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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I love the dots on the undersides of your stingrays! Everyone loves Nemo! The backrounds make your rays really stand out noticeably! Great job
Super creative!
Oh Jess, I was so excited to be living vicariously through your kayaking story…..until you got stung! (Joking here) at least you didn’t need someone to urinate on the wound to deactivate the poison! 😊
Thank you for sharing a very personal story and an adorable card!
You card is beautiful. The rays are colored so beautifully!
A fantastic card Jessica, the blue glitter is a great addition on top of the mermaid lagoon and your stingrays look awesome. Sounds like a trip of a lifetime, minus the stingray incident, but I have to say the tarantulas would have been right up there for me on that list of ‘bad memories’! LOL
Great card. I enjoyed your stingray story. I was a biology major in college and also have always been involved in music.
Your stingrays look so life like and I love the background!
What a fun stamp set! Who would have thought. Yes, love to pet the stingrays 🙂 Happy Anniversary SK.
Pretty Cards!
What a wonderful card! Love the rays and that gorgeous background ♥
Whoa, your story is freaky. I was always so paranoid around stingrays for the fear of what happened to you. What a relief your group was prepared for such an incident :S. Beautiful card! 🙂
Love the card
gorgeous card!!
I loved your story about kayaking, but it’s too bad about the stingray. I love your card, too.
Love that background and the sparkle!
Such a fantastic card..Love the glittery waves so much..
I am sorry that you got stung but I really enjoy hearing the backstories of why certain stamps sets call out to a cardmaker. I have several backstories but none so painful.
I love this card. A must have stencil.
Love your background and the design.
Jessica you really captured the essence of the stingrays. And what a great story. I’m sure that was an amazing and very memorable excursion.
What a gorgeous card! That is horrible that you got stabbed by the stingray! Were you able to finish off the trip and your foot didn’t get infected? Except for the scorpions and tarantulas, it sounds like an amazing trip, although I can’t imagine being the professor taking a bunch of students who had never kayaked on a 12-day kayaking adventure! 🙂
We got to feed stingrays while we were in the water in Grand Cayman, which kinda freaked me out at first them swimming all around us, but they were fine. One sucked my finger up in its mouth when it took the food from my hand and for a second that freaked me out too!
Super fun card! I love the background with sparkly waves. Your kayak adventure sounds amazing!
Love the card and the background is stunning! Your story is wonderful and sounds like the kind of trip my daughter would take.
SQUEAL!! LOVE LOVE LOVE your FUN Card!! SUCH an AWESOME Design!! THANKS SO MUCH for sharing and hope you have a FABULOUS Memorial Day WEEKEND!!
Love this card! and your story makes it so personal!