Good morning!! I’m thrilled to be a stop on the hop for the 2nd Anniversary Blog Hop for Studio Katia! Studio Katia is celebrating their Anniversary with a new release!! The May 2018 release includes 6 new clear stamp sets and 4 sets of coordinating dies, 4 new stand-alone creative dies, 2 new stencils and new embellishments!! Today I’m using the adorable Under the Sea set for my card!
So storytime…while in college I took a field ecology course over the summer of my sophomore year. I was a music major but always enjoyed science so I took a few extra science courses just for fun. And this class was a 12 day, 100 mile ocean kayaking trip in the Baja Peninsula. I had literally never been in a kayak prior to taking the class (as was the case for every student in the class) so it was definitely a crash course in learning how to kayak. We camped on deserted virgin beaches every night and basically saw no one the entire time we were kayaking. And it was amazing! It was stunningly beautiful and we saw tons and tons of wildlife everyday…rays, dolphins, scorpions, sea birds, tarantulas, and countless fish! The only bad part of the trip…on the 5th day of our trip I was pushing my kayak through the waves and I stepped on a stingray. And made him REALLY mad. I never knew how much control stingrays have over their stingers and that they can drive those suckers straight down through the top of your foot. And the pain was like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life. And the cure…is to put your foot in a bucket with ocean water and pour boiling water into the bucket to break down the poison sheath and stop the pain. Yeah…that was exciting. Needless to say now I look at the aquarium tanks with the “pet the stingray” displays very differently than most people. 😉
Anyway, as soon as I saw the stingrays in the Under the Sea set I wanted to use them on a card! I started by blending peacock feathers and mermaid lagoon distress oxide ink onto a piece of white cardstock. Then I splattered the panel with water and blotted off the excess. Next I laid the Brush Stroke Waves stencil over the panel and applied a thin layer of blue topaz glimmer paste! I let that dry and then trimmed the panel down to 4″ by 5.25″.
Next I stamped the stingrays onto watercolor paper with versamark and heat-embossed them with silver embossing powder. I watercolored them with my mijello mission gold watercolors and let them dry. Then I masked off the bottoms and added splatters of dark grey paint to give them the look of an eagle ray (like the teacher ray from Finding Nemo!). I used the coordinating dies to die-cut them and then added a layer of spectrum noir clear sparkle to their tops.
I stamped the sentiment on white cardstock and heat-embossed it with silver embossing powder before trimming it down to an angled label. I adhered the stenciled panel to a card base, and added the rays and sentiment with foam mounting tape. Finally I finished the card with a few iridescent bubbles! Maybe it was a form of catharsis…but I really had fun with this card! 🙂
To celebrate their anniversary Studio Katia is giving away TWO $100 CAD Gift Certificates every day of the Blog Hop! That’s FOUR chances to win big!!! The winners will be chosen randomly from comments left on ALL blogs of the Blog Hop.
To enter:
You should have arrived from Erum and Ilina is your next stop. If you get lost you can find the full hop list below or visit the Studio Katia Blog! This is the second day of a two day blog hop so make sure to hop along on day one for more chances to win!
- Studio Katia (Rowena)
- SimonSaysStamp
- Amy Kolling
- Crystal Thompson
- Dana Gong
- Erum Tasneem
- Jessica Frost Ballas –> You are here!
- Ilina Crouse
- Heather Hoffman
- Tracy Freeman
- Olga Moss
- Simon Hurley
- Carol Mayne
- Laurie Case
- Kristina Pokazanieva
- Kari VanNoy
- Natalia Zubkova
- Amanda Bodine
- Liliya Rytsar
Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful day! Happy hopping!! 🙂
Interested in the products I used? To make them easy for you to find, I have listed them below. (Affiliate disclosure can be found here). Your purchases through my links help keep my blog running with no additional cost to you and I thank you so much for the support!!
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That glimmer paste is everything! Such a gorgeous background!
Such a gorgeous card!
so beautiful work as usual. I am fan !!
Beautiful card and wonderful backstory, painful though it may have been!
Very nice card
Love your story and your card. My Mom and I went to a local aquarium and were at the pet the ray area. A boy next to us was poking at a sea cucumber and wasn’t happy. He tries to squirt the boy, but got my Mom instead. I have a son named Ray. We have several Ray ornaments on our Christmas tree. I love your work!
Whoa, great card!
Ooooh, Love that sparkly background! Great card!
Wow, your card is absolutely gorgeous ! I do love how you coloured the sting rays so much !! And your background is perfect !! This stencil is really beautiful and I love how you used it, first time I see it used this way on the blog hop and it reaaaallllyyyy caught my eye !! Congrats !
Love your card Jessica! From the way you painted your stingrays to the great background colour choices and that glimmer paste with the stencil – all fabulous! And then you top it all off with a memorable story 😀
Jessica, I am surprised you used stingray stamps for your card after reading your story. You are very brave lady. 🙂 Love how you created the ocean background.
Love how you used the Brush Stroke Waves Stencil! Beautiful!
Lovely card and great detail!!
Your card is stunning… and I love that you had a story to share with it. I really love the silver on white of the sentiment, and have a card in the works that was missing something…. I think I found my solution. Thanks for the inspiration.
Take care
Tracy
I adore this card! The background is just gorgeous!
Gorgeous card!! I love the sparkly background!!
Awesome card! Love the sparkle. Sorry about your foot.
Marcia m
Such a fun card!!
Wow! What a stunning card you’ve made! Love that gorgeous background.
This is a lovely card – I love, love, love how you did the background, and the rays are perfect! (And I cringed at the story you told – owie, owie, owie!!!) Thanks for sharing all of it!
Were you in single or double kayaks? Hope they were ocean kayaks at least.
Your card is so fun. I love how you did the background and added the glitter paste over it. Yikes, that sounds so painful! Sounds like the overall trip was worth it though.
Wow!! That was a harrowing event! I can’t believe you would ever want to be in the water again!! So sorry! But I love your beautiful card with those (bad, bad stinger) stingrays!!!
We have had several excursions with stingrays. My favorite one was when we got to feed them. They suck up the food like a little vacuum! 🙂
That sounds like such an awesome summer course you took in college…except for the stingray part 😉 Your card looks great! I love how you used glimmer paste with the stencil.