From This To This......

I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed at how you can turn a white piece of card or a blank surface into something completely different, just by using paint and ink and a few embellishments.

This piece started off as a blank wooden frame around a small mirror – one of two that I purchased at a local car boot sale…never underestimate just how useful these places can be for crafters and artists!

I was inspired by two things when starting this project – Kay from IndigoBlu and the free Bird Stamp that came with the June issue of Craft Stamper magazine. Kay did a mirror with a seaside theme on the Create & Craft TV programme, it was really lovely so I was inspired to pull one of the mirrors from the ‘to do’ pile and make my version of it. The Bird Stamp made me think of a garden floral type theme so that’s where I headed.

Now, as is usual for me, I forgot to take photographs as I went along. I started out well with the first three pics.....

then got so in-grossed each time I worked on it that the photo thing went out of the window - that reminder note I’ve pinned above where I sit is sooo not working!

So with this one you’ve got more of a written explanation rather than a visual one.

I gave the frame a coat of Black Gesso then some Acrylics in different blues,  then I painted a 12x12 piece of Patterned Paper with Acrylic then cut it to size and cut the aperture from the middle to fit the mirror. I roughened and distressed the edges with a Scissor Blade. I used Texture Paste through a Branch Stencil then painted over it in toning colours and added some pink and gold for the ‘blossom’. I then randomly stamped Flowers, Birds, Foliage and Dragonflies in Black Ink without really taking too much care where I stamped. I also stamped circles using a Plastic Spray Bottle Top and gold grid lines using a Plastic Loyalty Card. I randomly added Metal Effect Embossing Powder and there’s a bit of pink Gilding Wax in some areas too.

The Butterflies were stamped onto Tissue Paper then coloured with a Promarker, then ModPodged onto the frame, then a bit of doodling with a White Gel Pen. The bird was stamped onto White Card, coloured with Distress Ink and given a layer of Glossy Accents. The Bird Cage is a Recollections Die Cut, which I painted and embossed and gilded, adding a little Brad to the top.

I painted the paper flowers with White Gesso and then Luminarte H2os, using them to embellish around the aperture along with a bit of Lace and some turquoise Gems thrown in for good measure! 

I wanted this to be quite restrained and distressed so I tried really hard not to be neat and tidy and not to over embellish. When it was nearly finished I wasn’t really that happy with it – I felt it was too dull, that it didn’t ‘pop’ enough. I think that’s down to the colour palette I’ve used so I just continued with it to see how it ended up rather than adding it to the abandoned pile – I’m sharing because I’m really quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Onwards now to the next little project…a handmade colouring book birthday gift for a little girl who’s got a thing for colouring and drawing and who just loves pencils and paper…she sounds perfectly normal to me!