Once In a While...love gives us a Fairy Tale

Joy here, in my first appearance as Guest Designer of the Month at Quietfire Design. I live in Calgary, Alberta (originally from the UK),  take classes, make cards and dream more than I actually get to make.

Preparing the Frame
For today's project, I started with a inexpensive frame and primed it with a layer of gesso. {ed.note: the frame here is the part of the project which appears as the mat for the photo.}

 I separated out a white napkin into layers.  I spread more gesso over the frame, carefully laid a napkin layer on top of the wet gesso and spread another layer of gesso over that. There are some wrinkles in the napkin layer, which add texture. You can gently pull off any excess paper around the edges of the frame where it is not wet from the gesso. Let it dry well.

 

I painted the frame with red acrylic paint,.  Then I mixed Forever Red perfect pearls with water and brushed this on top of the paint so it would  shine.  I also rubbed some silver Faber Castell gelato into some of the wrinkles. A few Quietfire Flourishes were stamped in various places. 

 

I spread regular Dreamweaver Embossing Paste over the Dreamweaver Flourish stencil and allowed it to dry.

 

When I painted the Dreamweaver flourish with a Perfect Pearls Pewter and water mix, I didn’t like the look so used a Versamark pen over the paste in sections in order to add the Marcasite Embossing Powder. I liked that a lot better!!!

 

I stamped Once in a While with Stazon Black onto  Spellbinders Decorative Labels 8 cut from black aluminum  and sanded well so the stamping would adhere. 

Roses and Heart
The paper roses were painted with Forever Red Perfect Pearls mixed with water (the roses were originally white and pink). The black rhinestone flourishes at the top are by Zva Creative. 

To create the heart, diecut a heart from the T!m Holtz Movers and Shapers mini hearts set, thermal emboss with Versamark ink , sprinkle with Marquisite EP and a touch of Ruby Red embossing powder.

I painted a small red paper flower with some black distress ink (mixed with water on non stick craft sheet). Smeared black gelato onto craft sheet and added a touch of water to rub onto edges of frame with my finger to tone down the red, and also around the edges of the heart.

The pine sprigs were die cut using Tim Holtz Sizzix dies then sponged with Distress Inks.

Adding the frame
My “knight” on shining armour decided I needed a traditional frame around my frame and made one out of MDF! I primed it with gesso, then painted with two layers of black acrylic paint. Wiped very small amounts of red paint to add highlights onto the frame in keeping with the distressed look.

Love how it turned out – this is very much “outside” my box, and I struggled at the beginning to get going and matching my vision for the frame with the reality of how it was looking.  I kept adding bits here and there, and it definitely took a while before things came together in the way that I wanted them to. All part of that creative process sometimes!

 

The Fairytale!
The background behind this piece: My “knight” in/on shining Kevlar is my beloved husband of 20 years, Greg. He has a passion for motorbike riding, and a few years ago, I finally got up the courage to ride with him.  I got a lovely helmet last year that is black, silver with red roses.  Hence, my inspiration for decorating this frame as a Valentine’s gift for Greg.

 He is my fairy tale: a tale that crossed thousands of miles in a trans-Atlantic romance that came out of nowhere during a working holiday in Canada, 22 years ago. We look forward to many more rides together, saving up for “the” trip to Italy for our 25^th wedding anniversary we hope!

Huge thanks to Suzanne for this amazing opportunity to be a Guest Designer.  I have taken this opportunity from Suzanne as a sign to spread my wings a little. I soak in all the inspiration of those talented people that I follow (especially on the QF design team) and observe with wonder, to now actually hope to “do”, as Yoda says, there is no try.