Paper Pieced Mermaid

The new challenge at Crafty Girls begins today.  The theme for this challenge is “paper piecing” and our sponsors are MilkCoffee and Sassy Design Studios.

I chose Little Mermaid by MilkCoffee for my DT card.  I paper pieced the mermaid’s tail and the starfish, and coloured the mermaid and sky in using ProMarkers.

Aside from the paper pieced areas, I hadn’t really thought about the rest of the image in much detail, which led to a “head-in-hands” moment earlier when I couldn’t figure how to create waves or depth in the sea…. After a cup of coffee, things became much clearer and I picked up where I’d left off!  I had printed a spare copy of the image, so I cut along the tops of the waves and laid the spare mermaid and sky part to protect the partly coloured image while I applied Distress Inks to the bottom half of the image.  The coffee must have kicked in around then, as I suddenly thought about moving the mask down a little and added a little more Distress Ink, to make a darker more intense colour.  I carried on a couple more times, using a mix of Tumbled Glass and Peacock Feathers for the bottom two waves to deeper the colour even more.  When I took the protective cover off, I was delighted to see the final effect – the mermaid was surrounded by a beautifully coloured sea!

I framed the image with some shimmery turquoise cardstock and based the rest of the layout around the current sketch over at From The Heart Stamps:

The papers are from the American Crafts Hip Hip Hooray paper stack.  The final touches were the yellow and white twine, threaded through a starfish bead that is from my stash and a liberal sprinkling of Crystal Stickles to make my little mermaid sparkle!!

Make sure you pop over to have a look at the projects created by my Crafty Girls team-mates!  I look forward to seeing your paper pieced projects soon too.

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

From The Heart Sketches: Sketch 54 (see above)

Little Miss Muffet Stamps – Birthday (balloons or birthday sentiment)

Milk Coffee – Girly

Seize The Birthday – Anything Goes

Fab n Funky  – Spots and Stripes

Craft Your Passion – Girly Girl

Cutie Pie Challenge – Cute + Spots/Dots

Catered Crop – Birthdays

Thanks for reading x

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Mesmerising…..

I have my card for the new Crafting From The Heart challenge to share with you today.  As always, you can choose to play Anything Goes or to use our theme, which is “Flowers” this fortnight.  (Little confession…I forgot about the theme!  I got carried away!) We are very lucky to be sponsored by Aurora Wings and MelJens Designs – I chose to use the beautiful Princess of the Sea for my card, as I fell totally under her spell, and couldn’t look away!

I have to be honest, as beautiful as I find these images, I wasn’t rushing to work with one.  They are so intricately designed, that I couldn’t myself sitting still long enough to focus on colouring one, let alone presenting it in a style that suited it!  I thought these captivating images were about as far away from my comfort zone as possible!!  So, in the spirit of trying new things this year, I set myself the challenge!  And here she is, all coloured and simply presented…

I used ProMarkers to colour the image.  Unfortunately, it took three attempts, due to a very juicy marker leaking all over the almost completed image twice (you’d think I’d have learnt after the first accident…!).  My original attempts both had blonde hair, but I’m glad I swapped to brown for the final version as it makes the shells easier to distinguish.  Once coloured, I added Glossy Accents to some of the larger water bubbles and Star Dust Stickles to some of the shells, smaller bubbles and the Princess’s eyelids.

I cut the frame on the Silhouette using a pearlescent pale gold card, and popped the image behind.  I added a bow, with two little starfish (that have been hiding in my stash for at least 5 years!) sewn to the centre.

Make sure you head over to Crafting From The Heart to add your creations to the challenge!

I’d like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Scribble and Scrap – Anything Goes

Craft-Dee Bowz – Anything Goes

Stamping Sensations – Fantasy (mermaid)

Fairy Tale Challenge – Frame cards

Thanks for reading x