A Fishy Tale by Fliss Goodwin

Hi there, I have a fishy tag to share this week, which is another of my makes with Donna’s gorgeous new Deep Sea Divas stamp sets. This one was inspired by a lovely photo I saw featuring a shoal of fish and I couldn’t resist trying to recreate it.

Ingredients:

That’s Crafty! Clear Stamp Sets – Deep Sea Divas Marina, Textures Set 1

That’s Crafty! Surfaces White/Greyboard Tag Size 10

That’s Crafty! Word Series Stencil – Dream (for the bubble border)

That’s Crafty! Dinky Stencil – Moc Croc

Sizzix Tim Holtz Die Set – Garden Greens

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Paints

White Gesso

White Cardstock

White Copy Paper

Archival Jet Black Ink

Ranger Dye Ink – Cheese Puff

Pencil – I used a soft, graphite one

Recipe:

Paint the tag with shades of blue and green paints, adding streaks in a downward direction until the surface is covered. When the paint is dry, use the Moc Croc stencil to add a little pattern around the edges with magenta paint.

Next use the bubbles border with turquoise paint and white gesso to add bubbles in the upper half of the tag. When they’re dry, replace the stencil and use a graphite pencil to scribble round the bubbles to make them stand out more.

I stamped the fish, seahorse and starfish on scraps of Gelli printed paper, but you could stamp them on white card and colour them if you prefer. I then stamped a shoal of fish directly on the upper half of the tag as if you do this, you can add coloured bodies over the top without any fiddly cutting out round the feathery tails. As you can probably guess, that’s what I did, adding the bodies with clear foam tape after rounding them out with an embossing tool.

I next die cut some seaweed from further Gelli print scraps and drew some thicker fronds on green paper with the graphite pencil and cut these out. I glued these on the tag, layering them up as I went. I tucked a seahorse in between the seaweed and added a starfish near the bottom.

I then had a bit of a ribbon issue, as the tag was a bit large for those I had so I made my own with copy paper. I coloured the paper orange and then stamped on the bubbly design with the orange dye ink. I pleated the paper roughly after scrunching it and added it to the top of the tag, tying it up with a scrap of twine and fanning out the tops.

We have a great new challenge today over at That’s Crafty! Challenge Blog so do check it out to see how you can win a great prize just for entering.

Have a great weekend and see you next week.

Fliss x