Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A little alteration...

Good morning, Flamingo fans! Melissa, here, with a fun new project to share!

So, I have this beautiful custom frame that I invested in as a focal point for a wall in my living room. You know, the fancy frame with the matting in my choice of color? Yeah. One of those. Now, I did wait until all of that stuff went on sale and bought it then, saving myself a pretty penny, but I still considered it an investment. I forgot to take one thing into account, however, and that is the fact that I have young children - boys - who like to clomp around, throw things, and shake my walls at any given opportunity. And this is why my investment fell off the wall, causing the frame to crack, the glass to fall out (but not break, thankfully) and the back to become damaged. What can I do about that? Not much, really. I can replace the frame, but I wasn't really excited about the idea of shelling out more money for something that my children can (and probably will) ruin again in the future. I can touch up the paint, and I did, but the crack is still noticeable. So, I did what any respectable craftswoman does when something goes awry - I decided to cover it up!

First, you will need a Maya Road canvas pennant album, available at the Flamingo Scraps store, some Glimmer Mist or Maya Mist, some masks or stencils, and a couple garbage bags.

I began by laying the garbage bags on my floor, laid my canvas page in the middle, a mask on top of it, and gave them a spray.



This particular mask had a lot of over spray, so I used a second garbage bag to do a second mask. I'll show you what you can do with that excess spray at the end of this post! You don't have to rinse your stencil in between sprays... of course you can if you want to, but I liked these to be a little messy (and it is all about personal preference). 


I added some various embellishments and letters on each of the flags, and then on the two where I had no letters, I decided to make a few of my own rosettes using Glubers and a few strips from a sheet from the Teresa Collins Now & Then collection


By the time I was done, I had an amazing final product!


In addition to what I've listed above, I used a Prima SIIP swirl that I cut into various pieces to use across the banner, some paint, a scrap border sticker that I had in my stash, and some stitching to bring more tactility to the piece. I used an uppercase alphabet from Maya Road and used alcohol ink for their coloring. Round this off with a Sharpie Marker to do the outlining and some random jute twine from my stash to tie them together and my project was complete!

I'm sure you're wondering how it looks on my frame, and have no fear! I used some double-sided tape to stick it up and cover that pesky cracked frame!


And, of course, I have a couple of close up shots so that you can see the individual banners a little better.





So, I know you're asking me what I did with my leftover mists that I promised to share at the end of my story. I pressed some white cardstock (and I'm sure you can use kraft or any other light color, as well) onto my garbage bags and stamped my masks onto the sheets, as well, and came up with some pretty cool backgrounds to use in future projects!




So there you have it! I hope you enjoyed checking out this project and to see many of your photo frames that you altered in the same way.

Until next time,
Keep scrappin'!
Melissa




7 comments:

  1. Melissa this is just STUNNING!!!! did you stitch on it as well!!! LOVE!!!! Suzanne

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful! I can't wait to see what you make out of the mist-stamped backgrounds!

    ReplyDelete
  3. VERY cool! I love the story behind the project, too! I am always getting bargains at yard sales and decorating them up!!! And, super clever idea on the extra mist recycling!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great project, Melissa!! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love all the colors in this banner and great technique!!! Just Wow!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Melissa - this is a great use of sprays, and such an adorable banner. Love how you did this so full of color and fun!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails