Alison Bevis Papercrafter: Courage, the Shore and the Fish

Hello everyone!!

How exciting, my FIRST day on the Couture Creations blog!!

I wasn't sure what style of project to make so have chosen something simple with a bit of an interactive feature? This idea is great for kids cards too..

Sea Breeze card

The first step is to die cut an aperture into the front of your card - I like to attached the cardstock to the card base and die cut through all the layers in one pass.

You'll notice I changed my mind and added another base layer and have used this as the frame.

Don't toss the scallop square...it will come in handy!

You might do this when you make a 'shaker card' also - I decided to have the 'shaker' element a small snaplock bag of 'clear hair gel' which I squirted a little mist into - you'll see I have two different gel bags for two projects... just for a bit of fun!!

Adding a couple of different colours will give you a swirled effect - just be sure not to mix it up too much?

When you adhere the gel bag to your patterned paper, you will need to add Foam mounting tape around the outside of the bag before attaching to the front of the card - I have added two strips on top of each other to allow the bag enough height to be flat on the card.

The stamp set 'On the Ocean' has that great image of a Sailing ship which I stamped in grey ink onto a pale patterned page from the 6x6" Paper Pad and fussy cut it out -

I also stamped the 'Courage' sentiment and cut this into strips - adhered with foam strips.

It's a bit nifty that the gel leaves little bubbles... which of course, add to the water effect?

By cutting the sentiment into strips it allows you to add 'The shore' to the opposite side and cluster with the ship and the Metal Trinket, of 'the shore' - perfect colour match too!

I've also added a piece from the Ephemera pack, on the left hand side (I snipped it in half, means half for another project if you're budget savvy like me?)

...a masculine card!!

..and while this is something you may not have tried or you are not a card maker...

you can also incorporate the 'gel bag' into a layout -

the gel does eventually dry out over time so is not archival quality, but rather a fun element to add to a mini album or such?

Sea Breeze layout with a 6x6" Paper Pad

Starting with a sheet of cream cardstock I created a background with ink and mists -

the Ship's Wheel has been stamped in pale blue and pale brown across the page and then some flicking of co-ordinating blue and brown mists

...again you'll need to raise the layer with the gel bag with 2 strips of foam tape

I layered the photo on various papers from the 6x6" paper pad and the frame is from the Diecut Ephemera pack - instead of throwing away the Scallop Squares from the card I've include them on the layout too (..more budget savvy tips!)

For the Banner element I started by adhering the pre-knotted twine across the base of the photo and then foam mounted the banner pieces - easy!

The top flower is such a pretty flower... you can pull it apart and have 3 flowers, which you can then ink, colour and adhered to your project - the flatter ones are great to stamp onto also!