Three challenges inspired this card:

Quirky Crafts wanted to go under the sea.

Cooking It Up wanted to splash a circle.  (Hopefully, my oval is ok.)

Dream Valley Challenge wanted us to Stamp something up.

First, I used my Fiskars templates to cut out the oval from white cardstock. 

Luckily, Great Impressions Stamps had two fish and a starfish in this months offerings that came in just in time for me to use them!

I took a plain blue sheet of paper and stamped one fish in Chipped Sapphire, one in Spiced Marmalade, and the starfish in green.  I then took the portion that would go into the circle and swirled some blues (combined a couple) with a sponge over the paper.  I then put the paper inside the circle.

At this point I thought the card was just too plain.  So I added some of the leftover unswirled paper to the bottom of the card.

It still didn’t seem quite right.  I added a ribbon along the side and the “Let’s Celebrate” stamp mounted on the blue swirled paper sans stamp.  I put the card to the side.

The next morning I was looking through my Sizzix dies and found the conch shell!  I cut it out in white and blotched it with orange and green ink.  Pop dotted it onto the card, rounded the corners, and was finally happy –  very happy with the results.