Ocean-Themed Printables for Beautiful Cards
Today we're happy to have a special guest return to the blog – Essie! She is sharing some great cards using new ocean-themed digital products from our June release. Take it away, Essie!
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Hello friends! This month I want to showcase the three new Hero Arts Digital Printables. There are three separate printables this month, each beautiful and with its own sentiments. The price point is soooo low, the gratification is immediate (no shipping!), so I’ve made a card for each new printable: the Dolphins, the Sea Turtle, and the Sea Otters.
I had an overarching design idea, and that made it so simple to create these cards. Here are those ideas (which would work for more, more, more cards!):
- Make the sea creature the star.
- Create a simple background that mimics the ocean.
- Use nature’s colors as the palette (I used Copics for the sea creatures, by the way).
- Use a sentiment from the printables.
- Add a little shine and texture.
With those ideas, each card came together so simply! Here’s what’s what:
Dolphins: The dolphins are die cut using Oval Infinity Dies, popped up with foam and matted with silver cardstock. The background is the Dark Sea Bold Print. I blended my ocean colors on the stamp using a brayer and blending brushes, spritzed it lightly (very lightly!) with water and then stamped it onto lightweight cardstock. (I love it!!). The sentiment comes from the printable, and I colored the cardstock to blend with the background, but popped it up for some more texture and ran the sentiment through my Minc machine to add silver foil to the words.
Otters: The sea otters are fussy cut and popped up on a three-layer background. I used an action wobbler to pop up the otters, but some foam or a few layers of card stock would work, too. The background starts with a wood print from Designer Woodgrain on Sand cardstock. Layer two uses the Arches Infinity Dies with blended Blue Hawaii and Blue Raspberry Reactive Inks and white splatters (try the Unicorn Ink Reinker). The Third layer is the next small arch die and has the sentiment printed on it from the printable. I added ocean colors with the Sea Palette Reactive Cubes to this layer, which I blotted onto a piece of plastic, spritzed with water, and then ink smooshed them to suggest splashes of the ocean. For shine and texture, I added some iridescent baubles from my stash.
Sea Turtle: I fussy cut the sea turtle and used a black fineliner marker around the edges to help the image stand out from the background. For the background (really fun to make!), I blended an A2 panel with Sea Palette Reactive Inks and then (heat setting first is a good idea!) I added the Rays of Color Stencil on the background and blended over the dark ocean color with Fog Reactive Ink. Next up, I smooshed plenty of Clear Embossing & Watermark Ink to the bottom third of the card and heat embossed it with Sand Embossing Powder (which is my all-time favorite embossing powder. Ever.) For some sparkle and even more texture I added select “bubbles” using the Large Sprinkled Dots Stencil with Glitter Hero Paste. I popped up the turtle with foam tape, and added a sentiment from the printable, again helping the sentiment blend into the sand by coloring it “sandy” with a Copic maker.
That’s it…and since you’ve kindly made it through my entire 3 card tutorial, 1: Thank you! And 2: You’re awesome!
I hope you’ll give printables a try – and I’d really LOVE to see what you create!
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Thanks for all the great inspiration, Essie!
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1 Responses
Kelly Santi
June 25, 2023
These are so magical! I’m literally going up and down as not to miss a single detail. Such sweet cards!