An Old World Box

I've added crackle painting to my favorite list of techniques. For this box, I used the 3 step method of painting to create a imitation wood look to a box I bought at Hobby Lobby. After the 3rd painted layer dried I adhered a piece of Graphic 45 Communique paper to the top of the box and Tim Holtz corners to each of the 4 corners. Tim Holtz feet were then added at the bottom corners. I used E6000 to glue each of the metal Holtz pieces to the box.

Well it was ok, the crackle paint in 2 shades of brown had the look of wood, which is pretty cool., but the top just seemed to look too ordinary. So I decided a change needed to be made and I took the drastic step to rip the paper off the box in two spots! Next after securing the uneven edges on the box with glue, I darkened the paper's white edges with Tim Holtz distress ink. I used that same ink to darken the box in the areas that no longer were covered with the paper.

Now finally the box is finished and has this wonderful old world look! The box will make a really nice gift for my son's birthday and can hold some of his many small trinkets!

PS: My son loved the box! I knew he would!

Graphic 45 Design Team 2012 Audition

Audition time for the Graphic 45 Design Team is here. I love working with the many collections that Graphic 45 has and now I am invited to audition for their team! How very cool is that! Here are some of my many paper crafted projects. Click for larger images!
Fashionista paper by Graphic 45 certainly lent itself beautifully for these two altered canvases. My dad took these pictures of my mom.

Communique paper by Graphic 45 work so well with these old photographs of my mom's family. My son liked these altered canvases so much, they hang on his living room wall!

Curtain Call paper was certainly perfect for pictures of my husband's parents, on an altered canvas.

Some day in the future this book and treasury box will be used for my grandson's first year of school. An ABC Primer just called out to me to make this.

My wonderful daughter-in-law is a great cook and she inspired me to make a cook book treasury and the Domestic Goddess paper was a good choice to use.

A Proper Gentleman lent itself to this wonderful cigar box.

 Here are two of my favorite cards. In one I used a 3D effect with watercolor pencils and in the other I embossed the background and used Tombow Markers. Both have stamped images.

Here is a decorative mini cigar box I used crackle painting on, along with decorative embellishments.

Here are three 6"x6" altered canvases, aren't these fun! They are all from the Asian influence.

It was great fun putting this blog entry together. I hope you enjoyed it. Have a great day!

Valentines for Hubby!

It's no big secret, Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday...one day before my anniversary. I have two days to celebrate! I love crafting or wearing pretty things. This year I went crazy trying out new ideas for cards for my wonderful husband. So I went to http://ramblingsofatexascraftroom.blogspot.com
and saw some great ideas there and tried them out. See these below:

One of those would have been the one except for the fact that I found this really neat kit in my stash. It's "Sweetheart Washi Paper Quilting" by Hanko Designs. The kit includes three sheets of chipboard, three sheets of washi paper quilting foam, patterns and idea sheet for four cards and instruction and tips for washi paper quilting. The washi paper (Japanese decorative paper) and embellishments need to be bought separately.

So since I had everything already and I loved the design with the heart, I began. The direction on the kit are really good and the best tip of all was to cut "slits" in the washi paper to overlap the back and help to pull the paper snugly around the heart for a lovely quilted effect.

I use one piece of patterned washi paper for the heart and another for the background and adhered them to gold cardstock over a card base and embellished with ribbon and a sticker. I love the effect and plan to try other designs in the kit and look into what else is available. The kit was bought at my favorite scrapbook store, Gingham Buttons 2 in Palm Coast, Fl.

I know my husband is going to love this card!

New Technique for Crackle Painting

I love designing decorative boxes, but I can't get enough free cigar boxes to keep this habit/hobby going. So off I went to Michaels and found cute little white shiny cardboard boxes for $.99!

I have 3 boxes and decided to try something different, although I still wanted the crackle look. I decided to skip the white basecoat and applied the crackle medium directly to the white shiny box with a sponge brush and let it dry. Then again using the sponge brush I applied the contrasting acrylic topcoat (blue). The color crackles as it dries, but not so much as when I painted the other boxes with white first. I think it worked enough to make an attractive surface to use of these inexpensive boxes.














