Take a minute and come and see my wreath.  It’s a burst of color in a world ready for Spring!

www.thehybridchick.com

I started out with a huge blank canvas.   After printing out all the canvasses on my Pinterest board for inspiration as I worked  and after staring at the blank canvas for 10 minutes or so, I decided I would start out by drawing out the frame that would feature Lael’s name.  Next step was to figure out the placement of the quote.  Ah-ha — I’ve started.  Getting started was the hard part it seems!  I had these amazing papers and alphabets I got from The Digi Chick.  They are from the Altered Bohemian kit designed by Jenn at Joyful Heart Designs.  Next I just had to figure out how best to arrange them on the canvas.

Enter Mod-Podge – This is the point where my table started to get a teeny-tiny bit messy, but not nearly as bad it was when I was finished three days later!  When I use Mod-Podge I always water it down a bit so that it is easier to brush on.  I keep any left-overs in an old cold cuts container.  It will keep for a pretty long time!  After I had positioned the papers like I wanted them, I started to brush on the Mod-Podge.  Brush and smooth, brush and smooth, brush and smooth and repeat about a zillion times!  Then I still found bubbles.  I used a roller, I used my fingers, I used my palm and then when it was finally all smoothed out I walked away for a few minutes to let it dry.  When I came back, what do you know?  More bubbles, I guess the canvas or paper had to burp or something.  I tried to use the roller and it peeled up some of the paper – EEEeeeekk!  I found that if I glopped on more Mod-Podge with my fingers and smoothed it out carefully I was able to coax the bubble out to the side and release it.

The fun part was next – letting loose with the creativity.  Again, I went back to my Pinterest board, I googled Mixed Media Art, I went to the gallery at 2Peas and Scrapbook.com.  Finally, I decided to just go with it.  I got busy throwing paint and stuff on the canvas that I forgot to take pictures as I went.  Basically, I divided the canvas into 4 art areas.  Bottom right is where I started.  I Mod-Podged (Is that a real word?!?) some book pages on first, used a pasta strained as a stencil and painted on some polka dots, added some tissue paper for texture and stamped some flowers, and oh yeah – the pink paint.  That might have been overkill, the pink was just a bit too pink!!! I had to tone it down with some watered down pale pale hardly any pink at all pink paint.  By then it wasn’t quite so eye-searing Pepto Bismol pink!

Bottom right corner was next.  I cut some book pages into squares and Mod-Podged (if that isn’t a word, it will be by the time I am finished with this post!) them.  Onto some of them I glued circles cut from the polka dot paper I had left over from the first layer I put on the canvas.  Onto others I just painted random stuff, squiggles, dots, a flower, stars, squares, swirls…….

Top right corner – When I got to this corner it was nearly lunch time and I don’t work well on an empty stomach.  I needed fuel to keep the creativity flowing…….All I could come up with was a couple of stencils stuck in the corner of the canvas.  Then I added some definition stickers I drug out of my very old stash.  B-O-R-I-N-G……After lunch I came back and took a second look and decided that paint splatters would definitely help!  I mean what does not look better with paint splatters?  Huh?  Can you think of anything??  As I splatter painted the corner of the canvas I also inadvertently splattered the table, wall and part of the rug.  Ooops, they probably DID look better without paint splatters!  Oh well, it is my Happy Place and if I can’t splatter a little paint in there I might need to re-name it!

The top left I had originally planned to paint a sun, but the bottom corners were still bothering me, I thought they needed another layer of fun added.  On the left bottom side, I added a house.  I started out with a book page body of the house and a triangle roof cut from more left over 1st layer paper and Mod-Podged both of them on.  Next I added some map printed tissue paper to give it texture and a door cut from left over 1st layer paper.  I don’t know how I ended up with two doorknobs!  I swear I only painted one!  The door was kind of getting lost in the map printed tissue paper, so I added some definition stickers from Making Memories that I’ve had in my stash for a very long time.  For the windows I used parts from another digital file I downloaded from The Digi Chick called Brady’s Bits and Pieces. After getting the house like I wanted it, my attention shifted to the flowers next to the house. I wasn’t thrilled with them. They seemed sad and lonely. I had to remedy that! I gathered up all the flower stamps I have, foam and rubber included. I got any pigment ink color that I thought would add a pop of happy and went to work making a garden outside of the house. I was worried that the heat gun would make the mod-podged papers buckle and it probably would have if I had held it in any one place too long. I did see the pink paint start to bubble at one point and that’s when I decided to keep the heat gun in motion and not in any one spot for too long.

Back to the bottom right corner – This one was easy!  I just cut out some of the flowers from a couple of the beautiful papers from the Altered Bohemian kit and some stems from the paper as well. I added tissue paper behind the stems for texture and then Mod-Podged them on at varying heights.

Top left corner – finally ready to paint the sun.  I started out with a template and penciled in the outline.  At that point I decided to go with flower instead of sun and then I got so carried away painting the layers of the flower that I forgot to take pictures until I was up in the very corner and smeared on some tinted modeling paste.  I used a comb to add some texture to the modeling paste but decided I didn’t really like that.  I dug out a tiny flower stamp and tested it out.  You couldn’t tell it was a flower but I liked the texture it left.  In the middle of the flower on some of the layers I added polka dots, I used watercolor pencils to outline part of the design and used some textured paint to fill in some areas.

