PaperArtsy Topic 5 : Nautical Colours

A wet bank holiday Friday is a good excuse to play in my craft room and catch up with projects I want to do.
The theme for the PaperArtsy Challenge Topic 5 is Nautical Colours and the inspiration on their blog is particularly good again. I was away last weekend so had thinking time but no craft stash with me to start work on this one but I did have several ideas. Strangely, I did not use any of those ideas. I had planned on making a tag but I have ended up with a card using my Scrapcosy sea life stamps from PaperArtsy (ESC10 and ESC12).

I started by making a Gelli print background using Adirondak dye ink : Pool, Denim and Stonewash applied with a brayer. Then I stamped one of the Scrapcosy images in red geranium archival ink and took the print. I added some water with my fingers to bleach out some of the dye ink to make bubbles which were later doodled with a white pen.

The seahorse and shell were stamped and embossed with white Wow embossing powder and painted with a little bit of gold Fresco paint. To finish it off, I used a Woodware stencil around the edges to add some gold embossing powder (metallic brass sparkle by Wow) and stamped and embossed some words. A small gem was added for the seahorse's eye.
All mounted on red and blue cardstock and a 7" by 7" white card.

Here is a close up of the seahorse :

These are such detailed stamps that I thought the embossing might lose that detail but not so, it looks quite nice in natural light as it is shiny.

Happy Easter everybody x

Mail Art

The Artful Times Challenge 55 is Mail Art. I just realised that Artful Times is sponsored by Oyster Stamps and since the Oyster Stamps people were so nice to me last weekend I thought I'd make the effort to do a challenge, haven't done one for a while (which is frustrating because I like blog challenges, they make me think).

This is my decorated envelope which I will enter for the challenge:

I started by masking a border around the envelope and masking out an oval for the address. The stamps used are Cardio Majestix Emily's Garden, a lovely set of miniature flowers, foliage and a butterfly. Starting with the larger flower I stamped the flowers with Adirondak Stonewashed dye ink, first, second and third generation stamping. Then added the smaller flower in Memento Paris Dusk. The leaves and foliage are stamped with Memento New Sprout and Olive Grove and then the masks removed.

The butterflies are added last after stamping the Daisy Post stamp which is a very old one from my stash by Stampendous, I used to use that a lot so it was nice to re-discover it for this little project. I guess I should make a matching card to go in it ..... I might just do that.

Sparkle Twinchie

My late in the day entry for the Show us your Twinchie's Challenge is a little different for me as its all about the words. I thought this stamp from Kaisercraft would fit the theme as it is an "anything goes" challenge with bling.

The background is Old Paper and Tumbled Glass Distress Stains, my current favourite pair for a nice translucent base.

The stamp is from a Kaisercraft set called Confidence. The words are stamped using Adirondack Earthtones dye ink in Bottle, Denim and Red Pepper and embossed with Ranger holographic embossing powder. A quick spritz of Sheer Shimmmer (frost) and the twinchie is done.

Its a bit more sparkly than the photo in real life and I think it has a sort of graffiti look to it, at least that was the idea.