CAS Koi Carp

Hi everyone.  My card today features a fairly new to me technique using tissue paper.  I have used it on just one of my cards in the past as a sea themed background and I decided to go with a sea theme this time.  This month's CAS Mix Up Challenge has asked for stamping, tissue paper and your choice of technique and I have chosen heat embossing, die cutting and some watercolouring too.

I started with the tissue paper background and got out my Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Peacock Feathers, Faded Jeans and Shaded Lilac.  I laid the inks from the pad down randomly on to my glass mat and sprayed with some water and lowered the roughly 5"square of tissue paper over it, rubbing the back until it had soaked up the inks, before lifting and laying it down on a piece of copy paper and dried it with my heat tool.  I did this two or three times to build up the colour.  I have to confess that the first couple of times it fell apart too much on lifting and I had to start again, but third time lucky.  It had a couple of minor tears which I was able to pull together when mounting it on to a snippet of square white card.  I scrunched it up before doing this and glued it down with some PVA glue all over and making sure to keep the creases.  I then rubbed Versamark Ink which coated the surface crinkles and then added WOW Metallic Silver Embossing Powder which I heat set.

I then cut a frame from a snippet of white card using a set of stitched square dies, the two biggest of them,  and adhered this over the top.  This left some of the tissue paper layer beyond the frame and I trimmed this until it was just a narrow blue border.  In the photo it doesn't look very level but in real life it is better I think.

I found another snippet of white card for the Koi Carp from a set by Sheena Douglass, unfortunately they don't seem to be available now.  There are two sizes and I used the smaller.  I stamped them using Smokey Gray Versafine Ink and heat set using WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder.  I then coloured them with my Lyra Water Brush Markers laying them down on my glass mat and picking up the colour with a waterbrush.  I then cut them out and glued them on to the framed tissue layer.

I finished by mounting the topper on to a 7" square white card and added a die cut sentiment using a snippet of silver mirri card backed with Stick It adhesive.

Thank you for visiting my blog today.

I am entering the following challenges:

CAS Mix Up July Challnge (I am thrilled to have been chosen as one of the Outstanding Designs)
Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 289/90 where we use our snippets of card or paper etc.
Virginia's Summer Blog Party - Summer Creations.
Happy Little Stampers July Mixed Media Challenge - Texture.
Happy Little Stampers July Anything Goes with Dies Challenge.
Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge - No. 251 Anything Goes.
Penny Black and More July Challenge - For the Boys.