Surf & Turf at Emerald Creek Dares

Servus, hi and welcome, dear crafting friends! :)

Surf & Turf

is this month's theme over at Emerald Creek Dares and Kim will add an extra prize to the challenge (besides the usual $50 voucher to spend at her store) if you are able to combine both - sea AND land animals with your makes!

I stayed with sea animals this time and did a little art journaling on heavy white cardstock:

Emerald Creek products used:

EC "Blue Whale" rubber stamp

Nicole Wright's "Upstream" stamp set

EC "Oriental Wave" rubber stamp

EC Fractured Ice embossing crystals

EC Hammered Metal embossing powder

EC Verdigris Sparkle embossing powder

EC Mercury Rising embossing powder

other products used available at Emerald Creek:

Emboss It dabber

Emboss It ink pad

Distress Stains

Distress Ink Pads

Believe it or not: I only used Distress Stains and Inks alongside the fab Emerald Creek embossing enamels to create my art journal page and I love how versatile these products are!


Let me quickly take you through the steps (please, click on the images for a larger view):

Using embossing ink I stamped the lovely whale's image from Emerald Creek's awesome "Native Art" collection and heat embossed it (one after another) with Hammered Metal, Mercury Rising, Fractured Ice and Verdigris Sparkle. Then I grabbed my Distress Stains and used them like a wide brush to create layers of the different tones in circular motions. The picket fence Distress Stain had to go first - it would later act as a bit of a resist and come to the surface again. I also used saltyocean, weathered wood and tumbled glass. Then I cut my paper to size and blended the white spots with evergreen bough, faded jeans and chipped sapphire Distress inks using the blending tool. To finish the background off I also used the emboss it dabber like the Distress stains and added some "swirls" that I covered with Fractured Ice embossing crystals and boosted.

Then I went in with a baby wipe and did the same: wiping in short strokes that followed the circular motion of the Distress stains. That made the picket fence swirls visible again. Next I stained an old dictionary page scrap with wild honey Distress stain, drew a little crown for my prince of whales with a black marker and fussy cut it. The central wave image was stamped with embossing ink and heat embossed with Mercury Rising embossing powder. Then I cut out the wave's image in circular shape and glued both - wave and crown to my piece using a glue stick.

The corners of my art journal page were stamped with little waves images from Nicole Wright's "Upstream" stamp set. The quote was stamped with black archival ink to top and bottom of a dictionary page, heat dried and then tinted with wild honey Distress stain. The cut out quote was applied to the page using the glue stick again. I drew a white border and little white highlights using a gel pen. The waves image was shaded in using a black aquarellable pencil and a brush.


My prince of whales has a huge smile on his face. I wonder why?

I am really happy with the swirling effect I managed to create with the Distress stains!

I hope you like my fun art journal project as much as I do! The story about my "Prince of Whales" can be found on the Emerald Creek Dares blog alongside with some awesome makes of my teamies! So I hope to see you over there soon!

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx