Make your own Mermaid – Combine Two Stamps for a One-of-a-kind Look

Have you ever had an idea that got stuck in your craw and wouldn’t leave? Well marrying up the bear from All Inside with the tail from Inner Mermaid has been sitting in my head for quite a while, and I finally had to try it out! Hello everyone! It’s Sandy here with a little bit of crazy fun!

First, I laid the stamps on some Neenah cardstock in my MiniMisti….in this case it won’t matter which gets stamped first – I’ll mask off everything below the bear’s paws and the tippy top of the tail; that can be done either with a sticky note or by wiping ink off the stamp like I did.

The bear is a little fatter around the middle (like me!?!?) so the top of the tail has to be widened. I did that with a Copic Multiliner. Oh after stamping hearts for “bubbles” which will make it easier to draw in shorter lines.

Now for the coloring! I used YG03 and YG21 first, tucking greens into a few sections….

I added some Y02 and RV00 in other sections – the Y02 is a good color for blending all these together!

For the shells and bubbles, I used some B06 and BG02…nice pop of color!

I drew in some bubbles…

While most mortal crafters are content to stop there – not me! I reinked up my B16 to start coloring in all that water! Yes the new Copic Inks are here – that’s the new bottle laying down! They look like pens, but aren’t….and not all the colors are in (it’ll take some time for Copic to fill the world’s orders after the long drought!) so be sure to click the Notifications button and you’ll get an email when the color is back in stock. I got tired of coloring around the bubbles really fast – so just went right over them so my background would be a little more even.

One way to disguise some of the streaks – add bubbles! You can use the colorless blender, or any of the light colors like B000. Make some crazy colored bubbles with other light hues!

I wouldn’t call any coloring “complete” until there’s some white pen detail added – ha! – so each bubble has a little sparkle on top!

I finished it off by trimming the colored panel down and popping it onto a card base with some dimensional adhesive…the sentiment was heat embossed onto black paper with white powder, then cut it out in a circle – and a white layer – with the circle dies.

So now my head can rest, I’ve now made a mermaid out of a bear stamp…ha! I guess you would call it a….bearmaid? A merbear? Let me know in comments what this little character should be called!

A little treat….

I also used my merbear on the cover of an art journal I made, and there’s a video for that one over on my blog. It’s not as strong in color as this, but you might like it! The art journal is one for my new intermediate-level Copic Art Journaling class – in which I teach some fun coloring techniques and easy-to-draw images!

Alrighty that’s it for me – if you make yourself a merbear, or a bearmaid, be sure to tag me on Instagram, I’d love to see what you create!

Sandy

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