Altered Printer's Tray for Ephemera's Vintage Garden

Hello friends!  Today I'm sharing my first project using journal bits and backgrounds from the Mabel's Diary digital collection for art journaling available at Ephemera's Vintage Garden.  In addition to bits from the collection, I've also incorporated some of the fun freebies issued weekly.  I purchased the tray at Michael's, painted it white, then covered it with various colors and patterns of washi tapes.  I cut my images from the collage sheets, and played with the arrangement until I liked it.  Easy peasy and fun!  

Mabels' Diary Printable Art Journal Bits

Matching Printable Art Journal Pages

Also Available:

Mabel's Diary Printable Journal Kit
Other:
The miniature chipboard corset is by Gina's Designs

Also visit the designer of all of the amazing digital collections on the YouTube channel, where you can watch the gorgeous art bits come together in the most amazing art journals!  So inspiring!

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Thanks for looking and come back soon to see more projects!

Whimsical Shadowbox for Ephemera's Vintage Garden

Hello my friends!  Today I'm sharing my second project featuring art journal backgrounds and whimsical page elements from "A Happy Place" by Ephemera's Vintage Garden.  I had so much fun creating this!  One of my favorite things to do when crafting is to create a scene.  No, of course I don't mean that I enjoy causing disturbances in public places LOL.  I meant that I like to portray a feeling through the depiction of a particular scene.  It may be a place where I've been in real life, such as I might create with a traditional scrapbook layout, but more often the scene is one where only my imagination could take me.  We all need a touch of whimsy in our lives now and then, and this kit, A Happy Place really makes me smile.

I began with an 8 x 10 wooden shadowbox frame that I purchased from Michaels.  I painted it with several coats of gesso so I would have a bright white surface on the base of the frame.  I wish I could say that I created all of the fabulous mixed media technique on the frame, but I didn't have to, it's already there on the background papers!  I printed the background papers onto tissue paper and then used Mod Podge to adhere it to the frame.  Let it overlap, it's fine, you'll trim and sand it later.  Don't trim it out and sand until it's completely dry, overnight is best.  To print onto tissue paper, I run a glue stick around all four sides of a 65 lb weight sheet of cardstock.  I place the white tissue paper on top pressing it firmly to the glue on the edges, starting at one side and smoothing it firmly over the cardstock backing to prevent as few wrinkles in the tissue paper as possible.  I trim it out so nothing is hanging over the cardstock backing so it doesn't get hung up in the printer and cause a jam.  Most of the time, I can easily remove the tissue paper from the cardstock  backing, but if not, you can just cut the edges off.  When I was finished with the frame, I simply fussy cut all the amazing and whimsical bits from the set, and arranged them inside and around the frame using pop dots for dimension at different levels within my shadowbox.  I added a few things that were not from the printable kit that I will list below.

I always like to remind my followers that many of the digital papers are designed to make incredibly amazing art journals.  The backgrounds look like you spent hours perfecting mixed media techniques.  Don't stop when you've finished creating your art journal.  You can print the papers again and again to create all kinds of projects!

Digital Design Paper from Ephemera's Vintage Garden

Printable Art Journal Page Backgrounds

A Happy Place II

Also Part of The Set are:

A Happy Place

A Happy Place II Art Journal Page Backgrounds

*The Blackbird at the lower left corner comes from one of the recent freebies called Merry and Wise

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Other items used in this project are chipboard shapes by Gina's Designs including:

Birds on a Wire

Birdhouse

Clock Hands

Bird Nest

Vintage Victorian Winter Themed Diorama for Gina's Designs

This Diorama is one of the newer selections in our store, and it's my new favorite piece to work with.  The possibilities are endless for decorating in any theme you like.  This is a large piece at 5" wide, 5"deep and around 7" tall.  When assembled, the Diorama provides a spacious  triangular shaped niche on each of the four sides for you to decorate.  The top of the piece also provides a really large space.   This piece also comes with a lazy susan pedestal to attach to the bottom so it will turn.  I chose not to use the rotating base and opted to add some Tim Holtz feet instead.  I wanted my creation to have a wintery vintage Victorian feel, and I thought that the ornate feet best reflected the look I was after.  

 

After I assembled the piece, I gave it a light coat of gesso.  I papered the inside of the niches with canvas resist by Prima Finnabair Elementals in a music note pattern.  I needed two sheets and had scraps left over.  I stenciled over the canvas using a snowflake stencil,  first with Prima Chalk Ink in Old Rose, and then I used the same snowflake stencil with sparkle texture paste.  I added some gesso with a dry fan shaped brush here and there to distress. 

I covered the vertical framework of the piece with crackle texture paste, and distressed it with some gesso and a little light pink acrylic paint, and a little buttermilk acrylic paint.  The horizontal framework was covered with a sequined eyelash trim I got on ebay and had been hoarding.

The chipboard shapes were embossed with Stampendous shabby embossing powders in cream and in white.

The Victorian winter images were mostly freebies I found on Pinterest, along with a collage sheet from Gecko Galz called Christmas Icons.

Thanks for looking!

Gina's Designs Products Used:

Diorama (coming soon)

Winter Shape Set

Christmas Shape Set

Snowflake Shape Set 

Cottage Windows Small

Window Shadowbox in a Sewing Theme for Gina's Designs

Hello Crafty Friends!  Today I am sharing a customized version of the Window Shadowbox by Gina's Designs.   This was an original piece that I'd had in my stash for quite some time, just waiting for that right moment of inspiration to come along.  In this version of the shadowbox, there is a dividing shelf across the center creating two areas to decorate.  You can request to have your shadowbox divided in the center as in this piece, or you can purchase it the way it is currently shown in the store, with no center shelf, to create a large window view of anywhere your imagination takes you.  

