Tuesday 18 December 2018

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.

03 Selection of Wallpapers

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.

01 Old Music from Alan Wills

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.

01 Cutting the Music and Wallpaper

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.

02 Music and Wallpaper Cut

The stems stuck down and the ends trimmed.

03 Wallpaper Pieces Stuck to Music

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.

04 Inking the Music - Pine Needles DI

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

05 The Music Inked

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

06 The Music in the Heart

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.

07 Working on the Back

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.

25 All the Purple Roses on Silver Wallpaper

26 All the Purple Roses on Light Rose Wallpaper

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).

24 All the Purple Roses on Dark Rose Wallpaper

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.

08 The Roses on the Heart

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.

09 Inking the Tiny Flowers

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.

10 Inking the Leaves

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.

49 Green Leaves and Tiny Purple Flowers

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:

11 Completed Heart 1

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

12 Completed Heart 2

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.

01 Cutting the Wallpaper Pieces

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.

02 Inking the Doiley

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

03 The Doiley Glued in Place

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.

04 Matting the Card

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.

05 Glueing on the Leaves

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.

06 The Leaves Glued 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.

08 The Card Inside

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

07 The Finished Card

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

09 The Card and 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.

01 Four Small Frames for Altering

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!

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