Shabby Chic Frame

This is my project for the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week. The challenge was to use a Tim Holtz technique so I had a browse through Lord T of H's munificent Compendium of Curiosities and settled on the Shabby Chic technique and made this:

This started off as a plain and simple (and very cheap!) frame from Ikea:

The first step was to paint it... and that took some doing as, once I unwrapped the cellophane from my 2-pack of frames, I found that they were made with a kind of plasticy-coated, glossy material that not even Gesso would stick to! So I hand to give the whole thing a quick sanding to key the surface enough for paint to stick to and then I gave it a coat of Gesso and then used Black Adirondack paint dabber all over it. Once the paint was dry I stamped flower and flourish designs (both TH stamps) here and there using Distress Embossing Ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. The next step was to add a layer of pink paint all over (again using Adirondack paint dabber) and, using a piece of damp kitchen roll, wipe off the paint over the embossed areas, leaving a nice shabby chic colour wash over the entire frame.

I then die-cut Tattered Florals and Elegant Flourishes from grungepaper. I painted the flowers with pink Crackle Paint and painted the flourishes with the black paint dabber and, once dry, rubbed a little Cotton Candy Stickles over them. These were glued onto the frame, using a hot glue gun, and buttons (from my "random bits and bobs" tub) and gemstones added to the centres of the flowers. I also painted pink Paint Dabber over a little Making Memories metal word accent and wiped the excess paint away, leaving the debossed wording filled with paint, and attached to the bottom of the frame. Et voila.

I couldn't think of a more appropriate picture to put in this pretty frame than one of my very pretty (IMO) DD1. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Time to share with you a project I have been working on for a while...

Hubby didn't get a Valentine's card this year... instead he got this:

And here's how I made it:

This little project started life as this cheapy kiddy's craft kit that I picked up for a couple of pounds in Wilkinson's!

I thought it would be a fun item to alter. You can also get wooden boxes in heart (and other) shapes for a couple of quid in craft shops like Hobbycraft.

The first step was to paint the box. I used the paints that came in the little kit and painted the outside of the box red and the inside a dark grey.

The next step was decoration. I started by adding some rub-ons around the sides:

Then I made a flower to decorate the lid of the box. I glued grungeboard to patterned paper...

...and ran it through the BigShot with my Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die. I curled the petals of the flowers into shape and then added decoration... I covered the smaller flower layer with Rock Candy Stickles, used a glue pen to add black glitter to the edges of the middle layer and attached self-adhesive gems to the bottom layer. I fastened the layers together using a decorative fabric-covered brad.

Next up I used a flourish stamp to stamp a border around the edges of the lid.

I then gave the box a couple of coats of clear varnish, inside and out, and attached the flower to the lid using a hot glue gun.

Next I needed to make the contents of the box. I used a piece of scrap paper to make a rough template of the inside of the box and cut out a heart shape that would fit inside. I used the template to cut out several heart shapes from chipboard.

I then glued the chipboard hearts onto patterned paper and trimmed around the edges and repeated with a different patterned paper on the other side.

I punched holes in the chipboard hearts and threaded ribbon through the holes punched in the hearts to string them together. To prevent the string of hearts from getting too bulky, instead of tying/knotting the ribbon through the holes, I stitched the ribbon into loops.

I then stamped letters onto white card to make the greeting. I coloured the letters in with a red ProMarker, cut them out and glued them onto the chipboard hearts.

I then cut out from white shimmer card some heart shapes a little smaller than the chipboard hearts and wrote my message on these hearts before gluing them onto the reverse side of the chipboard hearts.

To finish, I dotted black and white Enamel Accents around the edges of all of the chipboard hearts to form a decorative border.

The string of hearts was then folded up and placed inside the decorated box and I tied black chiffon ribbon through the remaining hole in the topmost chipboard heart and stitched on a decorative button to make it easier to pull the string out of the box.

All in all, I'm very pleased with how this turned out... and I think hubby really liked it! :)