In college, it was nothing for me to pump out a 25-page paper by pulling just one all-nighter.

Now, I am not nearly as productive in the wee hours of the night.

You see, I waited until 2am to sit down and make something for the PTI Blog Hop! Before that I was busying myself with the mundane tasks of life, like laundry, dishes and trying to find somewhere to house the stacks of unopened stamp sets that have recently taken up residence in my entryway.

By 2am all of that was done…and that’s exactly when the real work started.

With the inspiration image below, I had to come up with something…anything so that I could play along in the Blog Hop! (I am bound and determined to be one of the randomly selected winners who gets a free stamp set! I’ve got it picked out and everything!!!)

One thing is for sure…when you’re creating at 2am, you gotta go with whatcha know. None of that fancy stuff. No time to make plantable paper!

Well, I know I love gradient color schemes, so that was my angle! I’d use the watercolor gradient effect from the photo as inspiration….but what stamps to use? It was late (or early, I guess), and I had no interest in digging for the perfect image.

Modern Basics. It’s my go-to. I can usually come up with something fun to do with it and the possibilities are endless!

Well, three botched cards later (two of which were  destroyed by smudging the cardbase with my inky fingers – I’m really good at doing that) I had something! And I’m pretty happy with it!

I made a few modern tulips with the stamp set and colored them in with watercolor markers. I even got a little brave and added some green gradient grass using the Background Basics: Retro Set along with a dragonfly from Wishing You!