Scattered Fancies

Just wanted to let you see the newest piece in my Etsy shop. Check it out here.

We exchanged presents with Tim’s family at Thanksgiving because that’s when we were in Illinois. So I didn’t have a lot of time to get ready, but I was able to make some wall art for my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and nieces.

The first one was for my mother-in-law. I was able to achieve the look that I wanted with the black, white and red. Overall, I was very pleased with the end result, except for the fleur-de-lis stamp. When first put the stamp on, the paint had trouble sticking, so I tried to stamp again. I wasn’t able to get the two stamps lined up perfectly, so I got a bit of a fuzzy look. I finally had to hand paint over the stamped area so that the paint would be bright enough to see. I think part of the problem was that I had already sealed the paper, and the paint had trouble sticking to the paper. Oh well. Lesson learned.

This next one was for my sister-in-law, Kris. Kris likes crafts, so I was trying to give this one more of a craft look. I also was trying to match the colors in her house. I had fun threading the chipboard buttons, and everything went smoothly at the beginning. I really like the background paper and flower, and I wanted the flower to stand out. So I decided to mat it on some contrasting papers.

When I got ready to layer the papers, however, I realized that I did not have the chocolate brown paper I needed. I was working on this project late at night, so a quick trip to Michael’s was out of the question. Fortunately, however, I had some brown paint. I painted my tan paper brown, and ended up with paper that matched and almost looked like leather.

My three nieces share a room, and their mom has done a great job of decorating it in bright, fun colors. I wanted to make something that would fit with their existing color scheme. On this piece, I used a 12 x 12 pre-stretched canvas. Since I was also using a 12 x 12 scrapbook paper, I could not wrap the paper around the edges like I normally do. So I started by painting the sides and edges pink, and originally planned to use the whole paper on the front. However, I decided to use the paper in blocks instead. I also changed my mind about the pink and ended up painting over the pink with a very light blue. After placing the paper, I decided to trim the edges with ribbon. Finally, I added the embellishments–felt flower stickers and pieces cut from another paper.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the results. I would like to make some more pieces for kids’ room, though probably on a smaller scale.