Cool Crab

This is the card I had planned to share yesterday, but when I was working on it I kept having problems. It was not working out how I wanted it to and I was getting frustrated. At one point I felt like it was ruined and I would have to start over. I didn’t want to waste what I’d done though. So I ended up setting aside and coming back today to try to salvage it.

I started by stamping the crab from Paper Smooches’ Chubby Chums Pals as well as the ship from Lawn Fawn’s Lovable Legends directly onto a card base made from watercolour card. I stamped them with Simon Says Stamp Barely Beige ink. I also stamped the glasses from the Chubby Chums Pals set onto the crab.

Next I lightly drew in a shoreline just behind the crab using a pale blue watercolour pencil. I then started painting in my sea using a mixture of blue and green watercolour paints. I faded it up as it got towards where I imagined the sky would be. I then painted in some yellow-brown colours for the sand.

At this point I was already not happy with how things were going. It was not looking right. The more I tried to fix it the worse it looked. I tried adding colour to the boat and the crab but it wasn’t working.

After sleeping on it and giving myself some breathing room I decided to change course and not do a one layer card. I restamped the crab, ship and (separately) glasses onto a snippet of the same watercolour card and painted them.

I decided I would disguise the issues with my background by covering the whole thing with vellum to fade it out. A far away ship, for example, won’t be clearly defined anyway. First I added a bit more colour to make the background bolder so that it would still show through enough. I found some gold paint and added that to the sand, which I enjoyed doing but was perhaps unnecessary as the shimmer doesn’t really show through the vellum. I also added some white paint where the water meets the sand.

I fussy cut my ship, crab and glasses, then adhered the ship over the one I’d originally stamped on the card base. I then cut some vellum to the size of the card front and lined it up on the card so that I could work out where to add my sentiment. The sentiment is from Paper Smooches’ Chilly Chums, and I heat embossed it in black.

I used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to attach the sunglasses onto the crab, then again on the back of the crab. Making sure the vellum was still correctly lined up I added the crab to the vellum so that it would completely cover the crab stamped on the card base. I turned the vellum over and applied more Tombow behind the crab. I also used my glue pen to add some glue behind the sentiment. I then turned the vellum back the right way and pressed it into place on the card base.

As a final touch I added some Wink of Stella to the glasses, then gave them a coat of Glossy Accents.

Whilst I’m glad I was able to salvage this card I’m still not really happy with it. I feel like it needs something more but I can’t think what. I think this will be going into my pile of cards that need to be adjusted. (And one day I’ll find the time to work on them!)

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

CAS Watercolour – Summer

Cupcake Inspirations – Watercolour

HLS June Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes

Paper Smooches – MenSimon Says Stamp Monday – Masculine

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Masculine

TCP Tuesday – Sand, Sea & SkyUniko Challenge – Masculine