Wishing You Oceans of Joy

Hello, sweet peeps! I know this has been a nearly unprecedented streak of posting, but I’m almost caught up with the backlog, and then we’ll get back to my ‘whenever the whim hits’ pattern. : )

Today I have a fun card — it’d be great for a BFF’s engagement party, don’t you think?!

All the stamps and dies I used to make this were new to me and I love how they go together! Remember back when I played with Pebeo Fantasy paints for the first time back in THIS post? (good grief, it’s been almost a year! I told you I was backlogged!! At that time I also tried some on paper thinking they’d be cool for a mermaid’s tail. I was right! This was the result:

I outlined it first with Pebeo Vitrail Glitter Medium and let it dry, then filled it with the Pebeo Prisme paints which hold their own and don’t mix into brown as green and purple normally would. As they dry, they for these fabulous cell ‘scales’!

Embossing the lines of the clam shell and puffing up the pillow with a stylus, like the Heartfelt Creations Flower Shaping Essentials tool, helps give it dimension!:

Here’s a close-up of that cute little seahorse:

Now that I know the Pebeo Prisme paints work so well, I need to make a whole set of mermaid cards!

Materials used:

  • Make it Crafty: Cordelia the Mermaid and Clam Shell
  • Create a Smile: Under the Sea
  • Hero Arts Color Layering Seahorse stamp set
  • Simply Defined Time & Tides Coral Reef die
  • Pebeo Prisme Pearl Violine and Emerald & Vitrail Glitter Medium.
  • Copic Markers
    • shell: R20,22; Y000, 13; V12
    • hair: E13; YR02, 21, 24, Y28
    • eyes: G02; BG13; V06
    • skin: E00, 02, 11
    • E02, 04; y13, R22
  • Faber-Castell Texture Gems, Gold, Pearl
  • Kuretake Zig Wink of Stella clear
  • Tonic Studios Nuvo Crystal Drops: Buttermilk, Crushed Grape, Mornig Dew, Raspberry Pink, Ripened Pumpkin, Sugared Almond
  • Tsukineko Memento dye inks:Tuxedo Black, Sweet Plum
  • Tsukineko Brilliance Pigment inks: Pearlescent Poppy & Rocket Red Gold
  • Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Oxides: Abandoned Coral, Fired Brick, Fossilized Amber, Peacock Feathers, Peeled PaintSeedless Preserves, Salty Ocean, Spiced Marmalade, Twisted Citron, and Wild Honey
  • Core’dinations Cardstock: Blue, Teal, Light Blue, Pink, White
  • Misc adhesives, shells and pearls

I am playing along with the following challenges – click on any one for more information on how you can join the fun!

~D.Ann

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Adventures with Marabu Easy Marble Marbling – Purrfectly Marbleous!

Ok, it’s time to break away from card and try a different craft for the Cat Lovers Hop which is 1/2 over already! Wahhhh!

Warning… This post will be extra long, so I won’t be offended if you just scroll through. I’ll put the cat stuff first. To dangle a little catnip…For those of you who hang in there until the end, there will be another giveaway. : )

My crafty pal Mary and I got together recently to try out the new-to-us Marabu Easy Marble paints. Talk about addictive! Once we got the hang of it, we wanted to marble everything in sight. Lol!

As promised, I’ll start with the cat items I wanted to marble. I had a ceramic toilet brush holder (Tuesday Morning) a plastic soap dispenser (Burlington Coat Factory) a pen (the Dollar store) and a wooden tape dispenser that Mary had given me.

 

These paints are as smelly as nail polish (containing acetate and a bunch of other strong, stinky chemicals), so you need a well ventilated room, for sure. You will also want to use gloves. I used cheap latex gloves that I could easily toss for another pair when they got too much paint on them so I didn’t smudge what I was dipping.

It’s so simple to do: drop a few drops on top of a tub of water deep enough to submerge what you’re going to marble. (When I searched for videos on Marabu marbling, I saw someone marble an amazing guitar in a bathtub!) I preferred to use cheap little plastic basins I could throw away as some paint would build up on the sides of them. (However Mary cleaned them up so well that we saved them for future projects.

Next, drag a pick of some kind through the paint to make your swirling designs. (I used metal tweezers that I’d used for holding the paper I marbled) Don’t over-do it or it will start sticking to your pick  You have to work fast as the paint will start to dry and glob up in only a minute and a half or so. Then you submerge your item. Try to find a place to hold the item that won’t need marbling. This is easy for glasses, open containers and this brush holder… just put your hand inside. For paper, it’s good to have a tweezers… make sure to clean them after each dipping lest the paint build up on them. You’ll also want to have a place set aside for drying. The paint tends to dry quickly, but porous materials like paper need more time to dry.

 

As you can see, my basin wasn’t quite big enough so I had to dunk him twice.

