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

First card challenge for 2017... and a little tutorial :)

Hello there :)

Just recently I was browsing around the internet and I stumbled across a really cute stamp set from Gerda Steiner Designs.  I had never heard of this particular company before so I did a little more browsing around and found two stamp sets that I just couldn't resist. 

My stamps arrived in the mail a few days ago and then yesterday I was having another look at their site and stumbled across their 'Share your Designs' challenge.  All you have to do is share your design created with a GSD stamp and you could win $15 Store Credit. So I figured I'd give it a go:

  Here's a look at my finished card for the challenge... I'm super pleased with how it turned out:

I decided to take step by step photos of the stamping and colouring process so here goes:

I started off stamping a few of the little ducks, some reeds and the water lily.  I also heat embossed all of the images as I went.

Next I masked the lily flower so that I could add a lily pad and I also stamped the underwater duck's head and a tiny fish.

Then I made a mask for the reeds so that I could add a couple more of them along with a nosy little dragonfly... super cute! 

After doing all the stamping I decided to cut out my panel with my stitched rectangle dies from Lawn Fawn.  I kind of had an idea of how I wanted my finished card to look and I knew the stitching would look cool.

Before adding my background colour I applied some masking fluid to all of the images.  I love doing this technique because it's actually super simple and always has great results.

Since my little ducks were supposed to be sitting on the edge of the pond I added some 'sand' to the card with Scattered Straw Distress Ink and a wet on wet technique.

Then I added water by colouring with Salty Ocean and Mermaid Lagoon Distress Inks.

Since the duck family were at a pond I decided to do grass up behind them as if they'd just walked through a field.  For this I used Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron Distress Ink.

While the masking was still in place I used some of my Zig clean color markers to add some extra details like some depth to the water ripples around the duck with 034 Dull Blue.

Then I added some more 'grass' with 041 Light Green.

Next came the exciting step of removing all the masking fluid... I LOVE doing this stage!

Now it was time for the really fun stuff... adding all the colour!  I went back to 041 Light Green to colour the lily pad.  I'm finding you can add lots of depth by blending with the water brush, drying it off with the heat gun and then layering on a bit more of the same colour... great effect!

I used three colours on my gorgeous wee water lily 024 Wine Red, 021 Light Carmine and 026 Light Pink.

Then it was 040 Green and 047 May Green to add the leaves to the reed plants.

The reed heads were done with 060 Brown.

Next came the gorgeous wee ducks using 050 Yellow and 052 Bright Yellow.

For the ducks beaks and feet I used 060 Brown and 061 Light Brown.  I also used these colours to colour the dragonfly's body.

The wee fish was coloured with 070 Orange.

For the wings of the dragonfly I used 083 Lilac.

One of the little ducks had his tongue showing so I coloured it with 025 Pink.

I finally had all the colouring done and I have to say that I was super pleased with how it all turned out.  The more I use my Zig markers the more I like them!  I decided to stamp one of the sentiments from the Lucky Duck stamp set onto the top of my card and heat emboss it.

Then it was time to make my card.  I layered my stamped and coloured card front with kraft cardstock and then layered that onto a plain white card base.

Here's my finished card:

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today xx

30 Days of Thankful and a few cards

Hello again :)  I've been a little slack in uploading my 30 Days of Thankful photos to the blog but I'm still working away on them.  Today I've got another four days to share with you... along with a few photos of some cards I made at a recent retreat. Remember that if you click on the images they'll be much bigger so you can read the text easily :)

Nov 6: Having a friend to go to the Woman's Expo with

 

Nov 7: Working in a great team

 

Nov 8: Having sunny weather to dry my washing

 Nov 9: Michael organising dinner

I'm still loving this little project and one night Michael asked me... "So what are you grateful for today?  Is it something to do with me?"  We've started talking more about the things we are both grateful for... and that in itself is something good.

As promised... I've got some photos to share of some cards I made at a recent retreat run by my lovely friends Sheree and Lynn... hi ladies :)

The first card I made was for my friend Esther.  She's celebrated several birthdays over the years without a birthday card from me so I decided to make her something special.  I used my MFT The Whole Herd stamp and die set to stamp out several images... super cute!

I stamped the images and then heat embossed them... great for when you do watercolours!  I then coloured in the images with Distress Inks and my water brush.  The background and hills was done with a foam sponge applicator and more Distress Inks.   The fence is yet another die called Rolling Hills and the white picket fence is super cute!

And here is what the finished card front looked like:

I'm happy to report that Esther really liked her card :)

Then I decided to do something with liquid masking.  I stamped a couple of images from MFT Magical Dragons and MFT Adorable Elephants and then I heat embossed them.  

Next I painted the liquid masking over all of the images and let them dry.

I did a cool watercolor background with Zig Kuretake Gansai Tambi paints.  I haven't done a lot with them yet but I love how smoothly they paint onto watercolour paper.

Then I painted the wee dragon and the princess with Distress Ink and a water brush.  

Lastly I added a dark green background layer along with some rhinestones and sequins.  This card was for Michael's birthday and he thought it was super cute... and he totally got that HE was the dragon and I was the princess!

Finally, I made two gorgeous little elephant cards... one for Sheree and one for Lynn.  I did the painted watercolour backgrounds again since I liked how well they turned out for the dragon card.

 

Then I removed the masking fluid and painted the adorable wee elephants with Distress Ink.

Next I stamped the sentiments and coloured the butterflies using Distress Ink.  I was a bit sneaky at this point too and showed the card fronts around to a few people including Lynn who mentioned that she liked the little elephant sitting down... so Lynn got the sitting elephant and Sheree got the standing one.

 I didn't actually take photos of the final cards but you get the idea. 

So that's it for today... I'm looking forward to getting a bit more creative in the lead up to Christmas and I actually have a fab new stamp set on the way especially for this occasion!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit xx