Treasure our Planet

Hi there and thank-you for stopping by.

I'm delighted to be featuring today at A Vintage Journey - one of my very favourite challenge blogs, as one of their Pinworthy mentions. It is an honour thank-you ladies!

Brenda and team are celebrating their 4th Birthday this month and so Brenda has chosen the theme of 'Treasure' for their current challenge. I decided to use gold foil cardstock that came with perfume bottle packaging as I've been 'treasuring' it in my stash for quite a while. Somehow I ended up die cutting a globe, creating a galaxy by altering a chipboard shadow box, and then turning the whole scene into a kind of protest with Tim Holtz paper dolls carrying placards with 'suggestions' as to how to treasure our planet more and help slow climate change. Here it is ...

How-to and Ingredients

I began with a chipboard shadow box by Snipart that I won over a year ago

To get the background 'Blue Planet' I whooshed some Tim Holtz distress inks around watercolour paper. (Used Broken China, Peacock Feathers and Salty Ocean). Later diecut a circle from this paper that I applied to rear of Goil Foil 'Earth' that I diecut using Tim Holtz / Sizzix mini Globe die.

Cut a new sheet of chipboard to fit inside the shadow box and blended layers of Tim Holtz distress inks (Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot).

Reason for new sheet, (as opposed to the original backing that came with the shadow box), was that I knew the sheet would begin to curve when heat was applied and I didn't want to end up with a bent back for the shadow box.

Splattered on Ecoline liquid watercolour in white and gold plus Winsor & Newton ink in gold.

Not shown in photo but I also swirled around some Ranger Perfect Pearls for a milky resist.

Dabbed Versamark on card, coated with embossing enamel and heated with Ranger heat tool until melted. Added 4 layers of embossing enamel whilst sprinkling crushed glass glitter between layers. (Stampendous Steel Blue & Prima Gold Rush). Splattered more watercolour ink, and flattened overnight under books. (If any cracks form when trying to flatten, just do a localised versamark / UTEE patch and melt to fill crack).

Cut 4 extra strips of chipboard to fit outer sides of shadow box and gave them the same 'galaxy' treatment as before.

I didn't want to risk bending the original sides of shadow box so painted them with Dina Wakley acrylic paint in 'Night'. (So glad I had this as I had exhausted my chipped sapphire ink!).

Here you can see the box begin to take shape before I adhered extra side panels (above)  using a combination of double sided tape and hot glue.

 
Some staging for the final edition. After this photo, the top flat panel was given the 'galaxy' treatment as before. I diecut all the letters using Sizzix / Tim Holtz Holiday Words 2 die set from my treasured gold foil.. This die set had all the letters I needed in its words except for 'U' so I used a 'C' on its side! The foil was fairly thick so it took an age to get all the fiddly letters. In the end I mounted the letters onto thick chipboard strips that had been 'galaxied' (!) so that the letters appeared to hover.




I edged the Tim Holtz paper dolls with a Krylon gold gilding pen. Using said pen I also gilded a chipboard square frame to hide the joins. Added Swarovski crystals and pearls (definitely 'Treasure' to me) to decorate the dolls. I'm glad that the new packs of paper dolls include a more ethnically diverse range of paper dolls, but sadly I don't yet have a new pack, as it would have been more apt for this creation.

The gold foil cardstock couldn't be printed on, so I printed text on Stix2 printable acetate and glued to foil with Ranger glossy accents. Gilded a few cocktail sticks so that the paper dolls could carry their placards! Diecut some tiny leaves from my blue inked paper to try to link the dolls to the 'blue planet'. As usual I had lots of plans to add other ingredients such as flowers, and clock dangling from a hinge clip, but it then looked overdone. So I just let the the words, globe and little people speak for themselves (and hopefully more and more of us!).


Thank-you so much to all the super talented team at A Vintage Journey for allowing me feature amongst their Pinworthys today. You should check out this months challenge of 'Treasure' to see the wonderful design team inspiration, and sure why don't you make your very own 'Treasure' project too!

Very many thanks for your visit,

Nicola x


I wish to enter shadow box to the following challenges:
Simon Monday Challenge - Whatever The Weather (I think climate change relevant)
Scrapyland - Anything Goes #85 using die brand carried by store (Sizzix)
Mix It Up Challenge - Anything Goes + make your own background
Alphabet Challenge - Y is your choice
Aud Sentiments Challenge - Anything Goes + a sentiment
Use Your Stuff - Anything Goes
An Inky Mess - Challenge 18 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Creative Artiste - 18, Anything Mixed Media goes
A Bit More Time to Craft - 63, Anything Goes