Dreamer

Good morning everyone, hope you're having a good week so far. I'm still in the middle of a pile of accounts work as the UK tax deadline is next Monday but I managed to get a couple of hours to myself yesterday afternoon so decided to do some crafting to relax my brain.
I also have several pieces of good news to share on the crafting front, the first of which was an email on Tuesday from the lovely Jill of The Stamp Man to say that I'm the very lucky winner of 2 sheets of unmounted Non-Sequitur stamps - yippee, how fantastic is that!!!
The second was when I popped over to The Craft Barn blog yesterday for a peek at a tutorial on using paper scraps (as my last card involved this) and found that not only is the tutorial fabulous, but that Michelle has used one of the flower stamps I designed - yay! You can see the tutorial if you click HERE and it's well worth a look as Michelle's use of her scraps is so creative.
The third piece of news is that this morning I discovered that my scraps card of the last post has been given a Ginger Gem Award so I really am on cloud 9 at the moment!. Thanks so much gingers, this means such a lot to me.

Now on to the piece of artwork I made yesterday which is actually in response to June of Dezinaworld's Spot Prize Challenge Beneath The Waves. Sadly, my glue took ages to dry and daylight went yesterday so I couldn't take photos until this morning so my entry is too late.
I have it here to show you anyway and happily this week's Wednesday Stamper is Inky Backgrounds, so I think this qualifies for that - you should see my inky fingers!!!

I decided to make a canvas and the background for the gorgeous vintage mermaid picture is made from a textured paper towel. I swiped it with Impress dye inks in shades of blue and green which were originally not as blended but when I glued the towel to the canvas with gel medium this caused the colours to mix with each other a lot more (and took a while to dry!)
I then stamped on the background with a flourish stamp to imitate seaweed. The stamp is from a clear set by My Paper World - Viva Decor which is available from The Craft Barn. I stamped it with acrylic paints in green, brown and bronze.
I tore the edges of the mermaid picture and then embossed them with copper and rust. I made the flowers to echo those in her hair by die cutting crepe paper (you can cut several layers at once) with a Nestabilities Blossom die. I layered up several flowers inked in pale yellow and green, scrunched them and secured with a brad then swiped them over Distress ink pads in Spiced Marmalade and Wild Honey.
I made the "seaweed" fronds by die cutting more crepe paper with a Sissix flourish die, inking with Vintage Photo Distress ink and embossing with a little clear powder. The flourishes curled a little and went translucent in places which give (I think) quite a realistic effect.
I'm really sorry to have missed your deadline June and will hopefully have more time next week.

Thanks for looking
Fliss x