New Stamps. Mermaid

Hi everyone, here is the sample that i did for my stamp launch that involves a 'big haired girl' a launch wouldn't be the same without one of these girls. 

My first job was to rough out how I wanted her to look, I scribbled notes on her about the stamps that i thought I might use.. 

Next I transferred her general shape to a piece of heavy smoothy. Then using the black side of cut n dry I blended Jade, Caribbean Sea, Southern Skies, Beach Hut, Prawn, Bougainvillea and Banana. 

Once that layer was dry I added a second layer of colour, adding the paint quite thickly and in a zig zag motion. 

I then knocked back these layers with a little Buff, this layer caught the thick ridges of the layer underneath. 

I then added a couple of coats of watery Beach Hut and stencilled some circles using Jade and Southern Skies. 

Next I stamped the grasses, using Hydrangea Archival ink, from EDY12 just in the background. I masked off the mermaid area to protect it. 

I coloured the grasses with Prawn and Tangerine Twist. 

 Then I stamped the spikey grass from EDY14, using Potting Soil Archival ink. I used Snowflake to tidy up the mermaid shape ready for painting. 

I shaded the skin with Buff, Blush, Rose and Chalk. 

The hair is Banana and Tangerine Twist. The tail is Caribbean Sea and Tangerine Twist stencilling. 

I painted some regular smoothy with Caribbean Sea and Beach Hut, over this I stamped the triangle leaf from EDY14. 

I cut the leaves out and glued them to the tail, not flat though, I left the points free so they could be curled out slightly. 

I painted more card with Caribbean Sea, then stamped just the pearls from the side of the heart EM16. 

I cut these out and added a highlight with a white posca pen. 

I painted her bra with Caribbean Sea then stamped it with one of the flower heads from EM11, this makes it kind of look like the rings of a shell. 

I attached the strings of pearls to the front of her hair and secured them with the crown from EM12. 

I felt the scales needed more shimmer, so I added a bit of metallic glaze to each one. 

I then painted some more card with a mix of colours from the limited edition range, and onto each colour I stamped lots of leaves and also the pebbles from EDY14. 

I cut out each leaf and secured them into her hair, glueing the string of pearls down over the ends of the leaves. I also added white details to the leaves with a posca pen. 

Next I painted card with Jade and stamped the grasses from EDY11. 

These were all cut out and trimmed to different lengths. 

I attached these at the bottom, under the mermaid. I then added the pebbles along the seabed. 

I mixed up some Blueberry and Purple Rain and Inky Pool and used this to paint a border around the whole page. 

Finally I loaded my brush with Snowflake and flicks lots of droplets all over the page, then I did the same with just metallic glaze. 

Here she is all finished. Miss Selena. 

Hope you enjoyed that tutorial. 

Remember all these stamps are available now from your favourite PaperArtsy retailer. 

Darcy. x