I is for Ink Blending

Hello friends and happy August! Hope you’ve been having a good start to your month so far. I thought it was supposed to be the “lazy days of Summer”, but it sure isn’t feeling that way lately! LOL Now it seems like we’re getting ready for “back to school” time! Where is this year going?!

Just wanted to share a new challenge up today over at the Alphabet Challenge Blog! Our next letter is “I” and the hostess has chosen “I is for Ink Blending” *Please remember that this is a bi-weekly challenge, so you have two weeks to enter.* I hope you’ll join in the fun with us. Here’s the project I’ve made for this challenge:

I sure love to do some ink blending! I love doing the dark to light with a watermark effect especially for ocean scenes. So I started with a regular blend of blue ink colors starting light at the top and then working my way down to darker blues. I think the colors used were Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean, Blueprint Sketch and Blue Saphire Distress Oxide inks. I then added the “Ray of Light” stencil (MFT store closed) over and ink blended with the same colors. It was then spritzed with water and dabbed with paper towel for the bubbly look.

BEFORE I started any ink blending at all, I had an “Under the Sea” border die cut (MFT store closed) that I used to create a mask with labeling tape so that I could leave the border at the bottom for sand. After the ink blending was finished, I ink blended some Antique Linen and Frayed Burlap Oxide inks to create the sand. I didn’t worry about it getting into the blue area because the colors are much lighter in tone. After ink blending was done, I cut the panel out with a “Wavy Pierced Rectangle dies” From Whimsy Stamps.

For the rest of the scene, I pulled out these cute ocean critters from Doodlebug called “Sea Life” (purchased from Scrapbook.com) that I stamped, colored with Copics and then fussy cut. Even though I had the coordinating dies (no longer available), I didn’t want the white border to distract from the ocean scene. It did come with an extra “seaweed” die in the set that I just cut out in white cardstock and then ink blended some green colors over it to add to the scene. I also used a white gel pen for highlights and dots in the sand along with a brown marker and glitter gel pen for more details to the sand.

Here’s a closer view of some of the details. I tried tilting it slightly, but it’s hard to capture the sparkle from the sand with the glitter gel pen.

I know this looks really similar to my last post with the mermaid AJ page, but I think I was having some fun with these underwater projects, and I just sat and had a playing session with it. I do hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and will join us in the challenge for some ink blending fun too!

Thanks so much for dropping by today! Have a great weekend!

Challenges:

Four Season – Anything Goes Summer
Critter Crazy – #101 Anything Goes with Featured Critter
Pearly Sparkles – #110 Under the Sea
Sweet Stampin’ – Use a Stencil + stamping
Try it On Tuesday – Summer
Cardz for Galz – #256 Create a Scene
Crafty Animals – #97 Anything Goes with Animal(s)
Allsorts – #829 Animals/Anything Goes (various products mentioned and linked throughout the post)

July AJ Page-Always Make Waves

Hello friends! I hope that you’re staying cool and having a great weekend so far! This is another pre-scheduled post from me again as I’m away for now. So glad you’re here!

Today starts another monthly AJ page with my crafty friend Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) who is collaborating with me to “SMASH OUR STASH”! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” JULY prompt of “ACROSS THE OCEAN”:

At one point I was going through my extremely large stash of card kits and realized how crazy it was that I had SO many mermaid/under the sea type of card kits/stamps, papers, etc. So I didn’t have any problem finding something from my stash for this prompt!

For the Background: I started with my usual size of 8.5″x5.5″ with Bristol Smooth cardstock this time. I wanted to do some ink blending with a large 6″x9″ layered stencil that I got from Trinity Stamps. I’ve used several different ink colors to create the underwater scene with the stencils. I had lots of fun with it. I then used some of the masks in the set and spritzed some water over it for the bubble effects in the “water”. The “light beams” came with the stencil set and I just used white ink for that layer.

I thought since I was using water, that I would watercolor the images from an older mermaid card kit that I had from Brutus Monroe. I die cut those along with the turtle and bubbles. The sentiment came with this set too and I thought it was a wonderful saying, so I white heat embossed it on the page.

I also had an “Under the Sea” die set from My Favorite Things (store closed) that I cut a few pieces from to add to the scene at the bottom. I took a gel pen and markers to add details to some of the ocean floor botanicals/rocks and then a glitter brush pen on the mermaids and glitter glue over the bubbles above the turtle to finish it off.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my Art Journal Page today! Thanks so much for dropping by and spending some time with me! I’ll be back later next week to see what you’re all up to! See you soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Botanicals (Hope seaweed counts!)

