"Mermaid Scene" by Melissa Struhs

Morning Colour Blasters!

While the weather in Queensland has been sweltering, I have taken up refuge in front of the air conditioner and created as much as I could and have been tinkering with little projects left and right over the Christmas and New Year Break. I found some fabulous  products that have been forgotten or tucked away in the scrap space.

I have been wanting to add a Vertical 6x12 pocket to an album that has been my focus in 2016, making a small title page for our visit to the Sea Life Aquarium. So this mermaid stamp gave me a reason to stop procrastinating.

Using Deep Water Colour Paste on a piece of white textured cardstock

a vine stencil was used to create a gorgeous vertical pattern and left to dry. Each of these individual fronds were fussy cut out later on and glued face down on the reverse of this next step.

Apple of my Eye Colour Paste was this time spread over the same stencil but on a plain transparent sheet.

While the paste was still wet, microbeads and sequins were scattered or pressed into it's surface. The photo I took wasn't very clear at this step, but if you wait till further along there are some fabulous close up's.

Here are all of the pieces I hand cut, crazy...I know! You can see the pieces are matched to the transparency but are slightly offset. A tiny blob of glue was just enough to hold them in place for now.

But when you flip the transparency over you get a real sense of layering

and movement depending on how you position them as you glue them down.

I have used a black Staz on ink to stamp a mermaid image onto scrap paper (those are the 2 full images). I like to stamp them a couple of times so I have options of which turned out better. My best was trimmed out and the other set aside.

Repeating the stamping process, the hair, tail and fins were stamped onto a white resist paper (wait till you see what the pattern is!) and the larger part of the fin and bikini top gets a green damask pattern.

Time to add a little colour to those resist pieces with

Paris Colour Shimmer Dust.

Forget the look of the dust...what looks yellow is in fact green

but you have the ability to make so many different shades and all just by adding a little more of the powder.

Then, it is all about adding the colour where you want it. I wanted a little more detail to stand out, so the darkest shade could be brushed on or puddled until it soaked in a little more. When it was dry, a small cloth was used to buff the excess colour off the resist pattern. Now the seashell and coral seaside pattern is revealed!

As I put the element together, glue could be added to the back of the deep water petals and adhered to the water patterned paper I used as a background.

The mermaid was pieced together, had some stitched elements added and glued on top of the Colour Blast seaweed transparency.

Here you can see the micro beads and a little stitching through the embedded sequins.

Sometimes, it is nice to check another small project off the list and now that is another section of my album complete.

Till next time,

Mel.