Dolphins Rocker

Hi everyone.  This is a rocker card featuring dolphins, and dolphins do 'rock' too as I love them.  This is a masculine birthday card for my brother-in-law and at first I was not sure what to do, but I came across a rocker with an added piece of acrylic round a circular shape on the rocker and with the dolphins leaping round the edge of it, and I did try to find it again but had a fruitless search online.  I decided on something simpler and made the rocker base from a 6" square card rounding the bottom using a bowl as a template and cutting the base with scissors.  I then found a piece of card which I had recently inked with a technique I saw by Chrissie Stokes using spray starch and powder colours with wonderful shimmery mica and a piece of crinkled cling film over the top and left to dry...you will find it here.   I used blue, gold and white Pixie Powders on mine and was pleased with the results and thought it had the look of the sea.   I also used a dolphin image from a set of stamps that came with Creative Stamping Magazine No. 97 Beneath the Waves.

I wanted to create a background with waves and a large wave with the dolphins leaping in front, and having looked online I found a children's freebie image of a dolphin and a large wave and used this printing it to fit the width of the rocker and I just cut out the piece I wanted and pencilled round it on the back of the background piece adapting it a little to fit on my rocker base, and then I cut it out.  I wanted to add some texture to the crests of the waves and added some Opal White Perfect Pearls to them and wasn't so happy with that as it wasn't white enough, so I used some white acrylic paint over the top, and then added some more randomly over the bottom section to give the sea some movement and then added some more bits of colour using some Distress Inks in several blues applied with a waterbrush.  I then added this to the rocker base.

I stamped the dolphins in Versafine Smokey Gray ink and coloured with some grey tones of Distress inks again using a waterbrush, and I cut them out and added them to the card.  I finished with a stamped sentiment using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink.  I was going to use Smokey Gray but there is a lot of mica shine on the base and I wanted the sentiment to stand out well so thought the black would be better.

Thanks for visiting me here today and I hope to see you again soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

Cardz 4 Guyz Challenge - No. 321 Get Messy - Inks, Paints, Sprays.
The Male Room Challenge - No. 174 - Animals.
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - No Patterned Paper.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Paint It.
Happy Little Stampers May Watercolour Challenge - Anything Goes/Flowers.
Happy Little Stampers May Birthday Challenge - Anything Goes.