“U” is for Underwater

Hello friends! It’s already closer to the end of our first month for 2025 and I hope you’re staying warm and/or cozy where you are!

Today I’m excited to share that I’ve joined the Alphabet Challenge design team! I’ve been playing along with the challenges for a few years, so this will be a fun one! Please be sure to check out the challenge blog to see how to play as we go through the alphabet letters every-other week (fortnight) for each new challenge.

For this challenge, we are at the letter “U” for Underwater and here’s what I’ve come up with:

Now how cute are these smiling underwater critters?! It was hard to believe that going through my stash that I didn’t have much of any underwater critters besides mermaids, but last year I saw this adorable Doodlebug Sea Life stamp set on sale and decided to add it to my collection. This is the first time I’ve used it.

For the background: I’ve taken my Distress Oxide inks and ink blended the colors Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon and Blueprint sketch over some Bristol Smooth watercolor paper. I sprayed it with water and blotted it up with a paper towel. I used a stitched wave die cut border at the top and another wavy landscape border die for the sand at the bottom with kraft cardstock. I’ve used markers and gel pens to create “dots” for the sand and then attached it to the ink blended panel. Once I had it all attached, I cut out the entire panel with a stitched rectangle die and then attached it to an A2 sized top folding kraft card base.

I stamped several of the images and colored them with Copic markers and die cut them out with each coordinating die. The “seaweed” was part of the coordinating die set that I inked over in green Oxide inks and then attached all of the images to the underwater scene.

Lastly, I white heat embossed a sentiment from the stamp set (it says: “with oceans & oceans of love”) in the top corner of the card base and stamped some blue solid hearts from the set for “bubbles”. I couldn’t resist adding some googly eyes to the crab too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and hop on over to the challenge blog to play along with us! I look forward to seeing your underwater creations in the gallery!

Thanks so much for dropping in and I’ll see you tomorrow for my monthly Art Journal Page!

Challenges:

Allsorts – Close to Nature/Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – PIP2503 Anything Goes
Little Red Wagon – #791 Can You Feel the Love Tonight (love theme)
Critter Crazy – #94 Anything Goes with Featured Creature
Crafty Animals – #90 Anything Goes with Animal(s)

Slimline Waving Hello🧜‍♀️

Hello there friends! Hope you’re having a wonderful week! Just wanted to stop in with a Slimline style card I had made with a fun underwater scene. (I’m thinking a magical place like this would be great to be in right now! How about you?)

Vicki-BRM-mermaidslimline

These slimline cards are really great for creating scenes like this on and I was also having fun being able to “experiment” with my different products too!

I’ve the stamp set called Sea You Soon along with the background paper (mermaid skin) and the Lilac Shimmering Sand Paste were all items from a past card kit.

I created my underwater scene basically using the mermaid skin paper as the background. Although it has a cool texture and smoothness to it, I was able to take the School of Fish stencil and add that Lilac sand paste over it. Love that extra texture and purple hue it gave! I also took the silhouette images from the stamp set and heat embossed them over this paper with black EP.

I stamped and colored the rest of the images from the stamp set with Copic markers and then fussy cut them out to arrange for my scene and popped some up with foam tape and then lastly added some clear acrylic bubbles over it.

Vicki-BRM-mermaidslimline-flat

You can see now that it’s lying flat how the color shifts and changes on the paper!

I’ve used some stitched wave border dies to help create the scene using some Kraft cardstock where I’ve also fit in to arrange the sand castle image that I colored and cut out. I used Copic markers and gel pens to help fit the borders and image together.

I cut out the background paper with the Trinity Stamps Slimeline Stitched Card Panels and Windows die set. I layered it over a piece of blue paper that was included with the kit and then layered that over a Slimline style card base measuring 8.5″ x 7″ folded in half from a piece of Aubergine Cardstock. The sentiment was actually stamped from the Merfriends stamp set using black Ink.

You can see parts of the images with shimmer on them which have been colored with metallic gel pens. I’ve also covered the mermaid tail and jelly fish with a Spectrum Noir Glitter Brush Pen.

The bubbles are looking a bit white instead of clear because my glue wasn’t quite dry enough when taking my photos, so my apology on that, but it took a couple of days to completely dry up clear for some weird reason! Those babies aren’t going anywhere though!! LOL!

Hope you’ve enjoyed my magical underwater slimline card today! Thanks so much for joining with me today and I’ll SEA you again soon!😁

Challenges: