Deeper under the sea.

Happy Sunday blogland. I hope the sun is out and you are having a good day.

I've have been trying out different card shapes, from the usual side, tent fold and easel cards that I usually create. This is my first attempt and I don't think it turned out too bad. I also used my favourite stamp at the moment, the cute mermaid Stamp from La La Land. Let's get to the make......

I wanted to try a variation of a gate fold card. For my card blank I used 2 6x6 scalloped edged cards. I folded the front of both cards in half, so the card front met the central fold. I then glued the two cards together using Cosmic Shimmer glue. I then stamped the image onto bleedproof card. I decided to challenge myself to using different colours of ProMarkers, than I usually use. For her skin I used almond, pale pink and Soft peach ProMarkers. For her hair I used blue grey 1, glacier blue and soft aqua flex marker. The next set of colour, I will be really honest with you, I have never used, just because I didn't think the lightest colour would blend into the other ones. I was happily surprised. For her tail I used holly, forest green and lime green. For her top, I used amethyst and cerise. When all the image was coloured, I fussy cut the image out. To decorate the inside I matted and layered using black card and blue and white spotty paper from my stash. The next layer is yet again is another thing that I have never used before. In my stash I had an A4 sheet of white vellum, that was foiled with silver foiled swirls. The swirls reminded me of waves, so I layered in on top of the blue spotty paper, I used collall 3D glue gel to attached it to the paper. So the glue didn't show, I placed the glue gel in the center of the vellum, because I knew my topper would hide it. I cut out the largest and second largest shapes from Spellbinders decorative labels 22, in black card and green mirri card, I attached them to the vellum using cosmic shimmer. I used 3D glue gel to attach the mermaid to the matted and layered decorative labels 22. For the two front panels I matted and layered it with the green mirri board and the blue spotty paper. I then chose a die cut sentiment from my stash and coloured it with weathered wood distress ink from

Tim Holtz, so it would tie in with the rest of the design. I matted and layered the blue spotty paper onto black card. I attached the sentiment onto the matted card with 3D glue gel and attached it the the front of the card with double sides tape. I then used blue dew drop embellishments from DoCrafts, in different sizes to represent bubbles on both of the front panels and inside the card to represent air bubbles coming from the mermaid.

There we have it, my take on a gatefold card. I hope you enjoy it.

Ian xx

I would like to enter this project into {pin}spirational challenge Challenge #60

All Craft Challenge Blog Hop

 Welcome Blogland to the Craft my life blog hop for the re launch of Sparkling black roses blog challenge. The challenge theme was anything but a card. You've found my part of the hop, by visiting the lovely Tania, and enjoyed Tania's brilliant creation. Now it's my turn. This is my first ever time being involved in a blog hop and I am really excited, to be apart of Elaine's re launch and I love the theme, because I have just ventured into altered art and having another chance to create something using the fabulous product of Sarah Hurley, made my creative juices flow. So onto my project.

I have had a set of nesting boxes in my stash for awhile, so I decided to alter the largest box, but what could I turn it into. One of my favourite kits from Sarah is the the Expedition kit. As with all of Sarah's kit it is packed full with hand drawn papers and embellishments. In fact the kit gives you 12 12x12 resizable papers, 88 hand drawn embellishments, 2 x printable embellishment sheets and an alphabet. Some of the hand drawn  images are of vintage modes of transport. From vintage hot air balloons to tallships. So I decided to create a keepsake box for holiday memorabilia.

I used CraftArtist to print out a selection of the lovely papers and embellishment. I couldn't decide on which of the papers to use to cover the box, so I decided to use torn pieces of all the papers in a collage. I used A'color Allround Medium to glue the piece onto the box and seal them, with a gloss finish. Now the fun part embellishing the box, I printed out two more papers from the kit and used bitty blossom dies, from Spellbinders to cut the flowers and leaves. I also used a set of spellbinder flourish dies to cut the flourishes from the same papers. I fussy cut all the embellishments out, some of them words. I chose to use the binocular embellishments and the words See and Do to decorate the lid. I glazed the lenses of the binocular, with a 3D glaze. I then used the embellishments both images and words to embellish the sides of the box. I then used some self adhesive material to line it.

There we have it my Anything but a card project, My travel memory keeper.

Thanks you for visiting me on this part of the blog hop. I hope you like my interpretation of the challenge theme. The next stop on the blog hop is the lovely Lydia and you can hop over here . Again thank you for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of the hop.

Ian xx