Feeling Bravely Experimental.... (Updated with a 'before the experiment photo")

Hi Everyone,

Happy Sunday to you!  It is a beautiful sunny day here, and I should really be outside planting, but before I go out and get my hands dirty, I am going to take a moment to share a recent project.

The current challenge over at  Frilly and Funkie blog is Snap, Crackle, Crackle.   It was just the push I needed to get out my Wendy Vecchi crackle paste and do some playing around.

This product creates the most amazing crackling in the simplest way of any of the crackle mediums I have tried.  I find the chalky finish to work very well with my vintage projects, and I love the way it takes paint and inks.  For this piece, I combined it with bead gel for a super texture-y background.

I found this sweet little tray at the thrift store. I painted over the dated brown and white polka dots with matte white spray paint.  Next, I randomly scraped bead gel and Wendy Vecchi Crackle Paste onto the tray with an old gift card.   I made sure to get some of each product on the edges of the tray.  After letting this dry over night, I added Frayed Burlap Distress Ink to the cracks and beads to highlight the texture. 

I cut all of my paper flowers and leaves with my Silver Bullet Professional digital cutter.  The flower files are all from Penny Duncan Creations.  She makes and shares the most beautiful SVG cut files on her blog,  I like to cut all of my paper elements from white paper, and use Distress Inks and Stains to add custom color. I  As you may know, I love using vintage text, and added some curls of book paper to "fluff out" the floral.  I added a printed garden quote, and a custom dyed seam binding bow, and thought I was finished.  After a couple of days of looking at the project, though, I just wasn't completely satisfied with it.

I guess I was feeling bravely experimental, because I took the project outside and sprayed the whole thing pretty liberally with the same matte white paint I had started with.  Voila!  It was the perfect way to tone down all of the bright colors from the flowers, and blend them into a much more vintage appearance.  I added just a touch of brown Distress Inks and Sprays, and stamped a Tim Holtz stamp in Tree Branch Archival over the previously  printed tag. 

Big thanks to the Frilly and Funkie gang for keeping me hopping with fun challenges this year!  And in case you didn't know, Linda is having a big sale over at the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  Almost all of her terrific products are at an additional 10% off her already discounted prices!  Thanks to a gift card from my hubby and recently being chosen as a random challenge winner, I have been able to fill my "shopping cart" with new goodies to use in future challenges. 

Now I'm off to plant those flowers!  Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!

Elizabeth

While editing photos of another project, I found this photo:

Here you can see the original brighter colors of the project.  Of course the Distress colors are all beautiful, but I like my choice to shabby the project up by toning them down with the spray of white.