Undersea Dreams

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!