Friday 3 May 2013


This Blog piece is about a #3up challenge I reently completed for Paprartsy. I was told that I would receive some stash in the post so I immediately got to thinking what I could do. A few days later the bits of stash turned up, I got a wooden hanging plaque, 3 Tando(?) butterflies and a twirly branch or tree.I had in the back of my mind something that Leandra had done in a video a little while ago, fresco texture background with crackle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lYBRACE4pU I had wanted to try this technique for ages, so i decorated the wooden base accordingly.The texture was made using Amber Gold ferro through either the Lacy swirl or Mini Capricious TCW stencils and the board was painted many different colours (all Fresco Finish) including: South Pacific, Beach Hut, Limelight, Guacomole, Eggplant, Nougat, Ice Blue, Claret, Pansy, Snowflake, Hey Pesto, Pumpkin Soup, Inky Pool , Crackle Glaze and some aquamarine treasure gold. The technique was as described in Leandra's video which is 36 minutes long, so I won't go into precise detail here. Of course the plaque has a reverse side so I decided to decorate that too. I painted it in Ice Blue then and stamped it ,using versa mark with the big flower from the Hot PIcks HP101 set and also stamped the "ART IN BLOOM" sentiment from the ELB01 Eclectica set i poured some sticky embossing powder over the stampings and then heated it until the embossing powder had melted. this powder remains tacky, as the name implies so I then applied transfer foil to both flower and sentiment.

I next turned my attention to the butterflies. already knowing that I wanted them hanging, I pierced 4 holes in the bottom edge of the plaque using a bradawl and screwed in 4 eye screws. then i added texture to the butterflies using Grunge Paste and 2 stencils mini capricious again and mini damask (both TCW), I then punched holes in the upper wings of each of the butterflies using my crop-a-dile, then the butterflies were painted squid ink and concrete, underneath and hey pesto and blood orange on top.then brushed royal amethyst and ruby treasure gold on them. the reverse side of the butterflies were painted beach hut and I repeated the transfer foil technique, this time using the SM10 mini. Attaching the butterflies to the board was very fiddly! this was mainly caused by the fact I thought I'd bought some large jump rings but they were in fact split rings and they were very difficult to get on the butterflies. Anyway. I managed to do this, eventually then I attached jump rings to both ends of 6 short pieces of chain that I already had in my stash and attached one end to an eye screw and the other to a butterfly.

The last piece of this project was the branch/tree. I really hadn't decided what to do with this at all. I painted the whole thing Sherbet. I decided I needed some bling so I put 4mm fuchsia swarovski crystal beads into the centre of the branches leaves using ranger Glue'n'Seal I also stuck some to the upper wings of the butterflies although I also used 6mm light amethyst ones here too. I applied some royal amethyst treasure gold to the branch and then stuck the branch to the plaque again using Glue'n'Seal.

I must thank everyone at Paperarsty for the opportunity to do this project and this week's totally guilt free crafting time :). I really enjoyed it. it was such fun.Phew, this describing what you are doing is quite difficult, thought id end up writing a book there.



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