Hi Everyone

For this weeks piece I have made a little concertina piece and it's one of those makes that ended up being something totally different than I intended when I started it, it all ended up a little bit fishy!

Here's What I Did: 

The first stage, always for me, is to create my background which I did by randomly brayering some of the fabulous new paint colours from Seth Apter for PaperArtsy (listed at the bottom). Once I had a good coverage I stamped with the same colour paints using a couple of Seth's latest mini stamps building up some subtle patterns. It was at this point, that once I had done that, where was I going to go with this? My original idea just wasn't calling me. I remembered I had recently received a couple of PaperArtsy stamps designed by Gwen Lafleur and I have this love of fish, I have no idea where that has come from though? It was at that point I started pulling together an idea and my accordion was on it's way to being created.

From the masterboard I cut 5 pieces 2.25"x 2.25 in size and then taped them together to continuously stamp along the background which I did using Vintage Photo Archival ink. I added just a touch of colouring using pencils and a little white pen. More stamping from the stamps on these sets to add further detail using Distress Oxide Broken China.

Then to make my little accordion which I made by cutting a piece of light kraft card 12.5" long and 2.5" wide. I then scored at every 2.5". around the edges and folds I blended on Walnut Stain Distress ink.

Next to make my fish and I wanted a strong colour contrast and there's very little stronger than red. I stamped the set of fish from Gwen's several times onto pieces left from my masterboard using Versamark and then sprinkled on Ranger Scarlet Mixed Media Powder and heat embossed. I then cut them all out. To add a little detail to them I stamped the fish again but this time onto some old book pages and cut out little sections to paper pierce into the heat embossed fish, the last touch was to end a little white gel pen around the eyes.

Hopefully you can see in these photo's some of the background detail and the little detail added to the fish.

After gluing each panel onto the accordion I added my sentiment which was one of the quotes from Alison Bomber's 'Travel & Journey' set. Stamped in Distress Archival ink and cut up so there were words added to each panel. At this point I just thought it needed a little something else so added pieces of torn old worn book paper to create a boundary to them making it look that the fish were swimming through little caves. I also added some bubbles to them using the Dinky Circles stencil I used some of the circles to add Versamark using a Versamark pen and heat embossed using Seth Apters Baked Velvet embossing powder in Aegean Sea.

Here's What I Used:

PA Fresco Finish Paints by Seth Apter - Gold Rush, Niagara Falls, Blue Bayou & Heavy Cream

Brayer

Heavy Stamping Card or similar

PaperArtsy Eclectica Mini Stamps by Seth Apter - EM49 & EM50

PaperArtsy Eclectica  designed by Gwen Lafleur - EGL04 & EGL06

PaperArtsy Eclectica designed by Alison Bomber - EAB12

Seth Apter Emerald Creek Baked Velvet Embossing Powder - Aegean Sea

Ranger Mixed Media Embossing Powder - Scarlet

Archival Distress Inks - Vintage Photo

Distress Ink Pad - Vintage Photo & Walnut Stain

Distress Oxide Ink Pads - Broken China 

Versamark Watermark Ink Pad

Versamark Watermark Pen

WOW Dual Speed Heat Gun

Inkssentials White Opaque Pen

That's Crafty! Dinky Stencil - Bubbles TC005

Book Pages

Scoring Board

Have a great week and I'll be back next Tuesday

Love

Amanda X