throwing my hat in the proverbial ring...

Greetings Everyone!!

This post is not about homeschooling, my kids, my family, etc.  I've dusted off some of my wonderful crafty supplies as I've really missed playing, getting inky and creating something fun.  The catalyst for this is a design team call for a fantastic company called The Alley Way Stamps.

I stepped down from all of the design teams that I was on in the summer of 2012 when I was newly pregnant with my third as I was incredibly sick. Life has changed so much since then!!  I now have a 10 year old, an 8.5 year old and the littlest Winston is now 19 months!  We are a homeschooling family and we are finding our groove and finding what works best for us.  It is all amazing, crazy and wonderful.  

For a while now I've been thinking about looking around for a crafty design team to join as I have sincerely missed the camaraderie, creative sharing of ideas and warmth that comes from being part of a team.  So I'm throwing my hat in the ring for a position on the TAW team!  I've been a huge fan of the owner, Alison Spelman for years - ever since the Stretch N' Bubbles digital stamp days and I had a fantastic time as a DYSU challenge blog member so I was thrilled when she started her own ADORABLE stamp line!!  The images are cleanly drawn, adorable and cute combined with fun and punny sentiments to go along.  They are designed for any type of crafter to use and can be mixed and matched as I did with this creation.

I am coming in on the design call a bit late in the game as I just found out about it so I've made one brand new project to show and I'll be entering a couple of older designs as well.

Here is the new project I made using two different TAW sets:  Castaway's and Sea Mates.  (such cute sets!!)

I will walk you through my creative process.  Here are the supplies I used today:

I pulled out my new Inktense pencils, a basic palette of frosty/sparkly watercolors from Michaels, my stamps, black craft ink, black embossing powder, powder tool, heat tool, painters tape, good watercolor paper, a sturdy board to adhere my watercolor paper down to so I can move my project as needed, a couple of small brushes and my acrylic block.

I dusted my piece of watercolor paper liberally with my powder tool to prevent static as black embossing powder likes to stick in places it should not.  I then inked my chosen images, dusted them with my black embossing powder and heat set.  I love heat embossing images before using watercolor.  It really lets you control where you place the color. Although you'll notice that I did not stay within the lines but I knew I was cutting the images out anyways so it really didn't matter.  But if I did want to control my color the edge of the embossed image would hold the color in.  Once my stamping was done I used my watercolor pencils along with my sparkly palette to color these five adorable images.

I let everything dry (ok well to be honest I used my heat tool to dry it all as I was growing impatient!) I then fussy cut them all out and set them aside.  I cut another piece of watercolor paper to create my background.  I used a wet watercolor technique which lended nicely to my idea of an underwater background.

Once I dried my background I worked on placement of my images.

that's it!

Once I got it just the way I wanted it I took a picture of the placement with my phone so that I could remember where I wanted the creatures to go and I once again moved them aside.  I added a bit more depth by stamping an ocean garden with the seaweed image from Castaway's set and the water spout image from Sea Mates set using two different inks from Hero Arts (Tide Pool and Green Hills).  I stamped both images repeatedly at slight angles and on top of each other to add the illusion that the cute critters were swimming at the bottom of the sea.

I then used my favorite Hero Arts black ink to add my sentiment and then used foam adhesive to pop all of my characters up.  I used SU! Summer Sun to make the entire scene pop off of the white card base.

  I added a splash (pun intended!) of sequins here and there for some added texture, sparkle and interest.  I hope you enjoy my creation and wish me luck in my application for TAW!!  (fingers crossed!!)

Crafty Hugs!
Meredith