Gold Crackle Paint and the Sea...

One of the projects in this month's issue of Craft Stamper used some stuff I'd never heard of called "Viva Croco Crackling Colour" and it looked fabulous, so I just had to go and buy some and this is my first project using the stuff. I really wish I'd bought a big pot!!

"The Sea"

This picture frame started life as one of those cheap wooden ones from Ikea. I just gave it one thick coat of the crackle paint with a cheap paintbrush and left it to dry.

"Crackle paint"

Wow, get a load of that texture!

"Hanging charms"

I added a few charms and beads to a length of chain using jump rings, and attached the chain via a small nail hammered (yes, I know, I used a hammer and a pair of pliers!!!) into the top of the picture frame.

"Octopus"

A few more charms and seed beads were fixed to the frame with glossy accents. I just love this octopus charm, reminds me of all those horror stories about giant squid at the bottom of the sea...

"The Sea"

I really like this lighthouse stamp from Kanban. The background was coloured with distress inks before stamping, then extra inks were added with a watercolour brush, diluting each colour in water before brushing. The scene was kept fairly simple, because in this case the frame is the real star. A small amount of distress ink was brushed over the crackle paint at the bottom of the frame to give a real seaside effect. I grew up by the sea and it always sticks in my mind how the bottom parts of anything in the water would become covered in green slime.

Ingredients:

Viva Croco Crackling Colour: Gold

Kanban clear acrylic stamp: lighthouse scene

Distress inks: Tumbled Glass, Stormy Sky, Broken China, Chipped Sapphire, Pine Needles, Dusty Concord

Archival Ink: Black

Cardstock: 160gsm white, stamping card

Picture Frame

Charms, Chain, Jump Rings, Beads, Seed beads

Entered for the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... Anything Goes
The Stamp Man... Texture

Picture Frame

Back to "normal" today (whatever that is!). After all those Christmas cards, it's great to get out some non-Christmassy stash for a play. This week's theme for Simon Says Stamp and Show is "Something Old, Something New", so what better than some altered art to kick off the new year?

"Altered picture frame"

A plain wooden picture frame was sanded and the edges coloured with Pine Needles distress ink.

"Left hand view"

The faces were covered with panels cut from the Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante paper pad, the edges sanded and distressed with more ink.  Individual images were cut, shaped with an embossing tool and adhered to the panels with Pinflair glue. A couple of butterflies were added; their wings shaped up and just the centres of their bodies glued. The image on centre panel was decoupaged for extra depth.

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... something old something new (old frame, new papers)

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe...

I wonder how many of us remember all those nursery rhymes from childhood, and whether they are still being passed on to the new generations. This one always confused me. Were the old woman and all the children really small, or was there an enormous shoe somewhere? The origins of this nursery rhyme seem to be shrouded in mystery, so I guess we'll never know :).

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe..."

The image was decoupaged from the Graphics Fairy original and lines from the nursery rhyme were printed onto a frame. A second frame was added from gold card with some peel-off borders. They are straight really, the scan made it look all wonky for some reason - mind you, I feel all wonky with a cold, so I guess it matches in a funny sort of way :).

Other things I used to lie awake at night worrying about:

If someone went to all the trouble of building the “old lady who had so many children she didn’t know what to do” a shoe to live in, why didn’t they just build her a house in the first place?

Was she the same old woman who swallowed a fly?

Where did the mouse go when the clock struck one?

Why did Mary have cockle shells in her garden?

Why did the little boy flush his wool down the loo (for some strange reason that I can’t fathom, I thought that was what “lived down the lane” meant!)?

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp

Seashells Shaker Card

I promised to put a shaker card on my blog this week, so here it is! Frame cards are easily turned into shaker cards. Just be sure there are no gaps in the foam tape holding the frame to the bottom image, and use a layer of acetate to retain the shaking elements.

"Sea Shells Shaker Card"

This frame is from the Graphics Fairy, the image from Crafty Individuals and the stamp was a free gift with Craft Stamper magazine. The shaker card is filled with tiny turqouise & white seed beads.