Good morning! Jess here with a bright and inky card for our current Inky Fingers challenge! I took the challenge literally to create this underwater world for my mermaid and her buddies from Mermaid for You!

To start I took a scrap piece of plastic from a stamp set package and smooshed Distress Ink in Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon, Peacock Feathers, Blueprint Sketch, and Tumbled Glass across the plastic in a loose diagonal pattern. Then I spritzed the inks with water and used my finger to mix the colors together and soften up the lines from the mini ink cubes. I turned the plastic over and pressed it to a piece of watercolor paper. I left it in place for a good 20 seconds to allow the ink to really soak into the paper. Then I lifted the paper and pounced it a few times over the panel. The darker splotches and dots really help create dimension and texture. Then I set that aside to dry (and washed off my fingers…ha!)

While that was drying I stamped my mermaid from Mermaid For You with Lawn Fawn’s Copic-friendly Jet Black ink and masked her with a post-it note. Then I stamped the narwhal so that it would appear that she was riding him. I also stamped a few seahorses from the set. I colored them with Copic markers and then cut them out. I added accents with a white gel pen, a silver glitter Spica pen, and a few dabs of Crystal Glaze!

I stamped the sentiment from Mermaid For You onto vellum and heat-embossed it with Silver Embossing Powder before cutting it down to a fishtail flag. I adhered the vellum to the watercolor panel with vellum adhesive and then added my mermaid and seahorses with foam mounting tape. Finally I added a few bubbles of Crystal Glaze to the background for a little more dimension!

And that’s it! You have a few more days, until Sunday at 11:59PM ET to get inky and enter our Inky Fingers Challenge! I can’t wait to see what you’ll create!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a fantastic day!

–Jess