Joanne Schempp's Valentia

For my card this week I chose to work with Joanne Schempp's gorgeous new Valentia digi stamp. I love this mermaid image and I had a lot of fun with this card, playing with the underwater theme...

I started off in the (for me) fairly usual way by colouring in the image with my Promarkers... but then I had the idea (one I've tried out once before when making a necklace) of using UTEE to coat the image to give a sort of shimmery underwater effect. I cut the coloured image out first and glued it firmly onto stiff cardboard (otherwise melting UTEE onto it will make the card curl inwards) and then pressed a Versmark pad over the entire image and added several successive layers of UTEE:

I love how a coat of UTEE makes the Promarker colours really intense, almost glowing. I also sprinkled in some very fine glitter powder, in shades of blue and gold, while adding the UTEE layers:

This gives a nice shimmery watery effect. I also added a few flakes of gold glass glitter here and there, allowing them to set into the UTEE. To finish off the image I swiped the edges with Versamark ink and added some embossing powder in pirate gold which I then heat set.

For the card itself, I was taken with the idea of replicating the strand of twisty seaweed from the image (which I'd added a layer of Stickles to before adding the UTEE coating) so I used some underwater-themed paper (by Graphic45) matted onto gold mirri card and cut lots of seaweed shapes using my Cameo. I cut these from plain white card and coloured them with my Promarkers, to match with the image, and also added Stickles to them:

Finally, some of the seaweed images had included little bubbles so I coloured those with Promarkers too and added them here and there, adding a layer of Glossy Accents to them for a sheeny, bubbly feel.

And that's my shimmery, sheeny, underwater mermaid card. Thanks for looking. :)

Ali xx