Hanging Snowflake Altered Art. . . .

I love to make use of items that I’d normally throw out and the main components of this project contain exactly that.

Hopefully you saw my two previous projects using the Globecraft & Piccolo Bejeweled Snowflakes accents set, if you need a refresher you can find them here (Snowflake Votive) & here (Happy Winter Card).  For this project, I used the little snowflakes that are in the set and my "stencil" that I made and used for the Happy Winter Card.  There are 6 adorable snowflakes, measuring about 3/4", that I had left in the set, so I used them up!  

Before I get into the tutorial, let me tell you about the products I used:

Small Snowflakes from Bejeweled Snowflakes   

Stencil I used in making the Happy Winter Card (from Bejeweled Snowflakes)   

Vintage Silver Embossing Enamel 

Embossing Powder Adhesive Fluid 

E600 Adhesive 

Glasstique Gloss Finishing Glaze 

Frame, 7” x 7” square

White Gesso

Distress Paint in Stormy Sky

Dylusions Spray Ink in London Blue

Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black

Fishing Line (or other clear string material)

Oval Word Charms

Piece of White cardstock

Sentiment “Warm Winter Wishes” by Quietfire Design 

I know it seems like a daunting amount of stuff but most of it you use only once.  First thing I did was work on the snowflakes.  I had originally wanted to have one side glitter and one side embossing enamel but that didn’t work out very well. 

I know I could of made this work, but I didn't really like the glitter

The detail in the flakes was a wee bit too defined for the glitter I had so I switched to embossing both sides.  

These are only embossed once - like my fingerprint?

I embossed both sides about 3 times (don’t forget to roll your jar of embossing enamel – it blends all the granules and colors perfectly!), which was tricky because each time I embossed a side the other side grew hot as well and would end up either slipping off or making a finish that I didn’t like.  My solution was to go slower and use a lighter touch with my heat gun; I also wonder if the fact that I have a Weller Heat Gun which is actually made for industrial applications may have caused the powder on the other side to keep reheating so much. When I find my regular crafty heat gun, I will do an experiment and see if the heat was too hot.

Once the flakes were embossed to my liking I set them aside to completely cool.  At this point, I wasn’t sure how I was going to hang them but I had a very vivid picture in my mind of how I wanted the assemblage to look – I thought about threading fishing line through each flake, of tying each flake to cord, using fibers, and a few other ideas.  The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of having the flakes hang invisibly – so I used fishing line! 

In the picture, you can barely see the fishing line stretched across one of my homemade art boards (cardboard covered with wax paper) and held in place with painters tape.  I then glued each snowflake to the line with E6000.  I made sure I used plenty of line and I matched up the snowflakes so they would all be in about the same place.  I let them dry overnight.

Way too dark!

I went to work on what I think is the focal point of the assemblage, the “stencil” I made from the Bejeweled Snowflakes set – the stencil is actually made out of the waste leftover after all the items are punched out.  This is the third project I am getting out of just one set.  When I made the Happy Winter Card, I had spritzed the stencil with Dylusions Spray Ink in London Blue to make the image on the card.  The stencil was really saturated with the spray ink and much darker than what I wanted for this project so I painted some gesso over the London Blue and got the perfect, icy baby blue color I wanted.  Then to give the stencil a bit more stability I painted over it with Glasstique Gloss FinishingGlaze.

Perfect!!!

The frame that I used came from a picture bought at the Dollar Store and had gotten ruined – and the frame was originally black. So I gessoed over the black, twice to be sure it was covered completely and then colored it with Distress Paint in Stormy Sky using a paint brush dipped right into the bottle.  I finished it off with a few light spritz of Dylusions Spray Ink in London Blue, let it dry a few seconds and swiped it very lightly with a baby wipe. 

I had already stamped the sentiment on a piece of white cardstock using Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black; all I need to do was trim it up a bit and it was ready to go!

All the pieces ready to be assembled!

