CIC 500 / Mermazing Monday | Mixed Media Mermaid | Birthday Celebration – PRIZES

We’re having a huge celebration over at Cupcake Inspirations because it is our 500th Challenge! In honour of the occasion we chose the theme of Birthday Celebration, so now is a great time to catch up on making birthday cards. Plus we have 13 sponsors offering 16 prizes between them for a total value of over $200! The team (myself included) have been very busy preparing as we’re sharing inspiration daily throughout the challenge in order to feature each of the fabulous sponsors, so we hope you’ll check back for those too. Our launch post (today!) and reminder posts aren’t featuring specific sponsors, but I did use a cute mermaid from sponsor Lawn Fawn to create my card, which means I could also use this project for today’s Mermazing Monday project.

I had so much fun with my mixed media card for last week’s hop that I decided to have another go at creating one. I started by cutting a piece of netting that I have in my ribbon stash. The netting was white but I wanted it to be blue, so I used a variety of paints from my Gansai Tambi watercolour set to add colour to it. Reinkers would be another option for adding colour, but I don’t have any. After adding the colour I dried with the cooler setting on my WOW! Dual Speed Heat Tool. I then added another layer of paint before drying again. When I dried the second time I used the hotter setting and intentionally warped the netting slightly to add further interest to it.

I cut three small hexagons from some thick card, and added some initial colour to them by dipping them into the paint left on my craft mat. (I also smooshed a piece of watercolour paper to pick up the rest of it, which I may use for next week’s Mermazing Monday.) I then added some texture on top of the paint once it had dried by stamping with Blank Page Muse’s Open Weave Fishnet stamp, first with Stormy Sky Distress Oxide, and then with Mermaid Lagoon. After stamping with each colour I rubbed over the ink with a sponge to soften it slightly.

Next I wanted to add some tissue paper for the tissue paper embossing technique. I did this on my previous mixed media card and really liked it. I started by putting Craft Tacky Glue over the majority, but not the entirety, of the surface area of each hexagon. I crumpled up a piece of blue tissue paper and unfolded it again, before pressing it onto the gluey surface of one hexagon at a time, shifting the paper around with my fingers to create some texture, and tearing away the excess. I then pressed each hexagon into embossing ink and heat embossed with Glassy Ocean embossing powder.

I chose three wooden shapes from an old card kit to embellish my hexagons. I went for an anchor, a seahorse, and a fish. I decided to heat emboss those as well, so as I did with the hexagons I dipped each into my ink pad and then added embossing powder. I used Sparkling Sand for these.

The other element I created for my card was a mermaid, stamped from Lawn Fawn’s Mermaid For You with MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink. I coloured it with Spectrum Noir Illustrator markers, and added texture to her outfit with dots of white gel pen and also Sakura Gelly Roll Glitter Gel Pen.

With all the elements I wanted for my card worked out I started arranging the pieces on the card base to see what I thought of it. Whilst I wanted CAS mixed media, I felt like the white card base was a bit too clean for the mixed media look. After some contemplation I decided to add to the background.

First I took a stamp from Simon Says Stamp’s Sea You Soon and stamped that with Catherine Pooler’s Aquatini, second generation to be a bit softer, to add a little texture behind where my focal pieces would go.

As well as the stamping I wanted to add some splatter. I attempted to splatter embossing ink by scribbling Nuvo Clear Mark Pen onto an acrylic block, mixing with a little water and flicking with a paintbrush. I think it would probably have worked better if I’d used the embossing ink pad instead of the pen, so I ended up adding fake splatters by directly touching the pen to the card here and there. I heat embossed that with the same Sparkling Sand powder I’d used on my wooden pieces. I also added splatters with the Aquatini ink.

I laid my netting and hexagon pieces back into place so that I could work out the positioning for my sentiment. The sentiment I chose is from Simon Says Stamp’s Beautiful Mermaids and stamped it with Versafine Onyx Black Ink.

Finally I was ready to assemble the card. I adhered the wooden pieces to the hexagons with Glossy Accents and left an acrylic block on top of them until the glue was set. I then put double sided tape on to the back of each hexagon in order to attach the netting, making sure to bunch it up slightly for further texture and interest. I flipped the whole piece over and applied double sided tape onto the back of the netting, pressing it so that it contacted the back of the hexagons as well, then added plenty of Glossy Accents onto the back of them, before positioning them on my card base.

I trimmed off the excess piece of netting, and using the negative die cut area of one of the hexagons trimmed down a piece to put behind my mermaid. I attached it to her with double sided tape, then used foam tape to pop her up above the other elements on the card base.

As a final touch I used my scissors to cut into the edge of the netting in some places to give it a bit of a torn and weathered look.

Phew, that was a long explanation! I had so much fun making this card and playing with the different techniques. I won’t say it turned out exactly how I’d imagined because a couple of ideas changed as I was going along, but I’m certainly happy with how it turned out and it’s not far off of what I had in mind. I hope this inspires you to come and play along with our challenge. Again, we have a lot of prizes up for grabs if you come and play along. You can find further inspiration from the rest of the team over on the launch post, or directly on their blogs via the links below. Plus we’ll be sharing each day over the coming weeks to further inspire you. I hope you’ll join us!

Love,

Lady Joyful

*Affiliate links may have been used in this post. For more details on affiliate links as well as other ways to support me, visit this page.*

Challenges included:

CAS Colours & Sketches – Sketch

Cupcake Inspirations Challenge – Birthday Celebration

Classic Design Challenge – Anything Goes

Fun Friday Challenge – Celebration

Kat Scrappiness Challenge – Birthday

Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes

Spectrum Noir Challenge – Anything Goes

Watercooler Wednesday Challenge – All About Occasions

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Check out what the rest of the DT made:

Charlotte (that’s me!)

Debbie

Ishani

Kim

Pioniya

Sandy

Sue N.

Sue T.

Vicki