitely isn't the same (as I actually discussed with our neighbour yesterday who had just got back from Cornwall). Anyway, I digress, when I came across the most recent challenge on the 'Less is More' challenge blog (HERE) many ideas popped into my head, should I use sea shells that I had collected? Should I gather sand from the beach and use it on my card? Should I use the sea glass that we found by the handful on a recent trip to St Andrews? I don't know why I decided against all of these ideas,  perhaps because I remembered the gorgeous new shell stamps that my mum had just bought me from Oakhouse Studio. So this is how my card progressed and ended:

The card prior to any embellishment

When I make cards I do not usually create the card and then add embellishments, I build it up ( starting with a background and embellishments, before mounting on backing paper, if I am using matting and layering and attaching to the card) for some reason today I did everything in reverse! I immediately wanted to use these colours, they were sitting on my desk crying out to be used. This blended background was produced by blending (explained in previous posts, but if you want me to explain again just ask) three lovely colours by Stampin' Up (Coastal Cabana, So Saffron and Baked Brown Sugar) which I got at a retreat I went to in May (this will be blogged at some point in the future, it was fantastic and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone, no mobile phone signal and no internet for 3 days = challenging but bliss!). It took me a while to decide on a colour to mount the background on before attaching it to my card, I must have tried at least ten different colours/shades before remembering that I actually had the matching Baked Brown Sugar card stock to the ink 

As an aside I really like the Stampin' Up Ink Pads (and indeed the spot ink pads too), they have a great mechanism and you can also, by pressing down firmly on the top, splodge ink on to the cover to use for 'painting', and they are available in a extensive range of gorgeous colours (with co-ordinating papers, ribbons and embellishments available). I would give them 4* (out of 5), simply because sometimes I struggle to close them.

Shells, stamped in the same colours as the background, ready to be cut out

This gorgeous shell design comes in a set of 4 stamps from Oakhouse Studio. I love them all but this one was the perfect size for today's project. I stamped the shell multiple times in each colour and then cut them out so that I could play with placement and work out which colour way looked best. The texture produced by stamping on linen card is stunning though it is much harder to achieve a crisp image.

I spent much time arranging and rearranging the shells and I am still not entirely confident of the result. Below are two options for my final card, which do you think looks best? I'd like everyone reading on this to cast their vote as I want to sell the card at some point :)

The slightly more CAS version

With a shell fragment attached 

The inside of the card (excuse my rather raw looking hands and the poor photograph)

The message inside the card reads 'Happy Birthday to You' x 4! I actually used the Baked Brown Sugar card stock to cover up some rather smudged stamping (it's not a good idea to stamp when you're stressed out by a million and one things that are going on around you), how do you deal with mistakes? Do you try to cover them up? Do you treat them as happy accidents? Or do you throw your work in the bin (rather like #bingate on the GBBO)?

I am entering this card into Less is More - Week 187 - I do like to be beside the seaside

- Rebecca