IO Design Team Challenge

Well, it is that time again! Time for another Impression Obsession Design Team Challenge. The theme of this challenge was "summer." Humm...seems appropriate! I decided to do something other than a card for this particular challenge. I was at Michaels the other day and saw these cheap little mesh totes that were perfect for decorating. The picture is a little deceptive in that the bags really are small (about 6" x 6").

To decorate the bag, I put a scrap piece of paper on the inside of the bag so that no paint would bleed through. I then cut a piece of paper the same size as the wood block of my stamp (about 4" x 3 1/2"). I placed the paper where I wanted my painted image and then placed painters tape around the outside edges of my paper to frame it. I removed my paper and was left with an area on my bag to paint. I approached the task this way because I didn't want to have to do any measuring with a ruler. I always prefer "eye-balling" my measurements.

I started by painting the area inside the tape with a layer of Gesso. I let the Gesso dry and then painted it with some light blue acrylic paint. I allowed the piece to dry and then stamped the fish image on top with Fabrico black craft ink. I allowed it to dry again and then painted the image with various colors of acrylic paint. I added some dark blue dimensional paint to the bottom bubbles and some lighter blue glitter paint to the top bubbles by the seaweed. To finish the piece, I colored the fish with a gel pen to make it shiny and covered the sand with Diamond Glaze so that I could glue real sand to the image. Luckily, this didn't take as long to dry as I thought it would. I thought Diamond Glaze was a good choice as an adhesive in that it is super strong and hopefully I won't have any stray sand wandering off of my bag. I stamped the image again onto some paper so that I could cut out the starfish and glue it on top of the sand. Here is a close up of the bag:

This design challenge is a bit smaller than usual, but be sure to check out some of the other participants. Julie, Daniela, Deborah, and Kelli all said that they would post brand new summer cards. I saw that Julie used the same exact stamp I did, so it is worth checking to see how one image can create two very different projects! Also, be sure to enter to win the blog candy on Daniela's blog. Her Impression Obsession give away month is June, and the stamp sets she is giving away are wonderful!