Distress ‘Self’ Banner

Good-day friends! Back with another project to share with you for Frilly and Funkie challenge.

Here is what Suzz had to say;

2018 – The Year of

 

Hi! Suzz here. Welcome to a brand new year! I am not very good at New Year Resolutions but I do like to think about what I want to focus on in the New Year. To help me do this, I pick a word that is my word for the year and try to use that word to keep me focused on what is important. The challenge to you is to pick a word that will be your inspiration for 2018. Create a vintage or shabby chic project that includes your word of 2018. The word can be part of a sentiment, phrase or stand alone on your project as long as it is featured somewhere in your art.

If you follow me, you know that I have already picked my word for the year and created this project to look at and remind me daily to work on ‘self’ improvements. It was such a fun project that any excuse to do something else was fine by me. So I decided to change things up and I wanted my extension words to be on the inside of the letters vs the somewhat easier route of in the background. The word represents working on parts of me that only I can improve, by my own self talk. 

 My first step was to cut letters using Cricket ~ ‘DonJuan’ cartridge. The stamps sets and dies that I have would have been to big for the letters so I decided to create the letters in Powerpoint then print out on top of Tim Holtz Distress plain tissue that was stuck to a piece of cardstock. I have a normal home printer and when applying wet glue found that the water in the glue was causing the ink to bleed, so this glue stick worked great due to not having water in it. I randomly glued the words all over the letters. The tissue becomes translucent so it appears as if I stamped them. 

For the foundation of the letters, I cut 4 7 1/2 x 3 1/2″ strips from TH resist motif paper stash. I wanted it to be a bit shorter than typical tags so I placed thinlit about 5″ from the bottom.

I inked up the foundation with some THD ink in picket fence and added a bit of vintage photo ink to the edges. I then grabbed some scraps and started playing around with collage elements

I was looking for a very vintage look and used Distress Crackle Paint to glue down my main background piece which is a copy of a vintage handwritten page of notes. I loved that the original was done in pencil so the coloring is very suttle, I didn’t want any font to compete with my letters. I let this air dry.

I cut some scrolls from Sizzix TH movers and shapers in brown Kraft-core. Embossed first with Lindy’s Byrentine Bronze, heat set, then used both UTEE and Lindy’s Cosmic Blue Violet hoping for a patina look.

Well, the EP didn’t quite work out so I pulled out Rub N Buff in patina, squeezed out too much so also added some to the letters. After dry, I buffed with a cloth to expose the different shades of the paste.

After crackle paint was dry I started to dirty the foundation up with alcohol inks in Patina, Mushroom and a touch of Carmel. Really trying hard not to over do this step.

Now I started layering. I wanted the same elements with each one but  different due to each one having a different letter shape. I also found that working on only one letter at a time helped me focus. Having them all laid out, trying to do a step at a time on all four was overwhelming. The main color component is Rice paper that I inked up, I did not take photos of my process but it is on the video I am currently editing and should be avail to view soon.

Almost done, I added a variety of machine stitches over the cooking twine to help the tags lay flat while hung, I also loosely tied scraps of lace & ribbon in-between the tags.

Here are the close ups …

As always, thanks Frilly and Funkie for hosting another fun challenge and you for taking the time to view my project.

I am working on editing and sharing a video of this project. It can be found here when completed.

xo, Wendy