Completion of the Mystery Project–Part 4–Purple Heart and Card

The final one of the three hanging hearts was the purple one, for my friend’s birthday, and I gave it to her a couple of days ago, together with a matching birthday card.

Some time ago she had asked me to make her something like this, and at the same time she gave me some pieces of wallpaper she’d got when she was deciding how to decorate her room. I decided to use bits from these for this project.

For the background for this heart, I cut a piece of music to fit in the recess of the frame – my friend is a musician, and she had got me a whole lot of old music from someone she knows, and I’ve had this a while now, ready for incorporating into art projects.

The particular piece I used was from the back of one of the books of music, showing samples of other books – the music was reduced in size and just perfect for this little frame.

I selected a few of the stems from one of the wallpaper pieces and fussy-cut them out to overlay on top of the music piece.

The stems stuck down and the ends trimmed.

The music paper had a slightly greenish tinge to it, so I enhanced this by distressing the edges with some Pine Needles Distress Ink to start with.

To this I added some Pumice Stone and Hickory Smoke Distress Inks to dull it down a little.

The music piece with its stems in place in the heart frame.

I worked on the back as before, packing out the recess in the frame with corrugated cardboard stuck down with masking tape, and making a back piece traced around the outside of the heart onto a piece of cardboard. I distressed the edges with Pine Needles and Pumice Stone Distress Inks.

Pumice Stone is a very useful colour. It’s not particularly inspiring on its own on a white background, but for dulling down other colours, it’s perfect.

These are the purple roses that I made for this frame, laid on a couple of the wallpaper pieces as a background.

Finally, here they are on the dark rose wallpaper. I really liked the spray of flowers on this paper and decided to use it for her birthday card (see below).

Here are the roses stuck onto the heart frame with hot glue. I have laid a few small flower pieces in place as I felt it needed something extra.

Inking the small flower pieces, using Seedless Preserves Distress Stain. On some of them, I also added a little Brushed Pewter Distress Stain for a bit of variety.

I made some die-cut leaves and coloured them with Pine Needles and Forest Moss Distress Stains. I hand-embossed these when they were dry.

Here are the finished leaves with the tiny purple flowers. The colour has come out a bit too bright on this black leather background! The true colour can be seen in the next photo.

Here is the finished heart frame with some of the leaves added, also stuck down with hot glue, first of all against the stems wallpaper as a background:

and on another of the wallpaper pieces for a slightly different effect.

The Birthday Card

I wanted this to co-ordinate with the heart frame, and I particularly loved the dark rose wallpaper and decided to use this for the card.

I selected the area with a complete flower spray, and also cut out some of the rose leaves from elsewhere on the piece. These didn’t need embossing because they were slightly curled, and there was shading in the printing of the leaves. I cut the piece with the floral spray to the correct size to mat and layer onto a black cardstock base.

The bottom left hand corner of the piece had part of a very large rose on it, which I didn’t want, so I cut a piece of background from the wallpaper to cover it, and then found a small paper doiley in my stash, which I inked with Worn Lipstick, Pumice Stone and Hickory Smoke Distress Inks, gradually building up the colour with Inkylicious Ink Dusters until I’d got the colour right to co-ordinate with the background piece. I trimmed off the excess so that it would fit over the corner of the piece.

The doiley glued in place over the piece of wallpaper background. Much better without that large rose.

Matting the piece onto the black card base. You can see that there are some leaves printed on the top edge – I was originally going to cut these off but decided against it. I love the “crazy paving” texture of the background of the wallpaper, which is slightly shiny.

The next step was to glue on the leaves. I did a mock-up to decide where to place the die-cut and embossed leaves and stuck those down first. I took the rose leaves cut from the wallpaper and filled the backs with quite a bit of hot glue so that they would retain their slight curve, and let them cool till set. I wanted the leaves to have some dimension on the card and not just be glued down flat, but the paper was fairly flimsy, so the hot glue had the effect of strengthening them considerably.

I placed them onto the card and heated them with my heat gun in order to soften the hot glue again and hold them in place.

Unfortunately this had the effect of warping the whole card, so it had to endure Shoshi’s Heavy Books Treatment overnight! It was much better in the morning.

I made a liner for the inside from some pink cardstock which I distressed with Dusty Concord Distress Ink, and stamped the sentiment with the same Distress Ink. I highlighted this with a pearlescent gel pen but this doesn’t show on the photo.

The completed card, on one of the wallpaper pieces as a background. I added a gold peel-off sentiment.

Here it is, with the purple hanging heart ornament which was her birthday present.

This completes the mystery project of three hanging heart ornaments and a birthday card. I really like the colour schemes and the wallpaper pieces, and have enough left of these, and some of the flowers (I used all the purple flowers) to alter the little frames my hubby gave me recently.

