Mermaid Starr by Janine

Hello lovely followers,

Im such a mermaidfan that i (Janine)decide to make a project with this amazing cute mermaid from Elisabeth Bell.

I colored this rubber stamp with my distress markers

Sweet Pea Stamps is sponsoring Addicted to Stampschallenge and this week they have Anything Goes...so come and take a look at the challengeblog!!

...... COPICS?

Last week I coloured the same image with watercolouring pencils.  Which do you prefer?

For my first project back after being AWOL for a couple of weeks I have chosen one of the gorgeous new stamps by Elisabeth Bell.  This one is called STARR and she's just the cutest.

I've seen some wonderful projects demonstrated by my DT colleagues using this image so I hope I've done her justice.

I've had the skin tones coloured for some time so just needed to decide on a colour scheme and finish colouring my image with my copics markers.  As I'm in the middle of re-decorating the whole house my crafting room has become a total mine field so I have been limited as to what is available to use.

I don't know if everyone is as dis-organised as me but I have crafting stuff stored in every room. At the moment I am re-decorating the smallest bedroom and have even taken off the door so that the bed can be moved and the room opened up.  All the crafting bits from this room are littered on the landing, and the second bedroom - thankfully I have kept ours free of any crafting bits.  So to make life easier I just took the top paper pad and decided to make my project around these colours.

I struggled a bit with the design - funny how quickly you can lose your flair or creativity!  I think that it's the design that has me stumped the most at the moment.  I usually fine the first project the most difficult after having a break away from crafting no matter how short!

Best wishes,

WATERCOLOURING OR .......

I used watercolouring pencils to colour this gorgeous stamp from Elisabeth Bell called STARR. For this stamp or any of the other Elisabeth Bell collections click here.

I coloured this some time ago and then decided I didn't like my colouring  - but having not seen it for some time I've quite forgotten why I didn't like it!  Maybe it's just a case of stepping back sometimes, working close up and personal you just start seeing mistakes and problems!

I do definitely remember having one disaster after another which probably added to my growing disatisfaction.   Having coloured the tail I decided I didn't like the effect so I covering with stickles glitter glue thinking that would add texture and subtly cover the colouring/colour!  Not so, once the image had dried I hated the stickles - it had dried flat and lifeless - so I scraped it all off.  

In removing the stickles with a knife the tail got damaged but I really like the distressed look - adding texture to the fin.  I had seen a Watercolour painter distressing his painting with a knife to achieve the surf on the water and also distressing rocks in the same way to add aging and texture - so idea was not completely my own!

I used liquid chalk for the sky and was unsure about the result achieved.  The fantasy hair colour was a new one for me and definitely took me out of my comfort zone.

I hope I have encouraged those of us out there who are very critical to go back and take another look at your projects - you may be surprised by want you see!

More information can be found on my blog here.

Best wishes,