Altered Heart Frame

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope that if you are celebrating today you get lots of flowers or chocolates or a wonderful dinner or whatever your heart desires! I myself am planning a Valentine's breakfast with The Boyfriend, because he has to work tonight, followed by a nice relaxing day of doing whatever I want. =) Anywho....on to the crafting! Today I have an altered frame to show you. I bought this wooden frame at Michael's for a dollar, with no idea what I was going to do with it but thinking that it would be fun to customize. Then a friend of mine got engaged, and I thought it would be fun to make the frame into something sweet that her and her fiance could put an engagement or wedding photo in. Right as I was having this idea Basic Grey released their Kissing Booth collection, and I thought it would be perfect to use for the frame. So here it is:

When I saw that "happy beginnings" title sticker, I knew I needed to incorporate it into this project somehow. Engagement is, after all, a happy beginning! =) I also used another large sticker from the sticker sheet, and both stickers are popped up on foam dots to give the piece more dimension. The flowers are all Prima, and one has a Kissing Booth brad for a center. I also used an Idea-ology memo pin to hold up a die cut from the collection.

The ribbon is just something from my stash that happened to coordinate nicely. This collection just worked out beautifully for this project....I can't say enough about how fun it is to work with. I especially love that lined paper...so versatile! Anyway, enough gushing...when I get started on Basic Grey I could go on all day! =P I also want to give a shout out to the marvelously talented Tammy Tutterow. I follow her blog and she is always posting the most gorgeous altered art projects. This frame wasn't necessarily inspired by any one project of hers, but her wonderful altered frames were definitely an inspiration in getting me started.

Happy Valentine's Day again, and thanks for looking!

*~M~*



Valentine's Day Card

Hello Bloglanders! Today I have a quick card to share. I was browsing through some blogs the other day and came across this older post at Lily Pad Cards. I thought the three different colors with the white embossing was really striking, and it inspired me to try a trick with my favorite background stamp. Here is the result:

I thought it would be cool to stamp the same background on three different solid-colored papers (these are from the Basic Grey Kissing Booth collection) then cut them into three equal parts and piece the background back together using strips of each color. I think it worked fairly well, and the cool part is you get three cards from this technique! The background stamp is from the Basic Grey Out of Print collection, and the sentiment is in one of the coordinating sets from the Kissing Booth collection. The flowers are chipboard pieces from that collection as well. I'm surprised how many projects I'm getting from the Kissing Booth collection, because I wasn't initially interested in it, thinking that I wouldn't want to make that many Valentine's projects! =P I've got some more to share as the week goes on.

I will be entering this card into two challenges: the Basic Grey Challenge Blog, and the Simon Says Stamp Challenge.

Thanks for looking! One more day...do you have all your Valentines done? =)

*~M~*

Love Tag

Hello Blog Readers! I've been busily working on some Valentine's projects over the last few days and now I've just got to work on getting them posted. The first one is a tag. This tag actually started as something completely different. I was going to try a couple new techniques and they just didn't work out. So then I had a tag background that needed embellishing and I had to come up with a new idea. The final layout for the tag was actually inspired by Tim's tag for the 1st day of 12 Tags of Christmas 2011. (Here is the tag I did for that day originally, if you're interested. =) )

I started by coloring the tag with Antique Linen, Worn Lipstick, and Victorian Velvet Distress Inks. Then I distressed the edges of the tag and then edged it with Aged Mahogany. I sprayed the background with a little Biscotti Perfect Pearls mist, just to give it a little shimmer. You can barely see it in the second photo there, but I stamped the large background from the Papillon set in Tattered Rose, then stamped the butterflies, a sentiment, and a flourish from another set in Vintage Photo.





The letters are grungeboard letters colored with Victorian Velvet and then covered with gold Perfect Pearls. I also used a ton of dies on this: the roses are made from the Tattered Pinecone die....it was my first try at making the roses, I think they turned out fairly well. =) (See Tim's insanely awesome video on making these here) Also I used the Tattered Banners, Festive Greenery, Autumn Gatherings, and Vintage Lace strip dies to make the other embellishments. I think everything was cut from Kraft Core....I'm not sure about the lace because I had it pre-cut from another project in a drawer. I also covered the lace in some Antique Linen Stickles for even more sparkly goodness. =)

Ooh, I almost forgot about the ribbon! It's the ribbon from the Idea-ology Trimmings pack, and I died it using Aged Mahogony and Vintage Photo Distress Inks. I do this by just putting a little ink from the pad directly on my craft sheet, squirting it with some water, and then squishing the ribbon around in it until it's colored how I want it. I know this can be done more easily by just swiping the ribbon directly with Distress Stains, but I highly doubt that it's as FUN. There's just something about squishing something around in ink and getting your fingers all messy that is super fun. Especially when the result is something beautiful. =)

I think that's all I have to say about this one. I think I will enter this in Hels Sheridan's Sunday Stamper challenge. Check out her awesome blog and the challenge here.

Thanks for looking!

*~M~* 

Grungy Monday 35 - ATC

Hello Blog Readers! I wanted to title today's post "Watercolor Paper + Distress Inks + Perfect Pearls Mist = Happiness", but I decided that was just too darn long. However, I must say that this combo makes me VERY happy. So I used it to make an ATC today for this week's Grungy Monday challenge. Check out the Studio L3 blog for the details, and it's never a bad idea to visit Tim's blog for all kinds of wonderfulness. (That may not be a word....oh well. =P ) Anyway, here's a pic of the background of my ATC, which was cut from watercolor paper using the ATC die, colored with Tumbled Glass, Broken China, and Faded Jeans Distress Inks, and then sprayed with Perfect Pearls mist in Perfect Pearl (my favorite):

Unfortunately it's impossible to get a good photo of that Perfect Pearl shimmer, but hopefully you can at least get an idea of how soft and blended and lovely the inks get on the watercolor paper after it gets wet. I just can't get enough of that effect. Next I embossed my ATC using a Texture Trades embossing folder from the French Connection set, and I used the technique in this video to get a script background using Tim's Reflections stamp set.

With the background finished, I just added some embellishments: Prima flowers, Idea-ology Pen Nibs and a Hinge Clip (which was sponged with some Pearl paint dabber), some frilly ribbon (no idea who makes this, it came in a kit) and a sentiment from the Stuff to Say stamp set, stamped with Coffee Archival.

That's all for today...thanks for looking! =)

*~M~*