They are a bit bigger than the small heart frames, so I’ll have a bit more space to play with. Watch this space.

I have enjoyed working with the wallpaper pieces. I have a couple of old wallpaper sample books and really should start using these. They can make a good starting point for many projects, and they have lovely designs, colours and textures which can be enhanced by the addition of embellishments. Must do more of this!

Mystery Project–Part 3–Turquoise Heart

For the second of the three hanging heart ornaments, I chose a turquoise and terracotta colour scheme. As I started making this, I decided to give it a suggestion of a Spanish theme, because the friend for whom I was making this one loves visiting Spain. I also wanted to make a more colourful, and perhaps more illustrative and pictorial, frame than for my other friend, the artist, for whom I made the brown frame.

This colour combination as a new one for me, and I was inspired by Zsuzsa of InkyDinkyDoodle blog – she uses a lot of these colours and I’ve always thought how lovely they were! Thanks, Zsuzsa. I’ve been meaning to try these colours for a while now.

I began by getting out various bits and pieces in order to choose what to use for the various embellishments on this frame. I didn’t use the poultry grit (broken up bits of shell) in the end.

I decided I wanted to add a couple of small terracotta pots as embellishments, and knew I didn’t have any such ready-made embellishments in my stash, and slept on it for several nights, wondering how to achieve the look I wanted. When I started rummaging in my mixed media oddments box, I came across a bag of empty silk cocoons that I’d bought several years ago at a craft show, and thought, “Perfect!” Not only were they exactly the right size, but they also had just the right texture, too! I trimmed them down to shape so that I could stick them to the frame.

To create the top edge of the “pots,” I stuck down two different thicknesses of string. This proved to be a very fiddly job and I couldn’t get the string to stick at first, and then I tried doing it with Glossy Accents, which eventually worked. You can see that I have cut one of the little pots to look as if it was broken. They look a bit dirty around the top because the cocktail stick I used to help me stick on the string was a bit grubby! No matter – they were going to be painted anyway.

The first step was to paint them with gesso.

Now they were ready for painting with acrylics. I used Burnt Sienna and created shadows with Burnt Umber.

On a scrap piece of watercolour paper which I’d cut to fit the recess in the frame, I painted a simple seascape and fixed it in place.

I cut a short length of black lace and stiffened it with some watered-down PVA glue and stuck this in place – reminiscent either of a Spanish mantilla or of the black wrought iron balconies so commonly seen in Southern Spain.

To create an impression of sand, I added some pumice gel medium and painted it with acrylics.

The frame was then ready for the rest of the embellishments.

Here are the flowers and leaves I used.

To stick the little pots in place, I filled the backs with hot glue and then stuck them in place with more hot glue.

Here is the finished piece, with all the embellishments stuck down with hot glue.

I shall be giving my friend this little heart in the New Year when we are planning our lunch get-together which had to be postponed from before Christmas. She doesn’t visit my blog so I thought it would be safe to post about it before she receives it!

Here are the first two hanging hearts together. At this stage I hadn’t done more than the basic preparation on the third one.

Completing the Flowers and Leaves for my Altering Project

WOYWW visitors – please scroll down to previous post.

I have now finished making the flowers for my mystery project, and I have also made some leaves.

I made a selection of single-piece flowers and layered some of them for a bit more interest.

I used Orange Peel and Turquoise Stickles for the centres of some of them, and for the rest, I added a nice big blob of hot glue and sprinkled this with orange Flowersoft equivalent – this stuff is called Soft Magic from Carole’s Crafts, in light orange – I’ve had the set of these for ages and can’t remember where I got them. I don’t use it very often and it does make rather nice flower centres. It’s one of those supplies that lives in a drawer and gets forgotten about!

Here are all the turquoise flowers I have made.

Moving on to the leaves, I cut them all with the left-hand die from this Die’sire Classiques set, “Assorted Leaves.” I don’t much like the second die and haven’t used it yet, but I bought these dies at a craft show early this year, for the first die which has proved very useful.

I cut all these leaves from scraps of American Crafts white cardstock so I didn’t have to break into another whole sheet. I then hand-embossed them all with two sizes of embossing tools into a piece of fun foam.

Colouring two sets of leaves, one to go with the turquoise/terracotta flowers and the other with the brown flowers.

For the terracotta ones I coloured them with Rusty Hinge Distress Stain, painting on the ink in a random, blotchy way, and then repeated the process with Gathered Twigs Distress Stain, and finally distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using a home-made ink blender.

For the brown ones, I used the same method, first with Pumice Stone Distress Stain, followed by Gathered Twigs, and finally with Antiqued Bronze Distress Stain for a subtle shimmer, and again, distressed the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

Here are the brown leaves, together with a selection of brown flowers.

These are the terracotta leaves, together with a selection of turquoise flowers.