I kept the chipboard technique simple on this piece because lots was already going on inside the box.  I covered all of my chipboard with a light coat of gesso using a dry brush, script stamped with perfect medium, then colored with perfect pearls.  Simple but effective, this technique worked perfectly to compliment this piece.

Gina's Designs Products Used:

Window Shadowbox *customized version

Dressforms 2 Miniatures Shape Set

Dressforms 1 Miniature Shapes Set

Vintage Seamstress Shapes Set

Parchment flowers (upper left) from Craftsupplies1 on Etsy or Zibbet

Shabby Chic Memory Tray for Ephemera's Vintage Garden

Hi Crafty Friends!  Today I am sharing a creative team project for Ephemera's Vintage Garden.  This Memory Tray features the digital paper kit called Paris in my Heart.  This is such a perfect gift for a lover of shabby chic Paris style, or I could just keep it all to myself.  What I love about digital paper kits is that I can always just print more paper and make another one.  This is the second project that I've created featuring this paper kit, and I hope you'll come back to see yet another that I plan to create later this month..

I have done some fussy cutting of some of the images in the paper and raised them up onto pop dots to create some extra dimension.  This tray did not take me long at all to decorate. The hardest part was in deciding which gorgeous paper to put in which square :)

I began by painting the tray with white gesso, then I used Tim Holtz tissue tape around the frame, and added some distress ink.  

Products:

Digital Design paper by Ephemera's Vintage Garden

Paris in my Heart printable kit

Wooden memory Tray by Recollections

Doilies and chipboard shapes (including the Eiffel tower) are from Gina's Designs

Tim Holtz tissue tape

Flowers by Prima and Petaloo

Butterflies by Renea Bouquets

Check out Debbie's other gorgeous papers, and sign up for amazing weekly freebies HERE!

Halloween Fun with Kitty's Scrap Post + $$$ COUPON $$$

Hello my Crafty Friends!  I'm back today with more Halloween fun, and a DISCOUNT CODE!  If you're a follower then you know how much I love Halloween.  When I saw the Nevermore digital kit by Kitty's Scrap Post, I knew it had to be mine!  All of the background paper and printed images are from the kit.  For this project I have altered a Memory Tray by Recollections.  I had so much fun cutting out the images from the collage sheets that come with the kit.   I'm such a fan of digital kits these days, I love printing the paper as often as I want for multiple projects.  If you haven't tried digital paper kits yet, or you want to add to an existing digital paper stash, then please visit the shop and remember to use this discount coupon for 15% off of your entire purchase.  ****Enter code NancyGDT15 to receive your discount!*****

Products Used:

Digital Design papers by Kitty's Scrap Post

Nevermore Digital Paper Kit

(Note:  The kit also comes with optional matching bottecaps and domino art)

Other:

Memory Tray by Recollections

Flowers by Petaloo

Spooky cat, fence and raven by Tim Holtz

Chipboard spider webs and flourish topper by Gina's Designs

Halloween Themed Composition Box by Gina's Designs

Hello Crafty Friends!  Today I'm sharing my version of the Composition Box by Gina's Designs.  Halloween is my favorite time of the year to scrap.  There are so many fun Halloween themes, and it's so hard to chose between witches, vamps, zombies, and other ghoulish themes,  that I usually end up making many projects during the Autumn months.  I knew as soon as Gina designed this awesome piece, exactly which numbers I'd choose.

Gina's Designs Products used:

Composition Box

Spiderweb Shape Set

Other:

Tim Holtz Halloween-themed stamps, rub-ons, and die

Collage sheets from Alpha Stamps

Collage sheet from Raiders of the Lost Art

Bagatelle Boxes! Brand new at Gina's Designs

I had the honor of being the first Design Team member for Gina's Designs to play with the new bagatelle boxes.  This was so much fun.  Each box is individual and notches together easily.  These boxes are made of wood, not chipboard, and are very sturdy.  I used plain old inexpensive white wood glue to glue them together.  Once you have them glued together, the fun begins and you can arrange them any way you please.  Below are a couple of different configurations I played around with.  The starter set comes with 12 boxes, 2 in each of six different sizes.  You can also purchase add-ons if you would like a bigger finished project, or use fewer boxes and make two.  You can also configure these boxes to form a square or rectangle rather than a free-form shape, although you may need to use more or less than the basic starter kit to form that shape.

After I glued my boxes together and figured out which configuration I wanted to use, I used hot glue to attach the boxes to each other.  I think it would better to use wood glue, but I was in a hurry that day :)  The hot glue works, but you have to be very careful to get your boxes even the first time if you use the hot glue.  After my boxes were glued together, I chose to cover the seams with Tim Holtz tissue tape.  It was so easy to use!  I then painted the back and sides with a crackle finish.  I like to use the white elmer's glue method of crackle painting because it's cheaper and quicker. You can dry it with your heat gun, and you'll be done in a jiffy.  I papered the inside backs of each box, and this is what I ended up with:

Now for the finished project!!!!  I had a lot of help filling the cubby holes from my BFF Susan who used to be a miniatures artist.  She had so many cute items in her stash including the collectible Avon figurine thimbles.  I just love the end result!

DT Project - Vintage Victorian Shadowbox

Created for Gina's Designs, this shadowbox uses her lazer cut window pane, shutters, and awning.  I made it really old and grungy looking with an almost gothic feel.