Under The Sea

Hi everyone can you believe that August is here. Once again a heatwave has begun so after running errands I holed up in my playroom and did crafting. I was happy when I saw that the challenge this week for Stampotique is the theme "under the sea".  From the time I first saw the ocean when I was eight the ocean has been my happy place. Even when I can't be there in person I go there in my mind.

To join in the challenge or to view all the wonderful inspiration please click on the badge on the left hand side.  You don't have to use Stampotique stamps in order to join in the fun. You can use any rubber or clear stamp. :-)

Since the deadline is not here yet I'm also going to enter this in the "No Ordinary Paper" challenge over at Simon Says Stamping . I went back and reread the rules and I can enter more than one project. :-)

Without further ado here is my under the sea creation.

This was a fun card to make it was also a learning experience. I learned you can creamate adhesive cork if you cut it cork side up. I also learned that colors appear differently air brushed on the cork than on card stock.

I first cut out my card base using Kraft card stock. I was going to cover the whole card base with the cork but cremated it with my first cut so I had to cut it down a little narrower. Luckily cutting it with the lined side up it ended up being a clean cut. The adhesive cork is by DCWV. I bought it on sale as I thought it would give an interesting texture to projects. I took a seashell stencil and used my Ebrush air brushing machine with Spectrum Noir markers.

My underwater background was an experiment to see what Brusho Color Crystals would do on wet photo paper. I bought a lot of water resistant photo paper at a dollar store several years ago just so I could play with  them in crafting. I misted my photo paper and then sprinkled turquoise crystals over the wet paper. Then I took my mister and spritzed the paper to help the crystals dissolve more. I love the resulting pattern.

Over the photo paper is scrap from a page protector which I ran through my eBosser embossing machine with a couple of different stencils. I then used a sponge roller with Liquitex Iridescent Medium. I rolled on a very thin coat as I wanted just a hint of the iridescent but didn't want to hide the background of the photo paper. After that was dry I randomly placed drops of Dimensional Magic in some of the de-bossed circles.

Not being sure if running the plastic through my Xyron Adhesive machine would smash the bubbles or not I stapled it to the photo background. I decided I didn't like the staples showing so the die cuts hide those.  The greenery is cut using Spellbinders Sprig Corners die set. I modified by tearing pieces off after they were cut out of scrap paper. The fishes  were cut using the patterns in the ScanNCut machine using parts of a couple of gelli prints.

After stamping my sentiment on a piece of non stick parchment paper which I had used for my air brushing and other things I decided to cut off all but the happy place of the sentiment.  Sometimes I don't like to use all of a stamped image..

Have you done any projects using adhesive back cork?  Do you like to use stencils in your projects? If so do you have any favorite stencils that you find yourself using over and over.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!