OUT of my comfort zone again!

Well between visiting grandchildren and attention to gardening, I haven't done a single challenge all summer long! Today, it's raining, so it's a perfect time to start working on challenges again. This week's Arty Girls challenge is to create anything without using patterned paper. This project comes from a need to try something "different."

This is a dollar store wooden piece I've been playing with all morning. I was hoping to achieve a sort of "hammered metal" finish, and this is the result. To get here, I first painted the box with Gesso, then Lumiere gold paint. Then I tore up and crumpled up hundreds of little bits of tissue paper, and stuck them all over the box with Aleene's Original Tacky Glue. I also glued on pieces of lace to the top and bottom. After I heat-dried this layer, I finger-painted a layer of gel medium all over, and heat set that. Then I added several layers of silver, gold, and platinum embossing powders, heating to melt after each addition. When you heat after using the gel medium and PVA glue, you get some really neat "bubbling" effects added to your texture. Then I used several different colours of Lumiere paints, rubbing them all over the textured base with my fingers. I stamped and black-embossed the Quietfire Design sentiment stamp on a piece of Lumiere-painted chipboard, added Swarovski crystals around the edges, and rolled the edges in platinum UTEE, heat embossing again. Finally, I stamped these new Quietfire Design dragonflies in a couple of colours of Fantasy Film, and glued them to the box,
along with a couple of larger Swarovski crystals for their heads.

I'll submit this piece as my Quietfire Design Team project for this month as well.
It'll eventually end up in my son's apartment; he enjoys having some of my quirkier pieces around. ;)

Thanks for visting today!