Shopping our Stash #148 - Happy Earth Day!

**For my Tuesday Morning Sketches post, please scroll down or click here. Thanks!!**

I am SO EXCITED to show you what I've made for the new Shopping our Stash challenge! In honour of Earth Day, we'd like to see you recycle or up-cycle something in your project. Use product packaging, die-cut embellishments from a cardboard box, find something around the house & repurpose it...you get the idea. 

So my crazy train of thought went like so. I was colouring this mermaid for the current Sweet Pea Stampers challenge, and I needed a place for it to dry after adding all the glitter & paint. I'd recently cleaned out my "market box" where I keep my paper bags, change, etc, and taken out this frame that I used to use on my table. Some of the gems had fallen off, the rolled paper flowers were crushed & dirtied, and I just didn't like it anymore. For lack of a better place to put it, I'd laid it down on top of my CD stack - and when I put the mermaid there to dry, I thought 'hey, why don't I put the mermaid in the frame?' (And yes, I realize that my craft area is a disaster zone. But then I wouldn't get cool ideas like this!)

Here's the back of the frame (I got too excited & started altering before taking a picture - I used the old insert as  the backing for the new piece of altered art!)

It was just a plain wooden frame, painted with gold acrylic paint. The rhinestone swirls were already adhered (although missing a few, which was easy to fix).  The rest:

This is going to hang on the wall above my desk, once I stop shoving it into people's faces and saying OMG LOOK I MADE THIS!

Because those swirls were already adhered and I wanted to keep them, I knew a complete repainting wasn't feasible. I used Broken China Distress Crackle paint (which had separated, giving some really neat colour variations) in dabs, and then sanded it lightly. After that had dried, I used Tumbled Glass distress Stickles and a paintbrush to lightly coat the entire frame. 

I broke out a lot of fun stuff - you can just make out the embossing paste bubbles, which I heat-embossed with Shabby Blue Frantage EP. The mermaid is coloured with Spectrum & Bic markers, and her tail was painted in with a mixture of liquid pearls & stickles. After painting, I sprinkled Martha Stewart crystal glitter all over for EXTRA SPARKLY! There's some sheer fabric that I frayed & treated with the heat gun, a corsage pin with a big gorgeous glass bead, the last bits of some May Arts ribbons, odds & ends of crystal swirls, and I beaded the ends of the wires that I used to attach the ribbon. I've also stamped some Hero Arts starfish & tucked them in. 

The three flowers on the frame were made by slip-stitching along the edge of seam binding & pulling the ends so that they gathered into a circle. Laura has a great tutorial on this technique here. 

I think you'll be amazed at the range of things the Stash gals came up with for this challenge -  come & play along with us until next Monday, April 28th!  Make sure you hop on by & leave the rest of my teamies some love!

Leslie

Alica

Deena

Lauren

Donna

Chris

Barb

xoxo,

Jessi