I'm back at last.......

Well it's good to be back - Mr Lottie had his open heart surgery earlier in the month and we are back home.  Doc says it will take about a year to return to full fitness - but hey, that's great - he's got a new lease of life.

I took a few hours off from 'nursing' duties to have a play - and it was great!   I moved a lot of my 'messy' crafting stuff back out into my garden studio (just lifting out drawers and swapping them with the empty ones out there)

On Cardmaking Paradise they are having a 'fun week' where you are set a task to create something.  The next few weeks are going to be pages for a textured book.  The first page was one using buttons - but at that stage I hadn't located or sorted mine out so I just made a texture page!

 I used one of my favourite stamps as inspiration - a mermaid which I stamped on a coaster first then glued it on to the house shape page.  I  broke up some large shells and used chunky bits across the sea bed - gluing htem on with bath sealent to raise them up to give a 3D texture to the underwater scene.

 Some fine dry twigs were painted in sea blues and green and tucked under the shells

I used plasterers 'tape' (which is rough open threaded string like stuff) for the hair, and other sea weed 'flotsom' - I pulled it to bits picking out individual threads and then painted them black for the hair and greens and blues for the sea weed etc - left them to dry - before gluing them on over and under shells, and other sea life

Why on earth I didn't think of using black sewing cotton I do not know - it would  have been much quicker!

I poured a clear selant over the top and left it to dry in the sun.

In 'real life' it really looks wet and as though she is under the sea. I quite like the shiny little painted fish swimming in and out of her hair!