Let's Hit the Beach! The New Dare at Emerald Creek!

HI and servus!

It's time for a new challenge over at Emerald Creek Dares and this time it is all about summer, the beach and water fun themes.

I recently stumbled over some cheap wooden houses at a dollar store - so I decided to create one of these gorgeous beach houses I adore so much from one of them:

Emerald Creek products used:

Upstream stamp set by Nicole Wright Designs

Carmen Stamp

Emerald Creek Chinese New Year Embossing Powder

Emerald Creek Ultra Puff White Embossing Powder

Emerald Creek Easter Parade Embossing Powder

Metal Key Charm

Metal Heart Brad

I also used various Distress Paints, Distress Spray Stain "broken china", a Tim Holtz idea-ology Chit Chat sticker, an old book page, a black permanent marker and Ranger Matte Medium.  

Here's how I did it:

First I used some masking tape to create a stripe pattern and mask the roof and door:

Next I dabbed on some embossing ink using an embossing dabber and poured some of the fantastic Chinese New Year embossing powder over the whole piece. I heat embossed my red stripes:

Then I masked off the red stripes - covering them with masking tape and did the yellow stripes with the Easter Parade embossing powder. 

I painted the door and roof using Tim Holtz Distress Paints. I also covered the sides of the beach hut with red Distress paint.

Next I chose the lovely waves stamps from Nicole's lovely "Upstream" stamp set to create my ocean waves.

I stamped them onto some blue designer paper using white opaque stamping ink and heat embossed the images with Ultra Puff White embossing powder:

To increase the contrast and make my waves more visible I sprayed on some "broken china" Distress Spray Stain:

I also used Distress Paints "mowed lawn" and "black soot" to customize the lovely key charm and hearts brad to add to my beach hut.

Some "mustard seed" Distress paint was smudged with my fingers onto some yellow patterned paper to prepare my background for the "Carmen" stamp which I intended to use to create my sun.

The image was torn into shape (instead of fussy cut) - so I had some white border around the stamped sun. I glued the sun to the back of my wooden house using a strip of transparent acetate (which was a left over from some packaging). 

The waves were fussy cut and glued to my strips of beach sand (which I had cut from some old book pages that had been glued onto some heavy card to make it more sturdy). 

A little fish that is jumping for summer joy was added the same way as the sun - using transparent acetate that was glued to the back of the house block. 

I stole borrowed one of my son's "Kappla" bricks to mount all my pieces to. 

The key for the beach hut and the welcoming heart sign were glued on using Matte Medium and left to dry naturally. 

I love how the Emerald Creek embossing powders sparkle....that reminds me of the sun sparlking and dancing on top of the ocean waves and its dancing reflections on beach houses, old boat houses and piers (which is pure summer feeling for me):

So now that you have seen my project I would like you to hop over to the Emerald Creek Dares blog to also check out the fabulous summer beach projects my talented team mates have created! And maybe we can even lure you into playing along! ;) 

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia 

xxx