Stitching, Punching An Altered Mini Chest 4 comments  

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This month I got to work with a manufacturer that I havent worked with much in the past: Pebbles. I have no idea why though because I LOVED these products! The sweet soft colors of Floral Lane are goregous in a just barely vintage sort of way. And the bright fun colors of Happy Go Lucky are, well, HAPPY! 

For this first page, I had these sepia photos lying on my desk waiting for the perfect papers. The pretty soft peach paired with the floral browns of the Floral Lane Collection was perfect in an almost vintage way. These papers reminded me, in a good way, of grandmothers and sewn aprons and iced tea. Along those lines, I decided to add a bunch of sewing.

I have all three kinds here - machine, hand and faux! I created a mini quilt using machine stitching. I cheated by using my scoring board to fold the edges where I wanted the stitching. Then I nipped the corners so they wouldnt cause problems when I tried to fold the edges down. I put a little adhesive in the center of each square (so my needle didn't run into the glue and get all gummed up) and glued them to a scrap paper. Then I stitched with a zig zag stitch along the inner seams and a straight stitch around the outer edges. For the scalloped edge, I punched circles and cut them in half before adhering them and finishing them with some faux stitching. The rest was easy!

The photos are popped up on foam tape. I added some gesso underneath the top part of the title and a journaling spot under the bottom part. Finally, I finished it all off with some simple lollipop flowers with hand sewn stems. The lollipop flowers were so simple! I just hand cut circles of various size from white eyelet fabric and sewed them together with buttons.

I found this little mini chest at Goodwill and thought it would be great for my daughter to put some little 'treasures' in. These sweet pretty papers were perfect for it! I started by spray painting it white, then covered it in gesso because the spray paint wasnt covering the way I wanted. I used mod podge to adhere the paper to the drawer fronts and the top and sides of the box. I love how the gorgeous teal contrasts with the peach. Since there was a neat little ledge on top I wanted to take advantage of that. I found some packaging that already had a fold in it. (I think it was from a cricut cartridge) Since there was already a fold, it didnt fight me when I wanted it to stand up. I trimmed the plastic to match the top edge, then added the title to it. After the title was on the front, I used little dots of glossy accents to add a piece of Hambly transparency to the back for interest. Before adding that piece to the chest, I hot glued an eyelet ruffle along the back edge and added some brown trim. I also added a piece of trim that has beads along one side. I placed that so that when I added the plastic, it sat on top of the trim but the beads peek out underneath. Fabritac holds all of that down. I added the first part of the title with one of the 3-D stickers and a die cut circle. Some fussy cut flowers, with a touch of bling and hand cut leaves finish the drawer fronts.

The Happy Go Lucky line was perfect for this page about my daughter and her grandfather fishing together. I love how their bright clothes and happy faces work with the bright colors of this line. I kept a lot of white in the page to keep the bright prints from becoming too overwhelming. The paper flowers were so perfect that I decided to use almost all of them on this page! When I didn't have an orange one, I made an accordion flower for the top right corner. The leaves are hand-cut - it is such a simple design and so easy to add a little interest. Just cut a pointed oval, then take little nips randomly along the edges. 

I have been stuck in a rut of always making white cards. I was inspired by some cards in paper crafts magazine to try a colored card and put the sentiment in the middle instead of off to the side. I played up the red and purple in this line and made the bouquet pop against a piece of white cardstock framed by the red card. For the leaves, I used a Unity stamp. Since I wanted some of the stems leaning left and some leaning right, I stamped on the front of the green paper with versamark ink, then stamped some others on the back of the paper with regular ink, so that when I cut them all out, you can't see the stamping. I used one of the really cool tear off edges above the sentiment, and glued the sentiment to some ribbon. 

Supplies Used in this Reveal