By the sea

Hi crafter's

This is going to be my entry for the Clarity stamp challenge, the theme is Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. My inspiration for this was the glass bottom boats tourists use to see the marine life without getting wet, and the perfect thing for this was the rowing boat by Tando Creative. The first thing I did was paint all the pieces with acrylic paint, I used teal but added some white for a lighter colour. My boat is made up of four layers, the back piece, two edge pieces that have no centre( this will give depth ) and the front. I have loads left over from this kit for other projects. When the paint was dry I loaded a dry fan brush with white acrylic and lightly swiped over the front and back to give a weathered look. Whilst I had the acrylics out I painted one of the oars making it more white than the boat so it will stand out. Now for my under the water scene. First I used the the back of the boat as a template and cut out a piece of white card, then coloured with the chisel end of the promarkers. You don't have to be too perfect or blended just go from side to side. I used dark and light blue plus some green, you don't want it too dark where you're going to stamp. Now for the fun bit, you need some isopropyl alcohol, or blending solution and a pipette. Isopropyl is a lot cheaper than blending solution and is easy to buy on the internet. Fill the pipette and scatter drops of alcohol all over,the marker pens will  start to move and form the bubbles. Don't be too heavy handed you can always add more. Using a black Memento ink pad stamp the coral and fishes then colour in with promarkers. I then used some glossy accents to make the bubbles coming from the fishes mouths. When this is finished stick to the bottom of the boat then add the two edge pieces on top. Before sticking the top piece in place stamp the word water at the bottom. The stand was made from a left over piece from the boat kit. I wanted to colour the stand with my alcohol inks but chipboard is no good for this, so to make it into a surface I could use I painted it with white metallic acrylic paint, then coloured the usual way with stream, stonewashed and caramel. You can only do this with metallic paints any others will not work. To attach the boat to the stand I cut a small triangle of greyboard and bent this in half, I used a hot glue gun to stick this to the stand and then stuck the boat to the triangle. The oar was attached leaning at an angle on the boat . To finish I used peel offs for the shells and starfish coloured with promarkers and a piece of string to moor the boat.

That's all this time, hope you like it.

Thanks for looking

Sally