Return to the Past

The "made with love (and paper)" Design Team
made with love consists of a group of gals that love paper-crafting! Each month we challenge ourselves to complete projects with specific requirements. We are a fairly new group to the craft world in internet land. This is our seventh assignment. Please stop by and do join us in this challenge!! You are welcome to submit your creation to the challenge.

We do not have a theme for September. We do have the following requirements: black, white, gray, and one color, embellishment (store bought, found, or homemade), and patterned paper. The sky is the limit this time.

I am not into Victorian. I have a hard time defining "Victorian" and creating in the area. I am also not too keen on the current silhoutte craze. But they both must be growing on me because when Rachelle gave us the assignment for September, I knew immediately what I was going to do . . . more or less. My final creation is not my very first thought, but that is what is great about crafting.

Have you played with core'dinations' core Impressions, Jenni Bowlin, Vintage Brights Collection? Oh-my! This paper comes embossed. You can leave it as is, reverse it, sand parts of it, and of course tear it. So I cut out my lady in a light, white washed pink. Look closely at her edges. See how the darker, core color comes through with the cut? I did sand some of the embossing to bring out a darker tone here and there. Perfect! I made a shadow of my lady with vellum and chalked the edges to help her stand out a bit more on the background patterned paper. I felt that a solid color was too alarming. I used a black from core'dinations Vintage Collection, Retro Mod Squad to create her headband (and also the frame--flipping the black paper over). The black & white background is Recollections.

My cut is from The Graphics Fairy blog. I turned the clip art in to a cut file by tracing the image in my Pazzles cutter program. For my embellishments, I made the stick pins to help 'hold' my lady's head band in place. These are always fun to make. I also made the spiral roses using core'dinations' paper. It's perfect with the way the paper tears to reveal the core and various shades.

Now, given I had my idea at the beginning of August, one would think I could get myself to the thrift store and buy an appropriate frame. Nope. I do imagine this framed in an oval shadow box (if such a thing exists). Maybe even putting some of the flowers on the outside of the frame. The finished size of this "picture" is just under 10" high by 7" wide.

here you can see the embossing