Hi everyone! Guess what?? Today is my birthday and I wanted to share my post over at
Altered Pages Artsociates today. It's a card that I've been working on for quite some time. Last summer I started this project by taking a beautiful mermaid image from the
Mailbox Muse collage sheet and blending it into a larger background with distress paints and a background stamp.
When that was done, I thought, "Now what?" I didn't have an answer so I put it into the box on my desk for art-in-progress. I take it out every once in a while and try different things, but now I've finally finished it.
I had the perfect stamp to finish this all along and it came in the same kit as the image! The Mermaid Fantasy Mailbox Muse kit has a great set of stamps including an one of seaweed. I masked off a border at the bottom and stamped a row of seaweed in permanent black
ink. I stamped the seaweed again on the envelope along with the adorable seashell from the same stamp set.
I wanted the seaweed to stay in the foreground so I opted for paint instead of markers because it was stamped over paint and metallic ink circles. I used flat, metallic and
Art Anthology dimensional paint for the fronds. I roughly followed the rubber stamp with a detailed brush.
I love using
German Scrap on my cards. There are many designs and it is a great way to add a little dimension and a little shine without overwhelming the artwork. On this card I chose a border piece from one of my favorite designs in my collection. The bottom border helps blend the card and the painted seaweed. I added an identical border at the top for balance. Then I trimmed a few tiny flowers off another piece of German Scrap. A few were glued right to the card and a few were attached with bits of
foam tape.
I added words from two different stamp sets. The mermaids came with 'UNDERSEA FANTASY" and Altered Pages also has a
Dragonfly Dreams stamp set with a lovely script "dreams" so I combined the two and came up with "UNDERSEA dreams", which is stamped in
gold ink.
I colored the envelope with permanent markers so that if it has to be delivered on a rainy day, it won't bleed or wash off. There are a few other pictures over at the
Altered Pages blog if you want to see the steps along the way. I hope you'll pop over there anyway and check out the other projects this month using Kunze German Scrap. I just know you'll enjoy them.
Now it's ready to be sent off into the world. I love making cards and sharing fun mail. Thanks for stopping by. Until next time...Happy Crafting!
