The World is your oyster

Hello. I am here today sharing a card with a totally different stencil. I love them can you tell...smiles. I have been so busy with work and makes for That's Crafty that my personal makes have taken a back seat but just had to sneak this piece in. I just love this stencil and I love this mermaid. She looks so peaceful and dreamy and I  felt this stencil was perfect for her. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Here's what I used...

TC 8x8 stencil...Cheryl.
Mermaid, wording, rope corner stamp and oyster are free stamps from latest Creative Stamping mag.
Distress inks...Chipped Sapphire, Spiced Marmalade, squeezed Lemon and Mustard Seed.
Distress oxide ink...Fossilized Amber.
Black versafine ink pad.
Lavinia Stamps...Birds.
Tonic Nuvo Crystal Drops...Ivory Seashell.
Polychromo Pencils.

Here's what I did...

I like to start with a piece of card an inch bigger than the stencil so 9x9 for this card. I like to have the opportunity to stamp outside of the image should I want to. It can then be trimmed as desired at the end once happy. I taped the stencil in place and then stamped my image. I stamped again onto masking tape to enable me to cover the image while blending my scene. I then used my large circle punch to cut the sun from masking tape and placed that on card. I decided where my sea was to meet the sky and placed a piece of paper across. I brushed the ink across to create my sky, then remove paper, covererd the sky and repeated the process for the sea. I made sure my area for sun on water reflection was lighter so that I could lightly brush some spiced marmalade through the blue. I then used the fossilized amber to create the sand underneath my image. Once I was happy with the look I removed my sun and brushed over with the squeezed lemon until happy with colour. I then removed mask from my image and coloured her with pencils. I then stamped my wording, birds, clam shell and corners with black ink. I trimmed down my card and mounted on to pink card stock to pick out the pink of my mermaids hair before mounting onto white card base.