Tilda "Happiness is Homemade" Altered Dresser

Good morning crafty peeps! Today I want to share another project I created for Sacrafter's shop. I'll be guest designing for her store the entire month of May and you can use discount code "LIZFANS" to save 10% off your purchase of $30.If you are not familiar with her store, you definitely want to head on over and check it out. She carries the most amazing and unique wood pieces to alter.All her products are so easy to put together and are made of quality materials.But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself, here.
So today's project is another storage piece for my craft space. I altered her Wood Chest Dresser to store all my needle craft embellishments.

I busted out my Tilda "Happiness is Homemade" paper pad because I thought it was perfect for the  theme I was going for.

I really love this page with the Tilda doll so I used it for the front of the drawers and just added the little knobs. All the edges are inked with Vintage Photo.

I had a hard time cutting into this paper pad because the papers are just so beautiful. That's the reason I didn't embellish the sides and  just showcased the papers.

The top of the dresser looks so cute with all the needle craft themed embellies.I love the die cuts that come in this collection; cute little button cards,thread cards, flowers etc.I added some embroidery floss and a sewing needle to one of the thread cards to give it a realistic look. The little basket was a find from the thrift store and I created the little yarn balls from some leftover yarn.I made the knitting needles out of toothpicks and adhered a pearl to one end.The wooden spools are from my local craft store and I just wound a bit of lace around them.Then I added flowers, buttons and that cute scissors charm from my stash.

I love the way the dresser turned out and the 3 drawers provide enough storage for my embellishments. Plus the piece looks so cute sitting on my cabinet!

Hope you enjoyed today's project share. Please come back and visit me soon.

Have a wonderful day!

Tags of 2015, May

Hi everyone! Today I want to share my take on Tim Holtz's May tag. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to play along in April but I made it a point to make time for this month's tag.  Especially when I saw how gorgeous it was! Tim really did an amazing job with this one. I loved everything about it from the burlap, to the vintage photo, to the handmade blooms. It was just stunning!

 May 2015 Tag

I worked on my tag the day before Mother's Day and as I was going through the Photo Booth  photos, I came across one that reminded me so much of my mother, when she was young. I just knew that was the one I was going to use and I decided to play tribute to my mom's love of sewing on my tag.I followed Tim's steps exactly but just improvised with products I had on hand.

Here's a closeup of the photo I used. I tinted it with Worn Lipstick, Tumbled Glass and Wild Honey Distress Markers.The ephemera pieces I selected worked really well with the sewing theme I was going for and I even added a little scissors charm to the top of my tag.

I love the way the flowers turned out, so pretty and vintage. I didn't have Tim's Mini Tattered Florals dies so I had to improvise with Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms dies. I die cut them out of Coredinations card stock and dabbed them with Walnut Stain Ink to give them that vintage look.

The pretty pink bow is made out of crinkled seam binding colored with Worn Lipstick Distress Stain. I just love how vibrant that pink looks. Then I just added the little Small Talk stickers and done!

I'm so in love with the way it turned out!!! Every time I look at it, it reminds me of my mom, and that just makes my heart happy!

There's still plenty of time left for you to play along. It really was so much fun working on this tag. Bring on the next one!

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope your day is a blessed one.

Mother's Day Coupon File Folder Folio

Good morning crafty friends. With Mother's Day only  a few days away, I thought I'd share with you a sweet gift idea for the special woman in your life. I was inspired by a grocery store run and a childhood memory. Weird, I know.When I was about 9 years old, I remember making a coupon book for my mom, for Mother's Day. Do you guys remember those? Each coupon was good for a small chore or kind gesture for your mom, to show your appreciation.Well, I was remembering all this while pulling out my coupon folio at the grocery store.You know, the kind that has pockets inside to sort your coupons? I combined the two ideas together and created my grown up version of that childhood coupon book to gift my mom this Mother's Day.

Here it is! Isn't it pretty? I thought Graphic 45's Precious Memories collection would be perfect for my project. I love the sweet mother and baby images and it has lots of blues, which is my mom's favorite color. The folio is constructed of card stock and I found the tutorial here. It measures 7x9 inches and has 6 pockets inside.

Here's a view of the cover. I did a lot of fussy cutting to create a collage, if you will. You can see bits of lace peeking out in the back and I used one of the post cards from the ephemera pack.I also used one of the chipboard pieces from the collection and accented it with tiny pearls and a sweet little bow.

