Whimsy Stamps ~ You're Fintastic

Hey crafty pals, I'm back today with another super cute creation for Whimsy Stamps. Man, every release, I'm adding more and more to my wishlist, these guys are the Queens of crafty innovation! The last release is full of beautiful Bohemian vibes, right up my alley, so I know I'm going to be broke this month! But, today, I'm here to share with you an enchanting recent stamp set combined with a lovely older Whimsy Stamp set. I love combining my new stash with older stash. I try to always buy classic sets that will last the test of time and I know I will use again and again and there's something about Crissy Armstrong's imagery that just gets me every time! I find her sweet characters utterly enchanting and this mermaid set is the super cutest! 

I used a fabulous die set to cut the layers of my design. I ink blended the three panels with some 'new to me' paper, because I wanted to check out what all the hype was about! So I managed to get hold of some Bristol Smooth paper at a local craft store and oh my goodness, the cynic in me was expecting an average result, but honestly, for ink blending that paper truly is amazing! So if you've not tried it and can get your hands on some, do! It is genuinely worth it. Right, that said, after ink blending my 3 panels in 3 different shades of Distress Oxide Ink and splattering them all with water and a couple of different splatter mediums (I'll list everything in the thumbnails below), I diecut two of the panels with differing sizes of die from the Wavy Nested Frames Die Set. I layered them so that the layer underneath the top one, sat at a different angle than they actually come nested. I think this adds a bit of interest and looks a little more organic. 

The base layer ink was Uncharted Mariner Distress Oxide, the middle layer was Broken China Distress Oxide and the top layer I inked with Tumbled Glass Distress Oxide. I love the way the new ink colour Uncharted Mariner can work with either green or blue inks so well. I did a previous ink blend with Uncharted Mariner, but using a green toned combination and I think they both came out lovely. You can see that creation here. 

I used a gorgeous sequin mix to finish this sweet design. I used a lovely confetti mix from This Calls For Confetti called Mermazing, but added in some extra sequins from Glazed Confetti which is a lovely aqua toned blue which worked well with the teal coloured shell confetti in the mix. I did pull out some of the sequins from the Mermazing mix that weren't a perfect match for the vision I had for the card, which I'll save and use on another project. The gorgeous pearls, didn't fit the shaker depth I'd created, they were too chunky, so although I'd love to have included those, I needed to pick those out and set them aside. I decided not to include the pink flowers and hearts from the set either, preferring to keep it a more blue muted palette. There's a little shot of pink from the confetti pieces, but I didn't want the pink taking over.

I'm not sure it's overly obvious, but the acetate layer is on top of the second diecut layer, not under the top layer, so there's a bit of playful gap between the depths. I added two of the sweet tiny sea creatures from the set into the confetti mix as confetti elements and two of the little sea-stars also, so they move and shake around freely. But I added two on top of the acetate layer in fixed positions, so there are always some little creatures 'the right way up'.

I'm often asked the copic combos I use on images and honestly, I'm a wing it kinda gal, just grabbing markers as I go, but I really loved these combos, so remembered to snap a pic as I went. I adore this sweet mermaid in green and had such fun creating the scales on the tail. A total experiment and I love how it turned out! I just snapped the mix of colours I used for each element. I gold embossed the lovely fish from the Fancy Fish Clear Stamp Set then Copic coloured after embossing. I love the touch of gold on those. They worked well with the gold embossed sentiment and splatters I used. One of my sweet nieces had been poorly with a tummy bug recently, so I made this card to cheer her up.

Thanks for visiting my blog today, I wish you a lovely week and will see you again soon with a new crafty adventure, so watch this space, I'm very excited and cannot wait to share! Hugs until then and happy crafting xoxo

 

(Understanding Affiliate Links: I use affiliate links where possible, to allow the companies I design for to track the effectiveness of my contributions. I receive a small commission, which costs you no extra, but helps these companies see where their marketing efforts are most effective from their DT and for me helps towards the higher cost of postage to New Zealand. I only design for companies whose products I love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own. If you're new to Whimsy Stamps, please feel free to use the discount code in my sidebar.)