Valentine's Day

     In elementary school, one of my favorite holidays was Valentine's Day.  Every year our class would spend some school time designing our Valentine's mailboxes.  Oh my goodness I loved this, all the construction paper, little scissors,  smell of rubber cement, crayolas; and things haven't changed all that much as evidenced by my craft room.  We have a *love challenge* going on over at Oozak Blog and would love to have you enter.  With my husband in mind, I've designed a card using Paper Smooches Word Salad stamps.   The font designs of these stamps come out crisp and sharp, and think I'll also be able to get a lot of use out of them for mixed media projects as well as cards.

          The always beautiful Memento Inks were used for stamping, and Copic markers to color in the stamps.  So the words that were colored would stand out more, I gave them a coating of Rangers Glossy Accents.  The little hearts on the envelope are included in the Paper Smooches Salad ~ so cute.  Hope to see you over at Oozak!

Treasure Chest

          Happy New Year!!!  My first blog post is a repeat project that was one of my more popular projects.    I'm re-posting it to include the steps I took to create the chest.

  

Beginning with a 7 ½” x 5” x 5” paper mache box from a craft supply store, I spray painted the entire box using a metallic (oil-rubbed bronze) color.  Next I spray painted 16 brass brads with the bronze paint and set aside to dry.  After letting the box dry thoroughly, I brushed acrylic paint in a gold metallic color onto the raised bands.  I painted one band at a time because I immediately swiped the paint with a paper towel while it was wet.  I applied 2 coats to get the look I wanted.  

           Next I cut design paper to size; I used Crowded Attic by Tim Holtz, distressed the edges of the paper with the Zutter Distrezz-It-All and sponged Distress Ink in Antique Linen and Tea Dye onto the edges of the paper.   I used Mod Podge to adhere the paper to the box.   The design paper is nice and thick so there was no buckling, but I did need to lift the edges of the paper and apply some additional Mod Podge in areas that were not laying flat.    

           

    

    

                 Using jewelry pliers, I cut the chain to size.  I bought the chain necklace on clearance at a craft store.  Next, marking off the areas for the brads with chalk, I used an awl to punch the holes then dabbed some glue around the holes for the brads.  The brads and chains were inserted into the marked areas and glue was added to the brads from inside the box.  The last step was decorating the box!  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  :0)