Perfect 10

It is ten years to the day since my wonderful girlfriend became my wonderful wife. She is probably the only woman in the UK who gets dragged into craft shops by her husband so I thank her for her patience and understanding.

She does get a special handmade card every birthday/Christmas/Valentines/anniversary and she has amassed quite a collection thus far. I have made her a special card this time but I also wanted to commemorate the occasion with a little piece of framed art, the making of which I would like to share with you today.

Once again I reached for the new Jillibean Soup collection of dies and folders because I LOVE IT! but more importantly because I think she will too. I haven't itemised the dies used but if you follow the link above you will get to see them all together as it should be.

I also used the new Block Talk Lowercase alphabet die by Tim Holtz and the Decorative Strip die Antiqua Numbers by Brenda Walton which is one of my favourite go-to dies for birthday cards because it has what I like to think of as a contemporary vintage vibe! which is an oxymoron which makes perfect sense to me (and me alone probably!).

I attached a square of pure white card to a 7 inch (just over 17 cm) square of mount board before die-cutting the number 10 from thin white paper and attaching to the board with low tack spray adhesive. I then proceeded to apply Distress Ink with an applicator, this was built up gradually blending the blue and the green (Broken China and Shabby Shutters) and the orange and red in the top right (Wild Honey and Worn Lipstick). Next, I took two Distress Paint daubers  and watered the colours to a milky consistency.

After strategically splattering the paint onto the square with the paint brush I pealed off the die-cut numbers and traced around the masked area with a fine black marker pen, it doesn't have to be too accurate. 

All the decorative paper used comes from a 6" x 6" paper pad from Basic Grey featuring the fab Hipster collection and I used a sheet of pale green patterned paper to cover some scrap mount board before using it to die-cut the letters for the word 'perfect' which I then attached to the square above the numbers. That extra dimension really makes all the difference for me.

Now, this is where things get a bit crazy, random, scatter shot... take your pick!!

 I knew what I wanted to do with the photo which I printed from my PC before trimming into a Polaroid style shape before adding a few stamped sentiments using my Dear Lizzy roller stamp. After that it was just a question of cutting, stamping, sanding, inking and folding a seemingly disparate collection of designs in the vain hope that they might work together on the page... I'll let you be the judge.

Here is the finished frame, you can see that I mounted the square into the centre of a box frame bought from IKEA (I think?) I spent a long time moving the various die cut elements around the page before I found a pleasing composition which for me is all part of the fun!

Every thing is attached using double sided tape or 3D foam pads adding a sense of depth and dimension, you will also notice a random smattering of adhesive pearls/gems in a selection of hues and sizes.

I hope you like it but more importantly, I hope my wife does too!

Here is a bit of close-up detail.