My Dancing Mermaid... and a Quick Best Friends Frame!

This is my entry for the April Monthly Challenge:  Reuse, Repurpose, Recyle. 

Mermaids have been swimming in my mind.  I have been doing a little surgery to combine fish and figures to find a mermaid I liked.  Not yet happy with the results, once I read the requirements for the April Monthly Circle Blog Challenge:  Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, I knew it was time to figure out the mermaid.  I grabbed all my rejects and a little trash too!

I figured out combining the cuts to create a mermaid.

Using an old folder divider with an interesting print, I cut the fish body.  This was my first recycled/repurposed element.  The dancer is from Shall We Dance (page 29), cut at 4-1/2".  The fish is from Pagoda (page 42), cut at 5-1/2".  I cut additional fish at 5-1/2" and 4-1/2" to add to the tail.  I used a little vellum on the second 5-1/2" tail and embellished with adhesvide beads.  The mermaid's hair is all hand-cut. The charm on her necklace was cut from Life is a Beach, page 45, at 1/2" and detailed with a Sharpie and a Zig fine pen.

The shadowbox itself is my second recycled/repurposed element.  This was headed for the garbage can after getting wet and the original artwork was destroyed.  For the purpose of this challenge,  I was so glad I had held onto it after so many times wanting to toss it in the trash! 

I used a beautiful box lid for the frame of my shadow box (my third recycled/repurposed element), adding extra ink to get some darker areas so that it would relate to the darker paper inside the frame.  This covered up the damaged areas on the shadowbox!

The background paper was also a fun way to use a previous mess-up.  That paper was actually fabric I found on-line and printed out.  Having miss-cut it for another project, I had tossed it aside but was able to use it for this project.  I cut additional strips and popped them up to get a little more dimension in the background.

I used a loop of paper to pop up only the head and torso of the mermaid.

I was able to add layers of dimension by folding an element for the floor of the scene.  This allowed for the seaweed, which was cut from the Spongebob cartridge (page 76), at 2-1/4" and 1-3/4". 

The starfish were cut at 1" from Life is a Beach (page 65).

My daughter told me yesterday that she wanted this when I finished it.  This morning, I asked her if she liked it while I was photographing the finished project.  She told me the starfish needed smiles.  I think I know who ProvoCraft consulted with for carts like Simply Charmed!  I have a feeling she will be adding to this project once it gets to her room!


I also wanted to share a super quick little project that I did on the Imagine:

This is the 3D frame from Sesame Street Seasons, cut at 7".  I used a pattern on Cricut Imagine cartridge Hopscotch.  The 'Best Friends' topper is from Imagine More, cut at 1.6".  Super fast and the perfect size for a 2-1/2" x 3-1/4" wallet size (standard size in Windows Gallery).  I added some flowers I had laying around that I cut out from Mother's Day Bouquet -- just some that I had cut for fun when I first received that cartridge.  The colors just happened to match.

Thank you for visiting my blog today!