Something Fishy ATCs

Something Fishy ATCs
Originally uploaded by lubsy1uk

I was experimenting with background techniques and in the past when I've taken the brayer to the inkpad and brayered it over my card/paper, the result is a smudged muddy effect of colours - not really what I want. So this time I thought let me try putting the card on top of the rainbow inkpad and brayer over the top - well the results were far better and each band of colour was clearly visible and bright.

My next thought was, "what if I don't want to see the separate bands of colour, but instead want to see the colours merge into each other flawlessly?" So I remembered water colour techniques and I dampened my card stock with water and then laid it on top of the ink pad and brayered over it with the brayer and the result was beautiful - jewel like colours bleeding seamlessly into one another, without any muddiness or lines. This is exactly what I was hoping for and when I looked at each card I saw an underwater theme emerge and thought of tropical fishes in the colours of the Mediterranean seas.

I added a bit of dimension to each card by stamping bubble wrap on to the cards with Versamark and then dusting over with mica pearl powders. The shimmer added depth to the cards.

I had some fish greeting wrap from PaperChase, that I'd saved from ages ago and thought that would be perfect, so I cut the fishes out and stuck them on to the backgrounds with foam pads and then added some Beadz Accents to represent the sea bed and coral. To complete the scene I dotted air bubbles to the fish with the end of a pencil dipped into white gesso

I'm really pleased with this series and now they're available for trade -get yours before they swim away! :-D