Fly Free: Mixed Media Home Decor Plaque

A month or two ago, my friend Lindsey came over for a Saturday and we spent the day crafting. It was such a lovely change to be sharing my craft room and have another person there to bounce ideas off and also to have a jolly good laugh. Throughout the day we played with ink, papers, stamps and the trusty heat gun and we each made a plaque.

This was so far outside my normal crafty zone, but still so much fun. I was using supplies to guide Lindsey through the different techniques which she could use on her plaque. I never got to take a photo of hers (hopefully i’ll get one to show you guys at some point) but heres a look at mine.

Part of me is gutted i didn’t take step by step photos, but heres a quick run down of what i did to end up with this piece of art.

Before i even began i stuck my chipboard to the craft mat because i knew i wanted a good steady surface to work on. To do this i used masking tape all the way around the four edges. Then i stamped the butterfly (unity stamps) with clear embossing ink and embossed with white embossing powder. Before cleaning the stamp i also made an image into scrap paper which i cut out to use as a template. I sprayed repositionable adhesive on the back of the butterfly template and stuck this over the embossed image to create a mask. Next I cut a flowing section out of a piece of scrap paper and adhered to the chipboard once again using repositionable adhesive. This was a mask to add the little stream of butterflies, which once again i inked in clear and embossed in white. Next I removed the mask which protected either side of the butterfly stream, and covered this section with another mask. Next stop was to stamp and emboss the chevrons, over the top of the masked butterfly and the masked ‘stream’. At this stage of course, my whole project was white on white. The next stop was to add colour. I loved this bit, mostly because i had lots of fun with my distress inks! I started with the butterfly and i used my fingertips to blend the colour as it was kinda tricky to use the big bulky blending foam pad over the tiny areas. Next I reused the masks to cover the chevrons and used the blending tools to mix yellows and oranges into that middle section. I love the way it gives a kind of graduated look. <3 Next stop was the chevron section. Once again i masked off the butterfly and the yellow bit, and then added the teal colour with the blending tool.

At this stage the project looked really pretty. I was pleased with it, especially the subtle white outlines and funky colours. THEN guess what happened! As i was removing the masking tape, I realised i had made a booboo. The heat that was applied when embossing had made the masking tape really sticky and when i pulled it off, it ripped most of the upper coating of the chipboard. Ahh puuuH! In order to try to save it i grabbed a posca paint pen and drew the border. This gave the project a completely different look. A bit more funkylicious and punky! To bring it all together i also used the pen to outline some of the elements on the project, and to finish, added some beautiful felt alpha stickers. ohhhh pretty!

Im not sure where this will go, but i liked breaking out of the norm and trying something different.