A seaside adventure with Tim's July tag

I was delighted to see that Tim's tag for this month has a real seaside feel and features my favourite sea creature, the sea horse. This is his tag below and you can see how he made it on his blog here

It also linked in with my seaside adventure I had with my daughter and Daisy on Tuesday. We met in Southsea and had a brilliant day by the sea. I will write a post about the day very soon, as we found an amazing cafe with cakes you would not believe. I saw gorgeous blue skies, saw the seagulls soaring in the sky and heard the waves rolling in.

These colours inspired the colours I used on my version of Tim's tag.
Tim created an amazing bubble embossed sheet using plastic from packaging. Again I don't have many embossing folders but I do have a swirl one by Sizzix which reminded me of waves.

 how cool is the effect it made

I don't have a seahorse die but I recently bought a great seahorse stamp from an American company called Red Lead. I stamped it onto grunge paper and also cut out some shells with a Marianne die.

I then coloured my pieces with acrylic paints

the shells on the left I had heat embossed adding some gold embossing powder.
I then added Rock candy distress crackle paint to the coloured pieces. At that point I left them overnight in my studio to see it do its magic.

When I went back the next day I was delighted to see the end result. Just look at the cool crackle effect you get .

I also cut out some foliage and also made up some "sand". On Tim's blog he gives a recipe using clear UT embossing powder. I don't have clear so I again improvised. I used a mixture of white UT embossing powder, fine gold glitter, antique gold embossing powder and micro beads all mixed together with Glossy Accents as a binder.
Here is my fun mix

I coloured my base tag with different acrylics, some DIs dribbled down and a puff of DI marker using my TH spritzer. I distressed the edges too.

I then spend time deciding on my layout and over the next day put my tag together...here it is

I was really pleased with the end result..here are some close ups

and I finished it off with some twine

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges;

Tim Holtz 12 tags of 2014 July

Natalie and Amy summertime

Live and Love Crafts by the sea

Artistic Stamper By the seaside my seahorse was stamped

Creative Inspirations anything goes

Crafting musketeers summertime

Anything but a card anything goes

Simon Says Monday start from scratch

Love to Create fussy and fancy or clean and layered mine is most definitely on the fussy side ;0)

Crafting from the heart anything goes

I had already been making some other seaside themed cards using my seahorse on before Tim showed his tag, I will share those too soon.

As you can see my day at the seaside really inspired my creativity as did my darling Daisy Jane

She  makes me smile every minute I spend with her, such a precious girlie and so very loved.

Thanks for coming to the seaside today with me. 

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x