Now that all the pieces were done the fun part – putting it together!  This is when I discovered my fishing line refused to stay straight and kept curling up on me.  No fear! I dug into my charms stash and decided that these oval word charms would fit the bill nicely.  I attached one to the bottom of each snowflake line and they worked like a charm (pun intended), in addition to tying the fishing line, I also added a dab of E6000 to each knot.  Now that my curling issue was fixed, I moved on to getting the stencil ready to be attached to the frame.  First thing I did was poke 3 holes into the stencil and thread the fishing line with the snowflakes through the holes, being careful to make sure all the lines were even with each other, then I flipped the stencil over and used E6000 to glue to fishing line to the back so the rows of flakes would stay put.  I let that dry overnight.

The finishing touches are easy – I glued the stencil to the inside of the frame & then attached the sentiment.  It took a bit of thinking and problem solving but I think this is an awesome winter decoration.  I hope you had as much fun reading about it as I had making it!

Another view

Next week I officially start spring, regardless if the weather cooperates or not.

Thanks for reading and I hope you & yours have a fabulous week!

Christi

I am entering my creation in the following challenges:

Love to Create Challenge  #104 Anything Goes!

My Craft Creations  Anything Goes

All Crafts Challenge Feb/March  Anything Goes

Tuesday Throwdown  Anything Goes
Simply Create Too Anything Goes 
Altered Eclectics Anything Goes 
Artful Times #50 Anything Goes

Elegant B&W Card and Globecraft & Piccolo SPRING RELEASE!

I hope you have been to the Globecraft & Piccolo Blog this week, you have GOT to see all the goodies my Teamies came up with to celebrate the New Spring Release! 

I love black & white, I think it is so elegant – and to continue with the elegant theme, I made this “Thinking of You” card using one of the NEW Flourish sets.  Honestly, I had another project planned, but life got in the way, so I am sharing this lovely card.

Here is the finished card

The card was simple as I had all the ingredients here.  It’s larger than most cards I make measuring 6” x 6”, but I wanted to give a proper showcase to the embellishments and the lovely textured paper I used.

This is all you need to make this card:

• NEW A157 Vintage Corner Flourishes 
• Micro White Embossing Enamel
• Enamel & Embossing Powder Adhesive Fluid
• 6” x 6” black white base
• 5 ¼” x 5 ¼” embossed black cardstock (I used paper from Francis Meyer, but you could just as easily make your own)
• Sentiment (I used an old SU! set called “All Year Cheer”)
• Black Cardstock
• Pop Dots 
• Cream & Black Strip (I got mine from GCD Studios Paper Pad “Paris Nights”)
• White Cardstock for your Sentiment
• Ranger Archival Ink in Jet Black

First, emboss your Flourishes with the Micro White Powder.  I embossed the flourishes about 6 times, coating it with more Embossing Fluid & Micro White Embossing Enamel each time to get the coverage I wanted but since the powder is micro fine I hardly used any of it at all.  Set these aside.  Stamp your sentiment on the white card and trim to a rectangle, then trim a piece of black cardstock to mount it on, making sure you leave enough room

to place your flourishes.  I fooled around with the placement of the flourishes quite a bit before I was happy and I even trimmed the square down further once I had attached the flourishes on (which was pretty gutsy, if I had made a mistake I would have to think of another project!).  

The beautiful embossed black cardstock

 Then I cut the 5 ¼” square out of the embossed cardstock, adhered that to the base, put the cream and black strip on, then pop dotted the final square that has the flourishes and sentiment on it to give it that much more texture (even though you can't really tell by the photos).

That’s it!  I love the look of the embossed flourishes with the embossed cardstock.  I hope you like it! Blessing to you & yours, Christi

I am respectfully entering my card in the following challenges:

Inky Impressions  #147 Black & White

Crafty Creations Challenge #257 Keep It Simple

Crafting for All Seasons Challenge Blog  #71 Sentiment as Focus

The Cheerful Stamp Pad  #80  Color Challenge, Black & White

Lexi’s Creations Monochromatic

{PIN}Spirational Challenges #95  Anything Goes

Through The Craftroom Door  Anything Goes

Papertake Weekly  Anything Goes