 Also since this box is small and short, instead of Tim Holtz feet I bought and painted wooden plugs from Michaels which were on clearance and glued the to the bottom of the box with E6000. My hubby drilled a hole at the top of the box and I used the smallest of Tim's curio knob as the pull to this lovely mini box. I embellished the top with flowers and a butterfly.

Wanting more of the crackle look, but not willing to paint white over a white box, I tried two more boxes. With the pink box I tried doing a few more strokes backward with a dry brush and it did add more crackle, but for the green box I used a wet paint sponge brush and painted in the opposite direction all around the outside of the box, while the green topcoat was still wet. This technique added enough crackle to have a similar look to my original mini cigar box, which I had painted white as a basecoat!

Of the 3 small boxes from Michaels the green has the best crackle effect, but all are pretty nice!

Key to My Heart Valentine

Ok, so February 14th is Valentine's Day...15th is my actual anniversary! Guess what, I get to celebrate for two days straight!

When I taught art, back in New York, my students made their own Valentines as their project for a special day in February. They loved using all the supplies I left out for them to work on their own. They went home with beautiful creative cards, for their moms and dads.

Back to today's card. I feel fortunate to have been able to buy Cricut's cartridge "Everyday Pop-up Cards," but sometimes the cuts don't work for me. So here is where creativity gets going!

First I covered the 5x7" blank card front with print card stock and then cut a 5" lock heart (page 68 layer 2) from gold card stock. I cut the handle off the top and glue the gold heart to the card front.
Then I used the same card stock to cover the inside of the card.

 For the pop-up cube. Cut a strip of paper 1 ½” x 6 ¼” and fold it in half lengthways and then again in half. There should be three folds.
Cut ¼” off both ends of the strip.
Fold the strip on those lines with mountain folds into a cube shape.
Open the cube with the peaks of the fold up, place glue on both end sections of the strip.
Fold the strip back to a cube and the place the cube into the center of the card at equal distance from the top and bottom. The middle fold in the strip is lined up with the card fold. The card should open and close easily.

The key which is a rub on from a bin at Michaels cut out and glued to the cube in front to pop up. Next I cut "Key to my heart" (same page) at 5" from the pop up shift. I like the wording, but not the way it would pop, so I cut those parts away and glued the welded words below the pop up.

Be creative with your Cricut cartridges...enjoy designing your own ideas.
Additonal Pop up cards made in this way:

Cling Wrap, Napkins = Greeting Cards

I recently went looking through my list of blogs in search of new techniques to use to increase my card inventory. I truly enjoy looking through all the craft blogs. Terri Wrights blog;
http://ramblingsofatexascraftroom.blospot.com, had just what I was looking for. Terri's video tutorials give great directions and are a pleasure to watch.

Here are my examples of cards made with cling wrap and paper napkins. The sentiments were cut on the Cricut, using my Gypsy to weld the letters. I can see using this technique for a wide variety of greeting cards, which turn out so professional looking. Thank you Terri Wright.

Crackle Mini Cigar Box

Ok, you already know, I'm totally into cigar boxes. Altering them is so neat to do. So one day a couple of weeks ago, I checked a smoke shop in town for cigar boxes and walked out with two mini boxes. They were so cute, shinny and full of wording. I had no idea what to do with these little boxes.

The first thing to do, is to get rid of the shine and the advertising, by painting the box white. Then I went to Michaels to use a 50% coupon and discovered a couple of bottled of crackle medium in the acrylic paint isle. A while back I had used another crackle medium, but wasn't really taken with it. This time I bought the Folk Art Crackle Medium by Plaid, made for acrylic paint.

After the white paint, also made by Plaid, was dry throughout the box, I covered it with the crackle medium and let that dry. I applied the contrasting topcoat color. The crackling showed as the topcoat of paint dried. It works really well. After everything was dry, I had my husband drill the hole and apply a Tim Holtz curio knob. I used E-6000 to glue Tim Holtz metal feet to the bottom corners of the box and had some more fun arranging flower petals and glitz around the top of the box.