BBTB2 Life's a Beach Lizard Cut

This is my second post of the day, so if you're looking for Macabre Monday, please scroll down. I'm trying hard to get back in the swing of things, but I had to get up at 3:00 am to do it. Just couldn't make this one all come together yesterday. For this week's BBTB2 challenge our dear DT sister Lori has chosen the lizard from Life's a Beach. I knew I wanted a sun (also from Life's a Beach) but the sentiment took awhile. I finally decided that "Bask in it" would be a good sentiment for a variety of occasions like birthday or some sort of congratulatory thing (the inside will some day read "It's Your Day!") and also thought it would be good for a guy, so I resisted the urge to put blingy toenails on the lizard. :D He's embossed with the Mesh Texture Cuttlebug folder (reversed) and inked with Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint. Okay so he does have long lashes on those lidded peepers (and yikes the eyeballs sort of rolled back in this pic, enjoying the sun, I guess) but I do know a few guys who were blessed with bedroom eyes. (Are you reading this? LOL)

With all of that texture goin' on on the lizard, the sun looked pretty plain so I took the wavy embossing folder from the Cuttlebug Just My Type border set and embossed each ray. To do that, I positioned the border as shown and used my A plate, Spellbinder's tan mat, B plate, folder with sun inside and 1/8th inch plumber's gasket cut to the size of the border folder and ran each ray through the Cuttlebug individually. There was a little smooshing of the texture where they met, but I was covering that up anyway. The center of the sun is embossed with Swiss Dots.

I really wanted to make one of my shaped front cards here but the design was really too open for that so I created the base by welding two rounded rectangles from George and cutting 2 smaller mats as well. No shadows on Life's a Beach, either so I welded the entire front mess together and cut additional sun and lizard layers to do my offsetting trick. The font is from Don Juan which actually DOES have a shadow but it's so close to the regular cut that I cut extra of those as well. (Oh yea! There are his little eyeballs.)

That cool "sand" paper is from an old DCWV Summer Glitter Stack. I will be heartbroken when I use that up! As you can see, there's quite a bit of dimension here. Glad I started making my own pop dots using fun foam and double stick tape. And no, that isn't lizard poop, I just need something to balance the design, Marlene. Obviously getting up that early didn't leave me at a loss for words,but one last thing. be sure to stop by BBTB2 to see the fabulous creations from the rest of the DT and we sure love it when you play along.