Guest Post - A Fishy Tale by Annie Watkinson

Today's guest post is from Annie Watkinson, who has created some very special projects. This is quite a long post,  so please sit back, relax and enjoy.

Products Used

Something Fishy UDLSP0330

Cosmic Shimmer - Aqua

Dylusions Spray Inks - Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise, White Linen

Staz On - Teal Blue, Olive Green

Memento - Tuxedo Black

DistressInk - Walnut Stain

Promarkers - Orange, Bright Orange, Yellow

Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen - White 101

My grandchildren have a fish tank, and love to sit and gaze as they swim round and round. Fish are very relaxing! Chocolate Baroque’s lovely stamps, ‘Something Fishy’ inspired me to try and recreate the gentle movement of fish and water. What I enjoy doing when I need inspiration is to create a ‘masterboard’. Put simply, this is a sheet of A4 paper on which I produce a background pattern, and then have fun cutting it up, and seeing how many projects I can make out of it! It is surprising just how many cards you can make with a sheet of A4.

So I started off picking lovely watery shades of spray inks, and randomly sprayed onto my sheet of paper. Before the ink had fully dried, I lightly oversprayed with Dylusions White Linen, then quickly sprinkled a coarse crystal rock salt on top and left it to dry. After scraping off the dry salt, I was left with a lovely watery fish tank, but it was empty!  The weeds were stamped around the edges, alternating with Staz On Teal Blue and Olive Green.

So along came the fish. I stamped and embossed the fish with clear embossing ink, and silver and gold powders. My background was now complete. I had an image in my mind of bright orange goldfish against the lovely blue background. So I stamped the fish onto white card, and then coloured and cut them out and spread them around the board. It is good to get fish swimming off the edge of the card, giving you the sense of continuation.

Now I had my background, I started to cut the masterboard up to see how I could use the various parts on the front of cards. I managed to get four cards and one bookmark out of it. Now I knew the positions of all the pieces, I went over the fish with Glossy accents, which really brought them to life. 

I also stamped and embossed the weeds onto plain vellum with clear embossing ink and silver powder, then placed them around the cards for the fish to have something to hide behind! The angel fish were stamped onto sticky backed vellum, giving them a translucent feel. The shell was stamped onto some patterned paper in Walnut Distress Ink to which I added a stick on pearl and some accents to the fish eyes, bubbles and angel fish with a white pen.

 

For the main card, I gave the bottom of my ‘tank’ a layer of micro beads to give the illusion of gravel. After matting all the cards on different coloured cards, I laminated the bookmark, and added a tassel.

I think you would agree that using different coloured matting really changed the mood of the cards!

We definitely would Annie. Thank you for your wonderful designs and for sharing your 'masterboard' technique; I'm sure this is something our crafty readers will want to try. If you would like to see more of Annie's work then please take a look at her blog, Serendipity Craft Room, and why not show your appreciation with a little comment or two.