One Fish, Two Fish ...

This latest adventure started yesterday evening, when I was trying to get more prepared for my Open House on Sunday, but instead I was distracted by a most excellent post on SCS, and Creative Avoidance set in once again.

The SCS post was (to use a Jan Tink phrase) stinkin' cute, so I had to CASE it immediately. The original SCS post can be found here, and she directs you here for the instructions on how to fold the fish. My creations are a combination of the two cards. I have to say, this is one of the cleverest uses for Stampin' Up!'s Round Tab punch I have seen yet.

First, I visually scanned my nearby, ever-present scrap pile, and grabbed some Blue Bayou, Basic Gray, Certainly Celery, and Apricot Appeal. The only non-SU items on this guy are the googlie eyes.

The seaweed is made from punches using the Horizontal Slit punch (CASEd idea). LOTS of gluing, but I really like the look.

I used the Alpha Bits set, stamped with SU's Basic Gray (my new favorite SU neutral color!) on the same color as the base card. The CASEd card used the same color as the background, but I thought the Basic Gray was a little too dark. She also used UTE powder on the bubbles, and I considered using Crystal Effects, but I decided not to in the end. Word of caution: Select a short phrase if you plan to make more than one of these puppies...my hand is feeling the effects of all that punching!

Now that I look at it, this entire card is punched! What was I thinking?!

Recipe (All Stampin' Up! except for the eyes): Stamps - Alpha Bits; Card stock - Apricot Appeal, Blue Bayou, Basic Gray, Certainly Celery; Ink - Basic Gray; Accessories- Round Tab Punch, 1/4 inch punch, Horizontal Slit punch, black marker, Two-Way Glue Pen, bone folder, googlie eyes.

I wanted to use non-In Colors, just to show I could do it, so the rest of these use Brocade Blue, Bashful Blue, Apricot Appeal and Certainly Celery.

Also, these next two are all-SU since I used the punches to make eyes to replace the googlie eyes. This is basically the same as the first one, just with different colors, and I inked the edges of the punches with Pumpkin Pie ink.

As I was setting the punched eyes in glue, I thought it would be sooo easy to make expressions on their faces - like rolling eyes, etc. Just a passing thought, in case any of you reading this want to 'twist' the idea a bit. ;-)

This version uses the leaf and stem from Bodacious Bouquet instead of the punches to make the seaweed. MUCH easier on the old hands!

I tried to make the bubbles look like air bubbles coming out of their mouthes...talkative little buggers, aren't they...



[No, I am still at Blogger's mercy as far as how the spacing works, so scroll, please ....]


These last two samples incorporate the Cuttlebug Bubble Embossing Folder. Hey, I just had to try it! I think I really like it as a background, but I had to cut back on the speech bubbles as it was busy enough already. Fortunately, the smaller phrase was MUCH easier to punch, too. ;-) I included a blank bubble for the other fish so it looked like they were breathing...what can I say.

So for mass production, this will not be my first choice - too much punching! But I can certainly see the potential for twisting it up a bit with the flexiblity in phrases, eye placement. and even fish placement. As I was typing that last photo description, my mind wandered to a fish floating upside down...is that sick, or what?!?!?!

Well, I guess I'll go hang up the SU-only samples for my Open House and consider this a successful evening. Off to play some more, but I am done with the fish (for tonight.)