Dipping a toe in the Water :o)

I recently got a new embossing folder which was the starting point for this project - a World Map - as my son is 18 in a couple of days and in the last year has been to both Australia and America (lucky boy!) I thought it would be appropriate to make something for him using it.  He has enjoyed his travels and plans to return to Australia as soon as he can.

So I ran a piece of card through my Big Shot, coloured it, then tore the edges and edged them in brown, then placed it onto a backing piece with some Hot of the Press paper covered in compasses.  The compasses then made me want to add a sailing ship so I searched through my ever growing pile of stamps and came across just the right set of stamps - PaperArtsy HP1202.

 My son also loves fishing, we even took him sea-fishing one birthday, so I decided to use the rest of the stamps as well.  I stamped some of them onto some cream cardstock and the others onto watercolour paper. The compass was the same size as the one on the embossing folder so I attached this with a brad at the center.  I then tried to position all the elements in a way I was happy with in order to create a card.  (You may have noticed I don't usually do cards (!) ).  This is not going to be an exception as I ended up changing my mind and painting a canvas for the back-drop!

Using a palette knife to scrape over the canvas I used some acrylic paints in blues, stones, yellow and a little touch of reddy-brown to give a mottled effect.  I then added a piece of linen to the canvas, wrapped a strip of hessian ribbon across the middle and then built up the picture on this.  I used Tim Holtz's watercolour technique on some of the stamped images using Faded Jeans and Worn Lipstick - by stamping them onto my craft sheet and then using a water brush to pick up the colour and add to the picture, and then used Brushed Corduroy to colour the torn edges which I had added on some of the images.

  

I stencilled through a mask with Faded Jeans to represent netting in two of the corners and as a final touch added a wooden lotto counter with the number 18.  (Another little Tim Holtz touch :o) )

I hope he likes it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

I wish to enter this into the following challenges:

A Vintage Journey - Challenge 9 Use Every Stamp in a Set - here:  http://www.vintagejourney.com/2014/06/challenge-9-use-every-stamp-in-set.html

The Artistic Stamper - By The Seaside - here:  http://www.theartisticstampercreativeteam.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/julys-challenge-by-seaside.html

Open Minded Crafting Fun Challenges - Challenge 14 Water Water Everywhere - here:  http://open-mindedcraftingfun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/challenge-14-water-water-everywhere.html

4 Crafty Chicks Challenge Blog - Challenge 201 Nautical - here:  http://www.4craftychicks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/4-crafty-chicks-201-nautical.html

That's Crafty Challenge Blog - All At Sea - here: http://thatscraftychallenges.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/all-at-sea-challenge.html

 and also

The Stamping Chef's - Tic Tac Toe Challenge (on Facebook) - here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/TSCRecipes/