Craft Challenge #2

This is my latest finished project.  I made this for the weekly challenge at my sister's blog, www.amberscraftsandstuff.com.

The challenge is to use a DIE CUT.

Now, not being a paper crafter, I've had very little (read: none) experience with die cuts.  I don't have a die cutter.  I don't have a Cricut, no Silhouette, NADA.

Since I'm a "home décor" kinda girl, my first thought was to have my sister die cut me something, and then use the negative space as a stencil and make a set of pillow covers or a shirt or something.

Well, due to my inexperience, that didn't quite work out – there were all these little teensy pieces from the die cut that I didn't know where to put and I just couldn't work it out, so I decided to flip my thinking 180 degrees and use the actual die cut as a mask and do a "negative stencil".  You guys know what I mean, even if I can't explain it.  Cuz you're brilliant that way.

Here is the original stencil:

Here is the actual die cut.

And here is the final product.  I'm not 100% happy with it, but my daughter likes it, so maybe we'll hang it in her room.

Once again, being a craft nOOb – there are no "DURING" pics.  But here's an overview of my process.  (Like you crafty wenches couldn't figure it out….)

I picked up the little canvas for 1.99 ages ago at The Goodwill (always capitalized, cuz they are special that way.)  I pulled off the plastic – very very important step – and covered the whole thing with silver acrylic paint.  Then I let it dry.  Sorta.  Okay – I'm impatient and it was still slightly damp when I tried to iron on the freezer paper die cut.  This was a mistake.  It didn't stick, not even a little.  So what's an impatient, crafty girl to do??? Pile on another layer of silver paint and splodge that stencil down in the wet paint.  Worked pretty darn good.

Then I took it out to my La-BOR-a-tory – aka the Garage - grabbed a can of spray paint in both hands (left hand NUTMEG – right hand CARRIBBEAN) and whirled them around randomly onto the canvas.  ARTISTICALLY, of course.  When I liked the way it looked, I stopped.

It was still a little plain, so the next step was tube of Walnut gel stain, which I watered down a bit in a little bowl.  Then I got a paintbrush, took a few steps back, and slung some on the canvas.  AGAIN, ARTISTICALLY – what do I look like, some amateur??

Then I let the whole thing dry and as a final step, went in and outlined the leaves with the same Walnut gel stain.

I let it dry, then went over the edges of the canvas once more with the silver to cover any splotches of stain or overspray and called it done.

Like I said, not my favorite, but not ALL of our projects are worthy of a museum, right??

But it's all experience – and teaches us how to be better next time…