Sunday, June 14, 2015

End of an Era Shadowbox Frame


This is my latest design team project for CraftyCutting design team. Craftycutting design and laser cut all sorts of boxes, frames, shapes and albums. The products are really sturdy and are great for every occasion. For this project I have used the greyboard shadowbox frame. These are €7.50 each and are really versatile. My theme was schooldays, so I decided to incorporate a photo of my youngest girls. The last of my children is set to finish Primary school in a couple of weeks, so this was particularly poignant. 
The finished project
The shadowbox frame comes flat packed and so is easy to decorate before putting it together. I painted everything black to start. I then covered the inside back panel with patterned paper and book pages. The paper that I used is from Graphic45, a collection called ABC Primer, (perfect for this project) with lots of elements that can be cut up and used to make the scene more three dimensional.

All of the insides and the front of the frame were also covered with patterned paper from the collection. I then applied some red texture paste through a stencil to the front of the frame and some white texture paste through a star stencil to the front. I added some gilding wax to the stars to make them pop.


I next cut some bunting and fussy cut lots of images including a photo of my DD first day at school. It was then simply a matter of adding all of the elements to the frame. I hope you like it and don't forget to pop over to Craftycutting to get your own shadowbox.
Some details

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

St. Patrick's Day mini shamrock album

This month on the Crafycutting Design team, I have been playing with the Shamrock Mini album. I decided to go full on Irish with it just in time for St. Patrick's Day. I don't really do much decorating around the Paddy's Day holiday, so I decided to make a little book with the old Irish Blessing in it.
 
 
I covered each of the pages with green and orange paper and painted the 'stems' in green. I then soften the edges of the album using white paint. For the cover I made a little rosette from green grosgrain ribbon and a little white lace, in the style of a St. Patrick's Day badge. I added a gold celtic knot button on top. Finally I added some gold gemstones. 
 
I used lace and a felt flower cut up to form a shamrock. The white shamrock is a rub-on. The text of the blessing was created using a tiny set of alphabet stamps. 
 
These pages were decorated with an Irish Dancing dress, a doily and some green felt flowers.

 
Again I used a doily on this page with some green gemstones. On the rhs is a claddagh.
 
This page was quite busy so I chose to just highlight one of the arrows with gemstones and add a little pint of green beer to the right page.
 
 
The final pages have some rub-ons added.
 
I hope you enjoyed my little album. Pop over to www.craftycutting.com to purchase the mini album, it costs only €2.40 for the 4"x4" album, a great project to do with the kids.