You’re A Star

Nearly two years ago I made a card with a porthole design. I liked it at the time, and though I still think it’s a nice design I can definitely see how much I’ve improved between then and now. Then I had been card making for just eight months; now I’ve been at it for almost 2 1/2 years. It’s fun to see how far I’ve come!

I started by creating my porthole. I die cut a snippet of card using two Sizzix circle framelits. I then used a hole punch to punch out a bunch of little circles, which I stacked together in threes then adhered around my circle frame. Lawn Fawn’s newest release has a die that would create the porthole perfectly, but as I haven’t got my hands on it yet I thought that this would work as an alternative.

I pressed my embossing ink into my frame to completely coat it, then added some silver embossing powder and heat set it. The ink didn’t quite get into the areas right up to my ‘rivets’, so I used my Ranger Emboss It Pen to get into those little areas. I repeated the process several times to create a thick layer of silver.

Next I masked off my card base so that I could do my ink blending. I used Mermaid Lagoon and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxides. I used the Cracked Pistachio just towards the top of my circle, with the Mermaid Lagoon at the bottom. I first blended the colours directly onto the card base, then used some scrap paper to make a wave mask and went over again with both colours to create the look of waves to my water.

The sea creatures were in my stash having been coloured a while ago but not used. They seemed perfect to go on this card! The seahorse is from Lawn Fawn’s Mermaid for You and the jelly fish and starfish are from So Jelly. All three of them were watercoloured with my MozArt Brush Pens, then fussy cut out.

The last element I needed to create was my sentiment. I used a sentiment from So Jelly and stamped it onto a snippet of white card, using the same Distress Oxides I’d used for my ink blending, and mirroring the ombre look of the background in the stamping of the sentiment.

I used some strong double-sided tape to adhere my sentiment to the porthole, then popped them both up on foam tape and added them to my card base over my ink blended area. I then used my glue pen on the back of my three sea creatures and added them into place.

I am really happy with this card. Every time I used my Lawn Fawn stamps I wonder why I’m not using them all the time – I love how cute they are! The porthole turned out surprisingly well. It’s not perfect, but it worked out better than I’d expected. Likewise the ink blended background. Whilst I was doing it I thought I was going to have to scrap the card base and start over, because it looked like a mess, but I worked through it and it ended up looking great!

Love,

Lady Joyful

*Affiliate links may have been used in this post. When you buy products from a company after following an affiliate link, I will get a kickback at no extra cost to you. This helps me to keep doing what I do! Thank you for your support.*

Challenges:

AAA Cards – Inspired By Nature

Addicted to Stamps and More – Make Your Mark

Crafter’s Castle Challenge – Anything Goes

Digi Choosday – Anything Goes

HLS Anything Goes With Dies – Use Dies

HLS Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes and Optional: CAS

Lawn Fawnatics – Sketch

Stamping Sensations – Close To Nature

TCP Tuesday – Die Cutting