Shrinking seahorses

Phew it has been so hot that most of our minds have turned to thoughts of the seaside. These photos were taken at the coast of Mersea in Essex where we visited a while back with friends, land of oyster fame. We also visited the south coast at the weekend to see Daisy graduate from pre school! Yes seriously..she even wore a little motor board and gown to receive her certificate! Bless. 

There's nothing like blue skies and the sea is there?

It's also time for my Monday design team make for Visible Image. I decided that my garden studio needed a fantasy seaside goddess wall hanging. Now I know that you will say that there is no sea goddess Visible image stamp. Yes I know that too but there's nothing stopping me improvising one. After all I made a mermaid from the leaping Katie stamp! I used the lady's head from the No space for dreams set 

and the seaweed from Dare to swim

I over stamped and embossed them onto some watercolour paper using Seth Apter baked embossing  powders to create my sea goddess. I love the colour mixes in these powders.

 I  coloured the paper with blue distress inks and added some white stencilling using the Time tunnel 

I also white embossed the sentiment from Own kind of beautiful

I wanted my wall hanging to also have a little seahorse...again I hear you say that there is only the one beautiful large seahorse stamp in the Create your calm set...

Correct again but shrink plastic came to the rescue. You can see the cute size after I had stamped, heated and shrunk the plastic when held next to the original stamp. I also shrunk the large jelly fish from the  Dare to swim set.

Here is my finished wall hanging

I made a mixed media frame for it from corrugated card...one of my favourite (and free) substrates. I used gesso, embossing powders, shells, metal charms, pearls and glossy accents.
Here it is hanging in my studio

You can see I used real shells collected from our seaside holidays over the years. I added pearls and glossy accents to give the feel of the sea.

The little fish stamp is also in the Dare to swim set.

 and here is one more inside shot

I would like to enter my wall hanging into the following challenges;

Creative Artiste 1/3 anything goes
Craft stamper take it make it 2/3 anything goes
Crafty Catz 1/3 anything goes/summer fun
A vintage journey get sentimental
Fashionable stamping 1/3 use those inks any way you want to
Crafty calander 1/3 totally girlie
Rhedd's creative spirit July

All the Visible Image links can be found here;

Visible Image group page on Facebook. Our friendly Group can be found here ...it would be lovely to see you. You can add work to the "Show and Tell" album where one randomly chosen winner each month wins a £25 coupon to spend on the website.

The main Visible Image Facebook page is here; there are weekly stamp giveaways...open world wide.

And the shop web site is here; where all these gorgeous stamps and stencils can be purchased. 

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Thanks so much for stopping by and for your kind comments.
The heatwave appears to still be with us this week...this is the first real summer we have enjoyed for some years here in the UK. Keep cool and carry on crafting!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x