I am now ready to continue with the rest of the project – I have already made good progress – and I will be able to show the finished results in a couple of weeks’ time.

I have made far too many leaves and flowers for my immediate use, but will use up the excess for other projects – most probably when I alter the little frames that my hubby gave me recently.

WOYWW 495–Lots of Flowers

I am sorry I didn’t get to visit many desks last week but I’ve been so busy this week. We’ve had a lot on, and I’ve also been making lots of flowers for my current mystery project which has a fairly tight deadline, as well as working on other parts of it which can’t be revealed yet. My stuff arrived from Ebay so I can crack on now.

I’ve made mostly roses, and a few single-piece flowers, in three colour schemes – dark purple, turquoise, and brown. Here is the complete set so far – I am hoping to make a few single-piece turquoise ones as well.

Individual sets.

Please scroll down for posts with further details of these flowers, and more pictures.

These little embroidery frames also arrived from Ebay on Monday – I had used my last one a while back.

They are an ideal size for small cross-stitch projects for gifts.

The outer ring is rubber and clips into the inner ring, and you can work in the frame, then back it, and hang it. You can get them in lots of colours – you can see my other ones – but I like the woodgrain effect best. Smashing little frames! I like to keep a few in stock. A few months ago I got a new cross-stitch programme for the computer as my old one does not work with Windows 10.

Sourdough

Some of my best sourdough this week! Following some online advice about shaping the loaves twice at the end, instead of once, they ended up with a lot more tension and didn’t collapse. Apart from this final shaping, I have found that the less I handle the dough during the day, the better the result. Developing too much gluten makes the dough wet and sticky and causes it to collapse.

On the top photo, you can clearly see the ridges made by the bannetons. This shows up more on a white sourdough loaf.

Health Update

Partial good news on the pants front! My tirade on the phone evidently bore some fruit, because despite them telling me the second pair would not be sent out till Friday, they arrived on Thursday! What’s more, they fit. So at least I was able to put a clean pair on and I can just about manage with two pairs until they get on with the remaining ones. After the GP’s prompt response to my email, promising an instant further prescription, I am hoping to receive the third pair (and even a fourth if the GP has indeed written me a prescription for two more) sooner rather than later.

Kitties

We’ve had more problems with Ruby getting out. My hubby was out on Monday morning – fortunately only locally, and I looked out of the kitchen window to see Ruby on top of the inward-sloping mesh on top of the garden fence, which is supposed to keep them in. She was clearly distressed and couldn’t get down. I went out and called her but she wouldn’t jump, and I was terrified of her catching her paw again, as she did a couple of weeks ago. I immediately called my hubby on his mobile and he came home straight away, went into next door’s garden armed with Dreamies and enticed her down, and carried her home. She was very subdued for the rest of the day.

He had a good look along that fence to see if he could discover where she was getting out, and found that one of the fence panels is quite rotten, and she’d forced her way between the top of it and the bottom of the mesh where he hadn’t put in enough staples. I suggested he looked for forensic evidence in the form of “hair and fibre” (I watch too many detective series!) but he couldn’t find any of her fur on the fence. It was an extremely small gap and I was surprised she could get through, but my hubby said kitties are like octopuses and can squeeze through the smallest holes. They are as curious as octopuses too. Both kitties are now temporarily banned from going outside at all until he can get this fixed. He ordered a new fence panel straight away, which has been delivered, but he will have to work on it to make it fit the space.

Amazingly, each time Ruby has got out, Lily has come to tell us! She was extremely distressed that time Ruby got her paw stuck. Earlier on Monday morning, she was sitting on the windowsill outside the kitchen window, crying plaintively, and I thought she was just asking me to let her in through the window, which I refused to do. I think that Ruby was already out, and Lily had come to tell me, and I was too stupid to realise what she was saying! She gets very distressed if her sister is doing something wrong or is in trouble. She is like the responsible older sister who cares very much about her naughty little sister, and Ruby isn’t nearly as bright as Lily, and she never learns! You’d think that after she got her paw stuck, she would have learnt that she is likely to get hurt and frightened if she goes over the fence. So far the kitty defences have been very adequate, and hopefully the new fence panel will do the trick – she’s only been out that side of the garden.

Some friends of my hubby’s in the village where we used to live, who recently lost the second of their two elderly black kitties, have just got two new kittens – tabby and white this time. Next time we are over in their direction we shall call in – I can’t wait to see them! I remember when they got the other two, and I completely fell in love with the little one who has just died, and was tempted to put her in my handbag and take her home! She was always the smaller of the two and utterly adorable. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone and those two darling little black babies are now no more, having lived a good long life. It’s so devastating when they go, isn’t it. They grow up so quickly and you don’t want to miss a moment of their adorable kittenhood.

Have a great creative week, everybody.