Urban Mermaid Designs: 2016

Sunday, 31 July 2016

Mermaid Trend in Scrapbooking Part 2

Graphic 45 are known for their high-quality products with a vintage theme. They have brought out some fun Steampunk-inspired ranges in the past and for 2016 they have combined Steampunk with Mermaids to create...Voyage Beneath the Sea.

There are 3 cool stamp sets in the collection, pockets, chipboard and 3 x paper pads.

I haven't had time to play with this one yet, but there are lots of amazing projects to check out using this collection on Pinterest or search Google images

Tim Holtz is also getting in on the trend with his new Distress ink - Mermaid Lagoon:

Also catching the mermaid wave this year are WOW! powders with a new underwater-inspired collection. I am a huge WOW! fan and had the pleasure of attending a workshop with the designer of this collection Marion Emberson earlier this year. She is super talented and when I asked her kindly to design some mermaid powders, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and said "just wait and see!" So they were obviously already in the pipeline...great minds, etc!

The line includes: Mermaid Tails, Coastal, Under the Sea and Pacific Wave

These gorgeous powders came in handy for this mixed media mermaid canvas:

I used Under the Sea and Coral Reef for the crown:

I just had to use Wow! Mermaid Tails on the mermaid's tail!

The finished piece:

Challenges:

MMW#16: Under The Sea

Creative Iinspirations - Summer Challenge Seaside

Fashionable Stamping Challenges - Stamps used for seaweed, stars, bubbles and vintage script.

Mermaid Trend in Paper Scrapbooking Part 1

Mermaids are finally making a SPLASH in the paper scrapbooking world! I have noticed quite a few lines this season with a mermaid theme, so will share them here and in the next post for all you fin-tastic and mermazing mermaid fans!

Echo Park have released a fun and girlie mermaid collection called Let's be Mermaids: by Lori Whitlock.

You can also buy a co-ordinating ephemera set and stamp & die sets:

Lawn Fawn have also released a cute mermaid stamp & die set which would work well with the Echo Park collection, How cute is that Narwhale?! :

Let's be Mermaids would be best suited to young girl or teen projects, for mixed-media and more sophisticated mermaid projects, I would recommend Mermaid Tails by Kaisercraft. This watercolour inspired range includes beautiful papers, album, stickers, die-cuts and stamps.
There are also some Kaisermists which co-ordinate with the collection.

The papers come in 12" and 6" and with Kaisercraft it's always worth buying the 6" too as some of the papers are different and they also include die-cuts and tags in the pad.

The Collectables pack is great and jam-packed with goodies (50+). It also has some large word art pieces which would be great heat-embossed with glitter powders.

A stand-out of the collection is a large scallop-shell shaped cardstock. This would be nice framed, but if they had created it symmetrically it would've also made awesome covers for a scrap album.

The only slight niggle I have with this collection is the mermaids themselves, which appear to have been created with Poser software. They have a computer-generated look which is incongruous to the style of the collection. They are in the same style as the fairies used in their Fairy Dust Collection. What a shame they didn't hire a water-colour artist to create the mermaids too.