Under the sea...

This is a card made (rather late in the day!) for the card swap on a forum I belong to.  The theme was 'Under the Sea'.  As I received the most exquisite card from my swap partner the pressure was really on to create something worthy to send on to her.

I decided to use my Clarity mermaid stamp and bravely use my Perfect Pearls and Versemark ink pad. I say bravely as I haven't used Perfect Pearls for a while and wasn't sure if what I visualised would work or not.  

I really wanted to use blues to give 'sea' like feel and gold to add richness.  I tried a few versions - at one stage doing the bubbles in blue and green but it was impossible to get the definition of the colours so in the end I went for quite a simple look with just blue and green on the fin and everything else in gold.

I love the Cuttlebug bubble embossing folder for sea effects and used that to create the two panels.  As you can see the Marianne flower die crept in on the act.  It wasn't on the original plan for this card, but I couldn't find my shell stamps so had to use it to embellish the corner.  My daughter and resident critique says the flower works as the swirls give a sea weed/wave effect and the flower is like the kind a mermaid would wear in her hair.  Sometimes daughters are lovely - sometimes the comments are so bad a card gets demolished and a lot of rethinking takes place.

This is the card I did last time using this stamp way back in July last year.  The details are here .

As well as being for the swap my card is also for the challenges at...

• Rainbow Lady's Challenge - Ocean Shades (hmmmm I really should have read Cynthia's challenge more carefully as I completely missed the bit about using initials on the card - what about if we count the bubbles as 'o's Cynthia and then it could stand for Oh (as in 'Oh can I get away with this one?)
• Stamp Something - Celebrate - sometimes we don't need a specific reason it's good just to say 'Happy Everything'.

Well have a super day everyone.  I'm returning to Slimming World after a couple of months off - ouch how much damage have I done?  May have to call at my favourite craft outlet on the way there to cheer myself up.

Ann xxx