Under the Sea

One of my favorite new suites from the 2018-19 Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog is the Tranquil Textures Suite. The Sea of Textures Stamp Set and coordinating Under the Sea Framelits are so fun, and they’re great for kids, youth, men or women. The Tranquil Textures Designer Series Paper (DSP) is also lovely. There’s also Night of Navy Medium Baker’s Twine, a perfect embellishment for “guy cards,” and Tranquil Textures Sprinkles for fun shaker cards or to tie onto the twine.

For our swap in June, the theme is “guy cards.” It’s so easy for me to make cards for my female friends and family members. Most of my cards this week are flowers, and I’m sure – although I haven’t counted – the majority of my stamp sets have a floral theme.

I wanted to play around with the new Stampin’ Up! Embossing Mats for the Big Shot, so I decided to use the Sea of Textures Bundle (Sea of Textures Stamp Set and the Under the Sea Framelits offered at a 10% discount).

I started the creative process for this card with a color. I wanted to use Cherry Cobbler, because I haven’t for awhile. So I checked my Color Coach, and two coordinating colors were Mossy Meadow and Petal Pink. Now for the design.

I used one of the sand dollar framelits, one of the coral framelits, and the net framelit to emboss the front of a 3-1/2″ x 4″ piece of Very Vanilla Cardstock using the Big Shot Embossing Mats. I liked it, but keeping all those framlits in place for 10 cards was daunting. Even using Washi Tape, it meant a lot of extra time. I only used the net for the final project.

After embossing the Very Vanilla Cardstock, I stamped some seaweed with Mossy Meadow ink, then sponged it all over with Crumb Cake ink. For the swaps, I also stamped some coral in Petal Pink, since I hadn’t used the framelit for embossing.

I love Cherry Cobbler and Crumb Cake together, so I chose the Crumb Cake “bubbly” design from the Tranquil Textures DSP. I stamped the sentiment in Cherry Cobbler, then sponged the DSP with more Crumb Cake ink. After adhering the DSP to the Very Vanilla layer, I wrapped it with some Burlap Ribbon, cut in half lengthwise to look more nautical.

I knew I wanted to use Petal Pink ink for the octopus, but the card stock color threw me for a second. I’ve never seen an octopus live, but I think they’re kind of gray-ish pink. At least, the photos I saw are. So I chose Gray Granite Cardstock. It’s a little more brown than Smoky Slate, and I thought it would work well with the Petal Pink, as well as the Crumb Cake. I used my Stamparatus, because it needed to be stamped two times to show all the details.

Because Cherry Cobbler is darker, I added another layer of Very Vanilla inside – also sponged and stamped with some Mossy Meadow seaweed.

In case you missed it, you can see the Embossing Mats in action in this video.