Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge

Hooray, I finally got to play along with one of Beate's sketch challenges! I wanted to do the last couple, but it just didn't work out. But tonight I can't seem to sleep - I tried going to bed & just laid there, which I hate - so I got up and decided to stamp! Ok actually I got up to read, but my stamps called me. :-) So... does anyone recognize this stamp???? It's from an old SU mini catalog cutie called Gifts from the Orient. I have spent some time traveling to Malaysia, Singapore and China (on business, but I did my best to turn it into pleasure as well!!), so when I saw this (I think it was ~2002) I just *had to* have it. Well guess what... tonight was the first time I've ever inked it up!! How crazy is that? I've done several stamp purges since 2002, but this is one I just could never part with. So it was fun to *finally* use it!! This card is a folded 4 1/4 x 8 1/2 piece of Cool Caribbean cardstock. Beate's been saying she just can't resist this size - I didn't realize just how small her cards have been lately. It's super sweet & small! And Beate's sketch was great - simple yet adorable. I cheated a little, I was supposed to put a sentiment in the bottom right and I put that charm instead (another thing I have several of for my China scrapbook, which I *am* going to put together *someday*!). After stamping the image on watercolor paper with black StazOn, I squished my ink pads & used the lid ink to watercolor the image with my aquapainter. I just love watercoloring, it's another one of my favorite things! Whether it's my ink pads, reinkers, watercolor crayons, or prismas & gamsol - I love it all! (Debbie made me realize in one of her posts that it's no coincidence that some of my favorite toys growing up were coloring books and my box of 64 glorious Crayolas with the sharpener in the back!) Even though solid stamps are so much quicker & easier to use - I am just drawn to images I can color in! I colored the flowers on the girl's kimono with markers, then added a tiny touch of gold Stickles to the centers and also her sash. I could not get her hair to stamp evenly, I don't know why - so I just went over it with black marker, and then my clear glaze pen to give it some shine. I used white gel pen on both of their trim, and added little dots to the boy's kimono print. I also used the clear glaze on their cuffs (not that any of these details are really visible in the photo!). The papers are Cool Caribbean, Bazzill Bahama (the teal color), Basic Black and the patterned paper is from a little DCWV Far East slab I recently acquired on sale at JoAnn's. The "love" sentiment is from Amazing to Zany, and the ribbon is from Michael's. さようなら <---That is allegedly "goodbye" in Japanese, I translated it! :-)