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

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.