At this point I was back at the top right corner and creativity was waning – again! And yet again – The Digi Chick came to the rescue. I printed out some of the banners from the Brady’s Bits and Pieces file and mod podged them along the top of the canvas and across the lame doilies.  I then went in search of birds.  I found these adorable little guys from a kit called Sweet Songs created by Viva Artistry.  It is kind of weird that I like to use birds in my scrapbooking and even in decorating my house, but birds in real life sort of freak me out.  Not just one bird, that is fine – it is when there is a flock of them flying overhead that I start to feel edgy, I don’t know why!  Anyway, I added the bird and banner and now I like this part of the canvas. Oh, and I also used a heart doily as a stencil to add another layer and more depth.

Finally – I had the canvas like I wanted it to be, it felt full and rich and DONE!  I just need to add the frame for Lael’s name and call it TOTALLY DONE.  But, a plain frame just looked so darn well, plain sitting there on top of all those fun layers and stuff that I had to do something to it.  I got my circle stamps and gathered all the same pigment inks that I used for the garden plus a few more and made quick work of adding 108 or so circles to the frame!  I could only do about 5-7 before I was afraid the pigment ink would get too dry and not grab the embossing powder, so it was slow-go!  After I got the frame covered in circles I just free-handed her name onto it with a black Zig marker.  Last part was firguring out exactly where I wanted the words from the quote and getting them stuck down.  Also, I need to pick a different adhesive for those because double sided sticky tape is not working!

Here is the final product with close-up shots of each portion.

Next step was getting the garbage bags ready for use.  I found these at the $1 Store, the perfect size for my bathroom wastebasket.  But, as I was getting one out of the package I couldn’t help but notice the great pale pink color and neat texture and my brain started working on weaving them into a future project.  These come in a pack of 50 and are 4 gallon size.  To start off, I trimmed off the end of the bag, where it is fused together and lays in the bottom of the wastebasket.  This will leave you with a strip that is 17.5″ long by 4.5″ wide.  Fold this strip in half, which leaves you with a strip that is 8.5″ long and still 4.5″ wide.  Fold in half yet again, and your final dimensions will be 4.5″ by 4.5″.

Now using your scissors, fringe the bottom 3″ of your strip.  Open the strip all the way up to the 17.5″ length and staple the ends.  Cut this strip in half.  These two strips will be the ones you attach to the wreath.

Using double sided tape, attach the strip of garbage bag on top of the ribbon previously glued to wreath.  Do the same with the other strip.  Then you will need to cut more bags, until you have enough to cover all the ribbon on your wreath.

At this point, I added a 3/4″ polka-dotted pink ribbon on top of the garbage bags adhered to the wreath.  I am always in the camp of “More is Better!”  It is up to you how much extra you put on your wreath!

 
I’ve seen some amazing things done with old book and book pages.  At my church there is a group of amazing artists that create the coolest art displays.  This month they created stuff out of old books.  I’ve also seen some awesome stuff online, like wreaths & flowers made out of book pages.  So, that was my inspiration to make the book page hearts for my wreath.  I used my old school Coluzzle to cut the hearts out.  I’ve had it for years and years and it still cuts just as well today as it did back when I first got it.  I use it often to cut basic shapes.  Anyway, I cut graduated sized hearts out of both book pages and a cute patterned paper I dug out of my stash.  I inked the edges of the hearts with both red and pink dye ink, alternating colors.  Next thing was to rough them up a bit, I spread them out on my kitchen counter and spritzed them with water, then crumpled them and sort of smoothed out the wrinkles.  Not completely just a bit!  After they dry, they retain the crumpled appearance. You can see the difference in the crumpled vs. smooth hearts in the first picture.

The last step was to stamp the sea glass.  I used some cute Valentine’s Day stamps and my trusty Staz-On ink pad.  Find a piece of sea glass that the stamp will fit on and get to it!  To make the image stand out more, I backed the sea glass with a book page.  Glue the book page to the back of the sea glass and then use an Exacto knife to trim the paper.

Hot glue the sea glass here and there on your wreath.  That’s it!  Find a  happy spot to hang it, where seeing it will make you smile and remember those you love.

Sunday Lael helped me alter it so that it goes better with my Christmas decor.  It was a wee bit ugly before, but now it’s fabulous!!  We cut little squares of scrapbook paper and glued them to each box with Mod Podge, then added rubon numbers to each box.  Lael was more excited than I would have imagined to open each box.  But, I had to find stuff to fill it.  So, I told her we had to wait til Monday after school.  Plus, the bonus was that we were already 8 days behind, so she and Caeden had a few extra boxes to open.

It was a chore to find stuff that would fit in the tiny boxes besides the obvious like Hershey’s kisses!  So, I remembered how much they like to do scavenger hunts.  For the objects that would not fit I typed up a note to send them off on a scavenger hunt.  I think that added a lot of fun to the project.

My most favorite thing is the Countdown to Halloween collage I made.  Here is a bigger picture of it.