Seahorses for Anniversary

Hi all.  Now, seahorses and anniversary cards at first glance don't really seem to go together, but I had the idea that the bubbles rising from the seahorses mouths should be heart shaped.  I have two new sets of stamps from Chocolate Baroque called Steampunk Funky Fish and Steampunk Sea World.  I have to say the steampunk thing is a slight departure for me but I thought the stamps were interesting and just a little bit different and will make good cards for the men in our lives who are never that easy to make for.

I used the gelli plate to make a background using a snippet of white card and Distress Inks in Faded Jeans, Peacock Feathers and Adirondack Lettuce.  I applied them randomly to the gelli plate and sprayed with some water and mixed them around a little before pulling the print.  I then cut the background down and added in the bit of greenery in a very washy way, and some small Nautilus which I think are so cute, stamping with tthe Faded Jeans and added a little Peacock Feathers and Victorian Velvet.  I added the heart shaped bubbles by hand and then coloured with the Peacock Feathers ink. 

There is a large and a small seahorse in the set and I needed two of the large sized ones so I used my gelli plate to make a mirror image by inking the stamp with the Faded Jeans and stamping on to the gelli plate.   I place the gelli plate on to a piece of card which it tends to stick to and then you can turn it over quite easily to stamp it on the card.  The image does come out slightly less defined but on the whole works well  I coloured them with the two blues and the pink.

I decided to add a bit of white gel pen on the seahorses and the shells and used the Glossy Accents on the seahorse eyes and the heart shaped bubbles.

I matted the finished piece on to a snippet of dark blue card and added this to the square white base card and using another snippet of the dark blue card which I first backed with Stick It adhesive, I die cut the sentiment.

The photos I took of the card showed up a mark where I must have overwet it and it had puckered and I had ummed and aahed about whether it was acceptible, but I decided to cut two more of the Nautilus from a snippet of white card and coloured to match the ones stamped in the background and placed them strategically ...lol.   I would say the colours were a little brighter in real life than in the photo.

Thank you for dropping by today.

Pat  x

I would like to enter the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 233 where we use up our snippets of card and paper etc.
Chocolate Baroque Challenge - No 23.  It is always a colour challenge.  I have used the colours if somewhat watered down so hope this is acceptable.