Stuck on U Sketches Die Cut Challenge: Crustacean

This weeks challenge at Stuck on You Sketches is a die cut challenge using a crustacean.  I will admit when I first saw that I gave a silent "Ugh!" in protest, but this turned out to be one of my favorite layouts of the year.  That is the beauty of a challenge.  It stretches your creativity and you surprise yourself with what you can do.  There is a story behind this design.  When at the beach as a child, the grown ups would give us a stick with string and a piece of bologna tied at the end. They told us to go and catch some crabs.  Of course we never caught one but  we would sit on that pier for at least an hour or so which gave them a break.  I had to tie a string on the crab's arm.

I used Wilna's style from Two Peas in a Bucket.  She uses white backgrounds with bright colors  to guide the overall design of the page.  I grabbed some paint and started with a dry brush (blue) and after cleaning it with water, I did the other crooked stripes with a wet brush. I loved the contrast it gave to these elements, including the side banners.  The echo park crab shells and beach title were cut from Silhouette designs.  I love Wilna's technique of sewing and folding paper on a layout, so the background was sewed onto kraft cardstock distressed and folded up to give the page more dimension.