Mermaid cards

Hello :)

I've been having some fun in my art studio designing mermaid cards.  It all started when I found a stamp I'd had in my stash for YEARS.  Within minutes of finding the stamp ideas started flowing and I just had to go with it and here are the results.

I started out with this stamp from Sugar Plum Stamps.

I didn't take all the step by step photos I usually do because the design was buzzing around in my head but I think I got most of the steps.  I decided to do a set of four cards so I stamped all the mermaids with black ink and then heat embossed them.

I knew I wanted to do a watercoloured background so I painted over my stamped image with masking fluid and then I left it alone to dry.

When the masking fluid was dry I started on the water.  I used the wet-on-wet technique to paint in the water using Salty Ocean and Mermaid Lagoon (how appropriate!) Distress Inks.  I also did an extra piece of watercoloured card using the same technique... trust me, it will make sense later on!

Then it was time to add some colour to the sky.  I die cut some masks using Lawn Fawn Puffy Cloud Borders from regular card and then I used Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and a round blender to create a sky background.  It's the first time I've used this technique and I really like the effect.

Meanwhile... it had started to rain and Toby and Nivea wanted to hang out with me, so I brought their beds down to the art studio.  Then Nivea decided that running around in the rain like a loon was right up her alley!  Even though Toby had access to his big bed he decided to squeeze himself into Nivea's bed and then look at me as if to say... this bed isn't big enough for me... silly boy!  I couldn't resist getting a photo of him!

 

Right, back to the cards. The next step was to unmask the mermaid... I never get tired of seeing the design being uncovered!

I had an idea for making waves out of velum using my Mama Elephant Ocean Waves Trio dies.  The only problem was I couldn't find my velum anywhere!  It turns out that it's not so easy to get anymore.  Spotlight didn't have any... neither did the emporium art supply stores... neither did Warehouse Stationery.  In the end I bought some translucent tracing paper.

I got my dies out and cut the waves from the tracing paper.  Then I cut the tops of the waves from white cardstock using the same dies and stuck them to the inside of the waves and I love how it came together.

Once I had the wave idea sorted it was onto the colouring.  I used my Zig clean colour markers to colour in the images along with my waterbrush to smooth out the colours.  I got inventive with the colouring and did each mermaid in different colours and with super bright hair.  Here's a few images to give you some ideas of what I was working on.

At this point I got so carried away with the colouring and making the waves that I actually didn't take any photos!  I did manage to get photos of the gorgeous sequins and things that arrived in the post the other day which I now have in little glass jars... LOVE LOVE LOVE!  I used some of these delightful little goodies to add a splash of magic to my cards.

Here they are waiting for the sequins to dry overnight.  Have you spotted the blue wave in the front?... that was made using the extra piece of watercolour background from the start of this post.

This morning I took my cards outside to get good photos of them...

I have to admit that the mermaid with pink hair is my personal favourite!  Do you have a preference?

Here they are all together:

Thanks so much for dropping by my blog today xx

New stamps mean new cards!

Hi :)  A couple of days ago a new order arrived for me from Simon Says Stamp and one of the goodies in my parcel was a new stamp set from Mama Elephant.  This one is called Organic Blooms:

I really like that the flowers fill up most of the card and there's lots of sentiments to choose from which makes it a very versatile set.

I decided to start off by stamping the flowers with Versamark and then heat embossing the image.  I did one using white embossing powder and one with Ranger's Queen Gold powder. 

 

I decided to watercolour the stamped images with Distress Ink because I wanted them to be lovely and soft.  For the white embossed image I used Rusty Hinge, Dried Marigold, Bundled Sage and Forest Moss Distress Ink along with my water brush.

When I was happy with my colouring I added some Evergreen Bough Distress Ink around the image to give a bit of depth.  The sun is pouring through my art room windows which makes it lovely and warm but not the best for taking photos.

Next I took the Queens Gold embossed image and coloured it using Victorian Velvet, Aged Mahogany, Bundled Sage and Forest Moss Distress Ink.

The two images feel quite different... the Rusty Hinge/Dried Marigold card feels light and fresh while the Victorian Velvet/Aged Mahogany card feels quite vintagey... I'm not sure if it's the colours or the embossing powder... probably a combination of the two. 

Once I had all the colouring done I left them to air dry and I chose a couple of sentiments which I stamped with black ink onto some watercolour paper off-cuts.  Then I trimmed them up and added them to the card fronts along with some tiny rhinestones.

Here's how the cards turned out (if you click on the photos you'll be able to see the detail much clearer):

And here they are again:

It's been a very productive morning in my art room... I've got a horrible head cold which kept me home from work yesterday but the sun shining in through the windows this morning is fabulous!

Thanks for visiting xx