Decorated Plaque

Hi again bloggers

Yesterday I shared a card I had made as part of the swaps on Stampers UK – well this is part of another swap.

It was called Secret Object swap and the idea was the hostess sent out a secret item to all who signed up for up the swap.

She set up a database so we said what kind of thing we wanted – as in colour and theme – then she matched the object to the partner

My partner was Jan who chose purple and green and any theme

The secret item was fab and I really would have loved to decorate it for me....

I was so undecided as to what to do – have a long time till it needed to be sent off but I am still trying to clear up all my swaps so set to one night when I couldn't sleep...

I started by painted the front with the lovely B&Q Funky Metallics paint in purple really called VIVID and once dry coloured the back of it with a plain emulsion called WATER.

Once all the paint was dry I set about decorating it – starting with the back – I trimmed a pretty sheet of butterfly backing paper from Blissful Butterflies by Hinny Bop to fit and used red double sided tape to hold it.

Onto the front – I stamped a lovely verse using a stamp by Inkilicious in the middle and a swirly flourish under it

Then I got out my big bag of mixed pop up flowers from www.diannesdiecuts.co.uk and luckily had plenty in green and lilac so laid a few out on the board until I found what I was happy with

It was the lovely loopy flowers – so the base was in green – then lilac - then green again – I curled the petals under on each flower so it stood proud...I left the centre for the time being...but I did add a couple of die cut flourishes behind the flowers.

On the right hand side I stuck on a beautiful decorative design made up of clear rhinestones.

I had in mind butterflies so went through my box of die cuts people had kindly cut and sent me recently and found 3 pretty butterflies in white – so I decided to colour them using Cosmic Shimmer sprays and then dried it off with the heat gun then spray Radiance Rain Pearl Lilac for a wonderful shimmer.

I stuck just the bodies of the butterflies among the rhinestones.

For the hanging flowers I actually coloured them using Pro Markers – the greens all worked great but sadly the purple shades didn't I used lilac, lavender and amethyst but they all look washed out! So I did purple one side and green the other on all 3 flowers.

Using my favourite ribbons – the spotty ones from www.meiflower.com I opted for 2 pieces of sage green and one of purple – I slotted ribbon through the flower and then through the board and stuck together with red double sided tape so no real join marks.

It worked out I used purple coloured flowers and sage ribbon and the outer ends and the green flower with purple ribbon in the centre.

The flowers I used were similar to a lotus pop up – still from Dianne's, I had plenty o lilac but not green so they were coloured with mown lawn ink pads by Tim Holtz

For the centre of the flowers I used some lovely purple glittery embellishments I had been sent from Yvonne – they are flowers and butterflies in shades of lilacs and deep pinks...

So it was the glittery flowers I used in the centre of the flowers here as well as the larger loopy flower at the top.

I used clear AB flat back gems – added one to each of the petals on the wooden flowers and then tinier gems on the flowers of the stamped flourish

Because the back of the wooden flowers was just plain I sprayed a little of the Radiance Rain – doesn't look as nice as it did on the butterflies though!

I posted this off to my partner this morning so I'm hoping it reached her tomorrow and that she is pleased with it – would hate to think it would just be popped into a drawer or cupboard when I could have used it!!!

Will let you know what Jan thought of it when she gets it!!

Bye for now then

xxx