I created 5 large, tag shaped coupons.Each has a sweet sentiment stamped onto one of the smaller journaling cards. Then I added fussy cut flowers and used the sticker sheet to spell out "coupon" at the bottom of each tag.

I printed out the coupons ,cut them out and adhered them to the back of each tag. So all my mom has to do is select a coupon and hand it over to redeem it. Easy, and this guarantees me some quality time with mom! We can take pictures during our times together and she can keep these pictures inside her folio. Precious memories! 

I do hope you like my Mother's Day gift idea and to all the mothers out there, I wish you a wonderful Mothers' Day!!!

Thanks for stopping by today. I'll be seeing you all real soon!

Shabby Chic Wood Heart Banner

Hi guys! This month I've been asked to be a guest designer for my sweet friend Sa's shop. Sacrafters carries tons of OOAK wood and chipboard products to alter, as well as embellishments and stencils.And her prices can't be beat! You can use my discount code "LIZFANS" for an additional 10% off your purchase of $30 or more and it's good for the entire month of May.
Let me share with you my first DT project for the month.

I altered her Wood Heart Mini Album and turned it into a banner for my wall. I've been stressing out a lot lately and I just wanted a little reminder to appreciate the little things in life, and not worry about things I can't control. Of course, I had to make it shabby chic to go with my decor and I think it turned out quite sweet.

You get 10  raw wood pieces, 5 solid pieces and 5 cutout pieces to lay over the base. I didn't paint mine but simply covered them with designer paper and inked the edges with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink. I printed out the words onto pattern paper and then adhered each word to the heart base, making sure I centered it with the opening of the heart shape.

The small flowers are all from my stash and I dabbed white acrylic paint to the tops. I created the music sheet flowers with my Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms Die and then sprinkled the flowers with Glamour Dust.

I really like how each piece has a different "window" shape, so I accented each opening with mini flat back pearls. The pearls add such a pretty little detail.

Lastly I threaded a piece of jute through each of the holes and tied pretty pink bows in between each wooden heart piece.

My heart banner looks so pretty on my wall and best of all it reminds me to "Live, Love, Laugh every day". And at the end of the day that is all that really matters!

I hope you like my project. Head on over to Sacrafters shop and check out all her alterable products and don't forget to use my discount code "LIZFANS" to save even more.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I'll see you all real soon.

Gorgeous Junque Gypsy Memory Folio

Happy hump day everybody! Man, this week has just flown by, can't believe it's Wednesday already. Today I want to share a recent project for Craft Source using Marion Smith's Junque Gypsy collection. I was inspired to create a memory folio by a very talented lady on Youtube named Kona Raven. I follow her channel and was so impressed by the gorgeous folios she creates, that I just had to give it a try. She was even so generous to provide an awesome tutorial that I will share at the bottom of this post.

Junque Gypsy Memory Folio

Isn't it gorgeous? The entire thing is constructed of black card stock and tons of Scor Tape. The paper on the cover was my favorite sheet from the collection.I just loved the colors and the beautiful roses.All the edges are inked with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and I added 2 fussy cut butterflies from the collection to the cover, as well as a metal frame from Prima. The closure is crinkled seam binding colored with Prima's Color Bloom Spray in Cotton Candy.

This is what it looks like on the inside when you first open it up.There are lots of pockets for tags and 2 mini books being held by a belly band on the right hand side.

 It opens up to reveal even more pockets and photo mats and a really cool water fall feature.

More photo mats and space for journaling.

I really love the way this folio turned out and I encourage you to check out my video to really see all the details. I didn't want to make this post so photo heavy so I only focused on certain parts of the folio.To truly appreciate it, you have to see the whole thing. You can check out my video here.

Thank you Kona Raven for the inspiration and the wonderful tutorial. You can check out Kona's 2 part tutorial here.

Thanks for stopping by today! I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week! Happy crafting.

Springtime in Paris Mixed Media Canvas

Welcome back to my blog! Today I want to share a very special project I created, recently, for Craft Source. Craft Source is a new, members only website, where for a $35 membership fee you can join and take advantage of deeply discounted craft products, bundled buys, exclusive tutorials and product review videos, monthly challenges and much more.They offer tons of bundled products and bulk buys. So the more you shop, the more you save and the products are discounted 15-35% everyday. Sometimes even more! For a limited time, the membership fee has been reduced to $25 so if you want to take advantage of this great offer you can sign up here.

