Cosie's Creative Corner

Swimming By To Say Hi This lovely mermaid is this month beautiful image from Gerda Steiner designs for the monthly challenge. Gerda will send you the freebie every month if you join and buy the first one and make a card etc and link it to the challenge. A lovely way to add to your digi collection and her images are adorable. I enjoy making scenes and this one is maybe a little bit fussy but it was fun. The background is made by colouring water colour paper using distress inks then adding salt when it is still wet. The salt absorbs the moisture and you are left with this lovely mottled background. I used heavy cardstock on this card as I wanted a more spotty look. The mermaid and shells are coloured with copics and the seaweed and small fish are  from a stamp set by Kaiser called Mermaid tails.  The shells are from two Darkroom Door sets called Seaside Vol 1  and Seaside Vol 2  and some extra seaweed from the Under the sea set . The sentiment was computer generated...

The Lighthouse This month the image for the challenge is this lovely lighthouse drawn by Laurian the Design Team Leader. I love the sea and had fun making this card. Recently bought a new die called waves, from Couture Creations, so this was the perfect time to try it out and I love the result. I printed the image twice, used one for a mask so I could distress ink the background then coloured it with copics. Cut the wave die and then used sections to frame the rocks, added white gel pen highlights and I had a nice stormy sea. The beams are white SU ink and the stars white gel pen. Copics: Lighthouse: N1,3,5. R14.46. Y32. Rocks: E53,55,57.

The Elegant 50's The theme this month is the Elegant 50's and Dark Room door has this fabulous stamp set called Just My Style  that is perfect for this era. I used water colour pencils for the image and distress inks for the background. The stamps I used on the background and the sentiment are from Just My Style and another great set called 1920's Chic , also from Dark Room Door. The Eiffel Tower stamp is an old one by Justjohanna. Had fun playing with the background and love the way it all turned out.

Resist Day 3 Today there were some interesting embossing videos and I decided to case a technique and card by Kristina. I remember doing this years ago but this time I had a lot of trouble ironing of the embossing so I could stamp on top of it. Finally was happy enough with it to make a card but I think I will try another embossing powder next time to see if it makes it a bit easier. The background stamp is from Hero Arts called Dots Background and the sentiment from the Stampin Up set  Really Good Greetings. I used my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolours to paint the background and the hearts were embossed with a coarse embossing enamel to give it a thick glossy finish. Added a few sequins to finish it of.

Heat Embossing  Decided to do the embossing heat wave class with Kristina and Jennifer then realized I was away for all of it. I have been in Bali for 8 days and was so tired when I arrived home it has taken a couple of days to get motivated and to check out Day 1. Some great ideas and it's nice to revisit the tips and tricks of old favourites. Did manage to get a card done and used my new stamp set from the latest SSS kit.  called Hand Written Floral Greetings. Stamped the background on watercolour paper, then the flower and extra leaves on another piece, and coloured them with distress inks. I then fussy cut them out and mounted some leaves and the flower to give the card dimension. The flower and the hello die from Kaiser is gold embossed and I also gold embossed the card base edges.