Wednesday 8 February 2012

A Mermaid's Chest - for the Happy Daze Love Challenge

Sometimes it is easy to get carried away with new projects.  There are so many wonderful ones to try!

And often one will laterally lead to another, and so it did today.   After reading the  Happy Daze Design Team Blog.

It has a challenge with the title of  Love - a technique that you love to use.  And here is mine!

I decided that I'd go back to my earlier 'basic' crafting of painting and stamping and getting mucky!

With a little wooden box I bought a year or two ago from Happy Daze

Out came, some paints, and silver rub and buff.

Inks, embossing powders, blue glitter........
And my all time favourite stamp - a Mermaid 
I painted her eyelids with a deeper shade of blue.
Her lips a blue-red colour with a hint of extra shimmer.
Each pearl bead of her necklace I painted individually, together with her shell arm band.

The lid is edged with lots of crushed blue glitter and really glistens in the light - I love it!
And on the outer edges I smoothed on silver and then buffed it until it shines.
The box has been stamped on all sides - vintage shells on a swirly pattern at each end, and larger swirls on the sides.  All the stamping has been embossed with a shiny wet look black embossing powder and softened with a silver rub here and there, and pearlised blue swooshes of rubbed on paint.
I have had such a fun day going to back to basics.

Rubbing on three layers of paints with my fingers, roughing up the wood, swooshing and buffing  of silver rub and buff, stamping, polishing and re-establishing the joy of getting inky, sticky, and messy!

The photos don't really show you how absolutely shimmering wet it looks.

I think I'll keep this little Mermaids Chest for my own little treasures.
Thank you for visiting


Polymer clay play - Sliced pendants

Well moving on from yesterday..................and still snowed in................apologies for the photos, it's a dark day, and even darker in our little bungalow - I used a 'daylight' bulb but still didn't get a good photo - perhaps a photography course should be  next on the list!  The background is white in real life!

 An update on my Julie Piccarello inspired slices

 Now sanded and polished and glazed. 
This one made from all the project scraps is so thick that I need to make a special ring for it!

I enjoyed having a go at this project, and learnt a lot of what not to do as usual.

The original concept was to turn them into pendants but on reflection, these and the other couple I made are destined for keyrings methinks, for the garage, shed, back door, and front door.

Hmmm what shall I play with next?