The results are ever so fun! (Yes, I added regular paints (Martha Stewart Crafts Metallic acrylics and Prima Art Alchemy Opal Magic) to define some of the features afterward, such as the eyes, noses, etc.) The paint will scratch off, so I sealed it with a clear acrylic paint sealer when dry.

Of course I HAD to work on some other home decor items… like my Bygel containers from IKEA for my Raskog cart

  

If your paints aren’t mixing well, you probably need to clean the water. We learned that you definitely want to clean as much of the paint off the water as you can before the next dip. for larger amounts of leftover paint, use a tag or scrap of paper. To get the scum and little bits off, drop a paper towel on the surface, then push the corners down and toward the middle, catching all the scum in the paper towel, pull out of the water and squeeze out the water.

  

A little goes a long way with these! I used the Aqua Green, Turquoise and Gold on most of these items for my house and still have about 1/2 a bottle of each left!!

There is a difference between how the colors show up on white and on dark surfaces as you could tell by the cats and by these papers:

You can also marble paper, cloth (the leaf) and acetate:

The paints even work on candles:

 

The colors don’t mix, so you can use as many as you like without making mud! I added some amethyst to the turquoise, aqua green and gold here:

For my final project, I did a silver picture frame from the Dollar Store using aqua green, turquoise, aubergine, amethyst and black:

  

And used it for a picture of Mary’s mom’s cat, Charlie (See more pics of this cutie-pie Maine Coon cat HERE)

Yep, playing with these left me feline pawsitively marble-ous! I’ll definitely be doing more of this in the future!

 

*****      Giveaway now closed      *****

Thanks for hanging in until the end! Check out this little package (#3) of feline goodies I’ll be giving away to one of you:

Hip, Hip Purray! Cat knee-highs, a color in cat card, a magnetic bookmark, sticky notes, washi tape, cat eraser, kitty tissues, and even an adjustable cat ring! Pawsome!

What do you have to do to be eligible to win my prize package #3? If you’re interested, just leave me a comment using the word “catatonic” somewhere in your comment.

Bonus entry option #1: Be a follower of my blog and leave me another comment.

For a second bonus entry, follow me on Instagram (@d.ann.c), like and comment on the post featuring this project. (It doesn’t have to be a long comment, just a heart will do.) Come back here and leave a comment letting me know that you did it and your Instagram name.

Bonus entry option #3 (for a total of 4 possible entries): Follow me on Pinterest(@dannscraftingand re-pin any one of my cards or projects that you like. (If you don’t like them, you don’t have to pin any. lol!) Come back here and leave a comment letting me know your Pinterest name.

You will have until Midnight, Eastern Standard Time, October 28, 2018 to get your comments in. Sometime after noon Eastern Standard Time on Monday, October 29, I will publish a post listing all winners from giveaways on my blog from this hop (chosen using Random.org). Winners will have 48 hours to claim their prizes so, if you’re not subscribed, be sure to check back later that afternoon for that post!!

Next up I will have something that reminds us what everybody wants to be…. can you guess what the song says that is? >^.^<

~D.Ann

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Painting Dory and Strawberries plus Flower Pics

Thanks for joining me today! I’m hoping to start catching up on some back-logged posts I’ve been wanting to share with you. Today’s comes from a visit to my aunt’s home in N. FL back in the Spring. She has some amazing plants, so I thought I’d share a few…

The Panda Plant aka Pussy Ears (Kalanchoe tomentosa) has these darling furry velvet ‘ears’ that you just want to pet!

She also has this nifty Rabbit’s Foot Fern (Davallia fejeensis) where the rhizomes (creeping rootstalks) look like fuzzy rabbit’s feet.

A pretty cactus bloom.

She was given this by family in Ohio and told it was a Jerusalem plant, tho I can’t find anything like it on the net. It’s nifty how the inside reminds me of a poppy ‘fruit’. Let me know if you know what it is!

I finish with her lovely irises… I couldn’t pick a favorite, so you get to see all three…

The strawberries and leaves on her welcome sign had faded away, so I went to Michaels and got some paints and refreshed them for her.

She wanted me to sign and date it and we all got a laugh when she caught that I put ‘o8 instead of ’18… yep, I’m running a few years behind! lol!

I was honored and a little bit nervous when she entrusted me with her next project…

She was tired of her plain white fish and wanted him to be colorful. Her BFF had a picture of her son’s royal blue tang and those were the colors she wanted used…

Ahh… Dory! Also known as regal tang and surgeonfish (Paracanthurus hepatus).

So, I used the picture as a starting point and then took a little artistic license for some extra pops of color and sprayed on a lacquer to seal her up for easy cleaning and give her some shine….

My aunt seemed pleased with how it turned out and if she ever gets bored with those colors, we now know it’s not too hard to change it up.

Thanks for stopping by here today. I look forward to seeing you again as soon as I can find another little break to catch up again. Have a lovely day!

~D.Ann

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