art

Hi my friends.  Happy Saturday.  Can you believe another week has flown by?  We're getting a bit of rain today.  A few storms came through last night, too.  I have my lace guild meeting this afternoon, which is an hour drive away, so I hope it's not storming while I'm driving. 

Yesterday, Eclectic Paperie issued a challenge to their blog readers to play along with their design team for this week's challenge. 

Here are the details of the challenge:

• Distress Inks (could be a combination of Distress Ink Pads or Distress Stains)
• Any kind of die (could be Spellbinders, Sizzix, Cuttlebug, Circuit, etc...)
• and an EGG CARTON - incorporate into your project somehow. You could flatten it out, cut it up, or use it as a surface.  

This sounded like a fun challenge to me, so I played along.  I started by cutting three pieces of corrugated cardboard 6-1/2" square and gluing them together for a nice sturdy base.  Then I covered this with some patterned paper.  I inked the edges with some vintage photo distress ink.  


I save my egg cartons for a lady (at lace guild) who has some chickens and sells the eggs, so I pulled a carton from the stack to use on this project. I cut it apart so I had some flat areas and went to work with my dies to cut some leaves and butterflies (Tim Holtz/Sizzix movers & shapers).  Of course, not really knowing where I was going with this, I cut more than I needed, but that's OK; they'll get used on something else.  I also cut a couple of edgings using my scalloped on the edge die (Tim Holtz/Sizzix), but decided not to use them on this project.

I used some distress stains to color the butterflies (broken china & spiced marmalade) and leaves (peeled paint), and then edged them with vintage photo distress ink. 

The flower is brown grocery bags die cut with tattered florals (Tim Holtz/Sizzix) and colored with spiced marmalade distress stain.  I crumbled them up while they were still damp and then opened them up again, but kept a lot of the crinkles.  I glued the layers together and added a large black brad to the center.  I realized that the flower was much more brown than I wanted, so I pulled out barn door distress ink and sponged all over the flower petals and then added some vintage photo distress ink as well.  Much more happy with the color it is now.  Here's a closeup of the flower. 

For the letters, I glued some black card stock to a piece of cereal box and then die cut using serif essentials alphabet dies (Sizzix).  


Since I don't usually start gluing the pieces down until I'm sure how I want the layout, I knew that I needed more, so I pulled out elegant flourishes (Tim Holtz/Sizzix) and cut a few of those from some scrap paper, which I then colored with peeled paint distress stain.  I added just touches of vintage photo distress ink on the edges.  

After deciding where to put everything, I glued it all down with matte multi medium.  This is the first time I've used that and I really loved how it worked.  


To finish off the butterflies, I took the little circles that came out of the scalloped on the edge die cuts and made some faux brads by coloring them with black copic marker and attaching them with matte multi medium.  The antennae are small pieces of hemp cord, also colored with black copic marker.


I added a strip of black grosgrain ribbon around the outside edge of the base piece and made a hanging cord with the same ribbon.  To make sure it held, I pushed a couple of small nails (with a bit of glue on them) through the ribbon into the corrugated cardboard and then colored the heads with black copic marker.  I'm really pleased with how this turned out.  Let me know what you think.


Thank you so much for stopping by today.  Have a great weekend.