Springtime in Paris

I started off with a 12x12 canvas and primed it with a light coat of gesso. Then I adhered two large pieces of music sheet to the top right and bottom left corners. I spread my homemade texture paste all over the canvas, heavy in some areas and lighter in others.Love this stuff because it creates such great texture and small cracks

.

I used a damask stencil and Faber Castell Whipped Spackle to create even more texture. Then I used  Lindy's Stamp Gang Flat Fabio sprays in T- Bird Turquoise and Ocean Breeze Blue and sprayed it all over the canvas. Because the Flat Fabios don't have any shimmer, I mixed up some Finnabair Mica Powder in Teal with a bit of water inside a spray bottle. I sprayed this mixture onto the canvas and even created drips along the flower clusters for a shadow effect.  Next, I went over the top of the damask texture with Faber Castell's Texture Gems in gold. I just dabbed it over the tops with my finger to add a gold shimmer. You can also see  some of the stamping I did with Fiannabair's Messy script stamp and the spattering of paint I created.

The theme of the canvas is Springtime in Paris, so I made sure to include tons of flowers on my project. The tree branches are cut from chipboard using Tim Holtz's Bird Branch die. I cut off the bird and glued 3 pieces together. Then I painted them a dark brown color and painted a coat of white acrylic paint on top of that. I distressed the branches with a sanding block to reveal some of the brown underneath. The tiny leaves are from an old punch and the small pink flowers are by Prima. I love the way the flower clusters turned out. You can see bits of cheesecloth and lace peeking out and the gold berries really pop!

The Eiffel Tower image is from the internet. I printed it out and framed it with a small frame from my local craft store. I dabbed the once green frame, with white acrylic paint and more of the gold Texture Gems using my fingers. The little resin birds are Prima Shabby Chic treasures also dabbed with Texture Gems, this time in platinum. I love the sheen, the Texture Gems create.

Where there are flowers, there are butterflies. I stamped some butterflies on vellum and heat embossed them with gold embossing powder. Then I just cut them out and placed them throughout my canvas.

I spelled out "Paris" with some alpha stickers dabbed with acrylic paint. Then I added Finnabair's Art Ingredients Glass Bleads in Crystal to the bottom left corner. There is some on the top corner too, but it gets covered by the flowers.

Almost everything I used to create my canvas can be found at Craft Source. They are your go to shop for just about all your crafting needs. Take advantage of the limited time membership offer of $25 and sign up today! 

Thanks for stopping by today, and I'll see you all real soon!

Shabby Chic Castle

Hey guys! I just realized I haven't posted anything in over a month. I've taken on some new responsibilities and have been sooo busy!
Today I want to share a design team project that I created for Not2Shabby. This is actually my last month designing for Jamie's shop and I'm sure going to miss it. Jamie sent me an adorable set of stamps this month, including La La Land Crafts Sassy Princess Marci. As soon as I saw her I knew I had to do something involving a castle.. While perusing the aisles at my local craft store, I came across a castle birdhouse made out of wood and thought it perfect for my project.Check it out.

Sassy Princess Marci in her castle.

I painted the wooden birdhouse with Vanilla acrylic paint and Light Pink paint by Craftsmart. Then I used a stamp that resembled stone texture and Pumice Stone Distress Ink to stamp all around the walls of the castle.

It's very subtle, but you can see a little of the stone look, the stamp created.

I colored Marci's skin and hair using my Copic Markers and used gold Stickles on her crown.Her outfit was paper pieced using scraps from an old collection by Melissa Frances.

The flowers and vines along the castle walls were die cut using Magnolia Doohickey dies and cardstock. I really love the look of the vines against the castle walls.

I made a little flag for the top of the castle using my Spellbinders Banners die set and a bamboo skewer. Sassy Princess Marci comes with 3 sentiments and I chose the "once upon a time" sentiment to stamp onto the flag.I also created a mini flower bed out of a matchbox and some more Doohickey dies. Isn't it cute?

 Here's another full view from the side.

I think this piece would look so cute in a little girl's room or make for a cute centerpiece for a Princess theme party. Too bad my little one has outgrown her princess phase.

Head on over to Not2Shabby and don't forget to use discount code "LIZRUSELL" to get 10% off your purchase. Jamie always has the cutest stamps at amazing prices.

Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you all real soon!