Distress Ink Background with Custom Stencils feat Craftin Desert Divas Mermaid Lagoon stamps

Hello everyone! The new Craftin Desert Divas stamps are finally available for purchase on the CDD shop, and today I wanted to show you a project I made by combining images from the Ocean Friends and the Mermaid Lagoon stamp sets. I knew that for this card I wanted to go for a shaker and have an ocean scene on the background, so I decided to use the new Craftin Desert Divas Ocean Border dies to create a stencil out of some heavy weight cardstock. And I love how the background turned out!
But let’s proceed with order 🙂
To start off I created my front panel out of some heavyweight cardstock using the largest die from the Craftin Desert Divas Crazy Stitched Frame Dies. I also used the smallest die in that same set to create a rectangular opening on the front of my card. I then took a strip of Strathmore Bristol smooth cardstock and used my DIY stencil to create the background for my shaker. I masked the bottom of the strip with my die cut piece, and blended some Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon, Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistachio to create the ocean portion of my scene. I then used the negative of  my stencil to mask off the ocean, so that I could blend some Distress Ink in Antique Linen to create the sand bank. For the coral and the seaweed I used Abandoned Coral and Mowed Lawn, but this time instead of doing ink blending I did some watercoloring, so that I could get in all of those beautifully detailed areas.
For my images I used Prismacolor Premier pencils and some Zest It to blend them out. The mermaid belongs to the Mermaid Lagoon stamp set, and the dolphin comes from the Ocean Friends stamp set. It was my first time using a blending solution with colored pencils and I really liked it! I makes coloring with your Prismacolors much faster and you still get a softer look compared to when you use markers.
The sentiment comes from the Mermaid Lagoon stamp set, and I used one of the dies from the Flag Banners set to cut a banner, that I will use strategically to create two separate compartments in my shaker. ☺
I took a piece of white cardstock cut at a standard A2 size to use as my card base, and glued my background strip in place, making sure it would show nicely through the shaker window I had created in my card front.
I then coated the shaker window with some acetate and backed the shaker front with two layers of Scoth 3M foam tape. I also added a strip of foam tape behind the area where the sentiment banner is, so that I could have two compartments in my shaker, and add seed beads in different colors. I chose shades of blue and green for the top portion of the shaker and a creamy color for the bottom, to match the colors of the background.
I then adhered the shaker front to my card base, and glued the images and the banner sentiment to my card front, making sure that the banner would cover the strip of foam tape that is running across the shaker window (the one I used to create the two separate areas in my shaker). To finish off the card I added some Nuvo Crystal drops in Morning Dew.
And that’s it for today’s post! I really hope you liked my card, and I hope I inspired you to create with the new, adorable sets from the Craftin Desert Divas July release.
I will be back tomorrow with some more fun inspiration, and in the meantime I wish you all a great day! Ciaooo!

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