Mermaids & Fairies

What girl doesn't love anything with Fairies and Mermaids?  Living in sunny Florida, I was inspired to try my hand at some fun mermaid cards.  I searched for a while to see if I might find some mermaid goodies from any of my favorite scrap sites... but alas, no luck.  I spotted an article online about piecing paper and thought I would give it a try.  I started with mermaids and ended up doing fairies as well.  Here are a few of my favorites.  

This little beauty is all blinged out with Making Memories Gem Embellishments,

I pieced together two hand drawn body section, the upper body and the tail.  It took me a few tries to get the sizes correct.  I'm no artist, so I'm sure anyone could do this! I drew a little face on her and popped some tiny gems in her eyes to really help her iris's stand out.  

I was pretty stumped on what to do with hair, so I went to my local craft store, Michael's and ACMoore to look around and see if I could get inspiration.  I was cruising down the isles and a package of moss caught my eye.  I thought, why not?  There are actually variety packs of moss that you can find easily in the stores that I've been using for all of these cards.  As you can see below, it makes for super fun and funky (and CHUNKY) hair.  I love some texture and depth on my cards, and the moss worked like a dream.  I used white craft glue to adhere it around her little head and popped a K&Company flower in her hair for a little moxie.  

Here I decided to try a 4th of July Mermaid.  She's a little curvy, but I think that's cute.  The beauty of piecing your own paper is you can make the body shape anything you like.  I love curves.  My son thinks these Mermaids are borderline "hoochie".  I think they're quirky, which suits my personality just fine.  I will say I did a google search on mermaid art to get some ideas on different ways to draw the tail.  It was a big help.  

After having a blast with making cards, I had the bright idea of making Mermaids in a shadow box.  I went to my local Michaels and bought a value pack of shadow box frames for 50% off.  www.Michaels.com  seems to always have a 50% coupon available to print out.  Handy!  The box frames were a hit and I actually started selling these at a little store in Matlacha on Pine Island.  Its a really cute area with fun art shops.  I highly recommend it if you come visit this area!  

And here is my funky fairy.  I was again stumped on how to manage the wings.  As usual, I went down to Michael's with an iced coffee in hand and started to scout for ideas.  I was looking through the dollar bins and spotted a large butterfly clip.  I loved the gray color, texture, and shine on the butterfly.  I will be honest and say I felt bad about ripping the wings off the little guy.  I know that's silly, but true!  Instead of drawing and cutting a tail for the bottom half of her body, I simply cut a long dress.  I used two small pieces of glitter ribbon for her waist.  

The moss hair has got to be my favorite thing about these cards.  I'm pretty sure I had some days in the 80's with my hair just as big.  

Hope you enjoyed my little fairytale cards.  Thanks for dropping by!  

~K