Motherhood Mermaid

I have made a card for the Crafty Challenge #6 at Emma's Cards. The sponsor for this challenge is the fantastic  Kanban who are offering a £15 voucher to the winner. The theme this month is "The Sea", which seeing as it was my suggestion, I thought I'd better come up with a card.

I love mermaids and I love Selina Fenech so I knew I wanted to use one of her designs. I downloaded the decoupage sheet and writing paper from Selina's shop. The image is called "Motherhood". I wanted to stay with the shell-like colours in the image, so I started by colouring my 8"x8" card blank with Distress Inks: Antique Linen, Milled Lavender and Spun Sugar. I edged it with Dusty Concord.

I stamped the music sheet with a La Blanche stamp and Dusty Concord ink onto a piece of card I'd coloured with a mixture of Distress Inks. The mat behind the sentiment was given the same treatment before being die-cut with a Spellbinder and edged with Dusty Concord. The sentiment was created in MCS.

I flipped the stationery paper in MCS before printing it and inking the edges. I tied ribbon around it and attached a double bow. I tried not to cover the paper too much so as not to cover the ghosted image on it.

I made up the decoupage and matted it onto card edged with Dusty Concord. I do think this is one of the most beautiful mermaid images. I took a Cheery Lynn leaf die and cut off the leaves, then chopped it into sections. I finished off with some shell die-cuts from Marianne and used the Distress Inks to colour them.
The challenge doesn't finish until the end of the month, so you've still got time to join in.

Moon Mermaid

This is another image from Selina Fenech. It's available as a decoupage download from her shop.  I would like to enter this card in  Challenge # 2 at Emma's Hints, Tips and Crafty Inspiration   The theme is Ribbons and Bows.
I'd also like to enter this card in the Ribbons Galore Challenge at LEJ Designs.

I started with an 8"x8" blank and inked the edges by blending Tumbled Glass and Shaded Lilac Distress Inks. I then layered with silver mirri card. I made the backing paper by cropping a section of the image in MCS and enlarging it. I also created the sentiment in MCS. I coloured die cut branches from the MCS Quintessential Country Garden paper pack in dark green and arranged them to look like seaweed. The flowers are from the same pack. The decoupaged image of the beautiful mermaid has been matted onto silver mirri.

I hunted around in my extensive stash of ribbons for colours I thought would compliment the image. I twisted the thin ones whilst sticking them down. The intention was for them to also represent seaweed. Two bows hide the ends.

I also placed three strands of wired ribbon behind the sentiment. I finished with a few dots of Cosmic Shimmer in black and pearl on the flowers, in corners and in the mermaid's hair.

The Littlest Fairy

This is another card featuring Selina Fenech's artwork. This image is available from her download shop  http://selinafenech.com/products-page/  from the stationery section. This has always been one of my favourite of Selina's beautiful fairies and I thought she would be just perfect to use on a card for a friend who is facing a major struggle in her life just now.

The download is a sheet of writing paper so I first took it into MCS and cropped the fairy. I then digitally cut 4 layers of her to create the decoupage. I horizontally flipped the sheet of stationery and resized it to fit on my card base as the backing. I also cropped a small section to use for the sentiment.
I inked the edges of an 8"x8" blank with Distress Ink Milled Lavender and inked the edges of the writing paper with Dusty Concord. I matted the full image of the fairy on a piece of card inked with Dusty Concord, and did the same with the sentiment piece.

I used Memory Box dies to cut the scroll and two butterflies from gold mirri. I then trimmed one of the butterflies for variety. The flowers were inked and the edge of the lace was coloured with a Promarker before being tied in a bow. Gold letter peel-offs were used to write the sentiment and a dusting of fairy glitter was the finishing touch.
If you look closely you can see the faint image of the fairy in the stationery. The paper is so beautiful on it's own, it's an added bonus that it works well turned into a card.

Bubbles

This is an image from one of my favourite artists; Selina Fenech. She paints beautiful fantasy pictures from which she has recently created stationery and decoupage to download. You can find her downloads here: http://selinafenech.com/products-page/  Have a look and you'll see why I love her wonderful artwork. In the meantime, here is Bubbles, decoupaged and made into a simple birthday card.

I started by inking the edges of my 8"x8" blank with Dusty Concord Distress Ink, then I made a backing paper in MCS by taking a cropped section of the background from Bubbles and stretching it to the size of my blank. I found a background paper on Flutterby Butterflies by MCS with bubbles on it and reduced the opacity, I then overlaid the two.  I also created the sentiment at the same time. The Bubbles decoupage was mounted up and placed on a frame created with Martha Stewart punches and Dusty Concord ink.

 The scroll is a Cheery Lynn leaf flourish die with the leaves removed, and the bubbles were created by punching circles from white card coloured with Distress Inks and sealing with Anita's 3D Gloss.
I didn't want to add too much to the card as I didn't want to detract from the beautiful Bubbles, but I did sprinkle a bit of glitter on her and the bubble embellishments as a finishing touch.