Beach Collage Card

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Paper Castle and my very first blog post! This card was made for a summer challenge that I participated in with the girls in my online scrappin' group. I'm usually such a perfectionist that it takes me FOREVER to come up with an idea and then actually execute it, but I've been trying hard to break out of that perfectionist mode and just play! I've been experimenting with collage a lot lately, and it's really been a lot of fun.

For this card, I first embossed the blue background paper with the Cuttlebug swirls embossing folder. Then I went over the raised areas with a chalk ink pad in a lighter shade of blue. I used spray adhesive to mount the burlap onto the background and then I added the "sand". To make the sand, I took some white glass bead gel medium and mixed in some brown paint. I spread it onto the bottom of the card and left it overnight to dry. In the morning I found that it had dried a little darker than I wanted it to, so since it was still a little tacky, I thought I'd sprinkle a little white embossing powder over it in spots to lighten it up. However, I was surprised to find that when I heated the powder, it didn't really melt into the gel medium. So I finally took some tan craft paint and a stipple brush and lightened it up that way.

The starfish is a laser cut wooden ornament that I found in Michael's this week. I glimmer misted it with Cherry Limeade and added some Radiant Rain in gold. I then added the paper shell embellishment and the gold metal shell charm. The slide mount was white, so I sponged on some Broken China and Vintage Photo distress inks to make it blend in a little better with the background. The little stamp was cut out from a paper pad of travel ephemera. Finally I added the "Summer" brad. It was bright orange but I added some Metallic Mixatives alcohol ink in gold to tone it down. I tore the edges and mounted it on a DCWV card blank. Hope this card gets you all in the mood for a great summer! Thanks for reading my first post and please leave comments and let me know how I'm doing and what I can improve upon. Go easy on me though...I'm a newbie!