How to create a card you saw on Pinterest

This was one of the favorite cards we made in class and I have to say it was fun to create it. I did see something similar on Pinterest, but tweaked it a bit. Pinterest is a great source for getting ideas and I always stroll through there and see what other creative people have done. This been said, I naturally not have the exact same products but that's not necessary in many cases. So what should you do if you see something you like, but don't have the exact same products on hand?
Well, take the idea and keep it in your head. Don't copy the picture and place it next to you, just memorize it. Now turn to your stack and see what would work for your project. What do I mean by this?

Let's see how I went along with my card shall we?
I did see a card like this, but what I kept in my mind was sea-gal, on a post, on a boardwalk with a life-ring hanging of the post. 

I started with my background. The original card I saw I think had some sandy background. Not having and sand like paper I thought water would be great to and a nice sky. So I checked my paper stack and found a couple of sheets with an ombre shading on one side. Well it went from dark pink to orange-yellow, but cut down, part of it would work. Next I looked for some blue cadstock to go along with it. For the post and boardwalk I found some woodgrain paper that was just perfect for the card. One side with smaller boards printed on and the other with some wider boards....card background done!
For the life-ring I used two circle punches of 2" and 1" and cut one out of the other trying to hit the middle :-)
For the sea-gal I happened to have a bird punch which punches out the bird body and the wing. I also found a stamp set in my stack that included these cute clouds.

I needed enough pieces of the ombre paper to last for my entire class and since I only had three sheets of 12" x 12" of this kind in my stack I had to play around a bit. I ended up cutting the paper at 4" x 3 1/2" (4" being the wide part) since I could only use about half of the sheet (due to the pink color) So my pieces all had an ombre effect one stack was orange to yellow while the other one seen here is orange-red to pinkish.
The blue cardstock is cut at 4" x 2 1/2" and teared it along the 4" side to create the waves of the water (works great with our Close to My Heart cardstock since it has a white core).
The woodgrain paper with the smaller boards was cut at 4" x 1/2" and the rest of the paper was used on the bigger board side to cut the posts at 1" x 2 3/4" with the top cut at an angle to leave one side about 2" long.
Further I cut two strips of black cardstock measuring 1/4" x 5 1/2".

For the bird, I used our "Whisper" grey ink and a sponge to edge around the bird, using a bit more ink on the bottom of the bird. I did the same with the wing. I also used the same ink to stamp clouds on the sunset paper and on the inside of the card. 
For the life-ring I drew pencil marks were I wanted to show the red strips. Ones happy with the placing and width of them I started coloring the middle part in red. I added some darker red on the inside of the strips and blended it out with the red I used first. (I used alcohol markers for this blending technique). I then added with a black pen the outline on the strips just over my pencil marks. I also used a sponge and some grey ink to edge the out and inside of the circles.

To put this card together I started with the two black strips which I adhered flush to the left and right side of my card front. Next I stamped the "Birthday Wishes" phrase with black ink on the sunset paper before I adhered it flush to the top and in the center of the black strips. The blue cardstock is adhered flush with the bottom of the card and lined up with the sunset paper on each side. The boardwalk piece is added to the bottom. The post was placed with foam dots on top of the boardwalk just a bit off the bottom of the card. The bird body is glued directly on the sunset paper and the little wing was raised with a foam dot. The missing legs, the eye and the beak were added with a black pen. A piece of string was wrapped around the life-ring before this one was added with foam dots on the post. 
For the inside I simply added a "Happy Birthday" and some doodling. 

So what do you think about this card? Can you find things in your stack to create something similar? Go, give it a try and let me know what you came up with :-) Please comment below and share your experience or how you encounter challenges like this were you see a card, but don't have the products to make it ....