Amaze Yourself!

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here to share a hanging icon.  I had so much fun playing with this, building up the layers.  And I ended up with a background I liked so much that I had to come up with a creative way of not covering it up too much!

I started with the large size icon and gave it a coat of white acrylic paint.

Then I spritzed some Dylusions sprays through the Crafter's Workshop Flower Piecing stencil.

I used the same stencil with some texture paste to add a bit of extra interest.  The colours slightly soaked into the paste, which I rather liked.

 Next step was some stamping... I used The Artistic Stamper's fabulous Mini Polka Dots and Sequin Waste background stamps to continue building my layers.

Of course, all of this is also trailing over the edges of the icon too...

And for some extra texture and definition on the edges, I used Faded Jeans Distress embossing powder... yummy colour!

So now I had this background which I really liked... and I had to find a way to keep as much of it visible as possible.  Bring on the recycled acetate packaging!

I used Staz-On black to stamp the brilliant sentiment from Tim Holtz's Way With Words set onto the acetate.  You can use it whole, like this, or stamp individual phrases... so it's like having loads of stamps in one.  

I edged the acetate panel with some more of the Faded Jeans Distress embossing powder, applied over Versamark embossing ink that I simply swiped onto the edges.  You have to heat it with care, so that the acetate doesn't end up all curly!

To mount the panel, I butchered some hanging decorations that I got for peanuts in the Czech Republic... just in order to get the pearls out, you understand.

I used Glossy Accents to glue the pearls to the corners of the acetate, and then once that was firmly dry, I glued the whole thing to the decorated icon.

Very happy with the dimensional look, as well as the fact that you still get to see all those lovely background layers behind the words!

Thanks so much for dropping in today.  Oh, and don't forget to come and play in our September challenge here at The Artistic Stamper.  The theme is Autumn, so there are loads of possibilities.  Hope to see you there!

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper stamps: Mini Polka Dots and Sequin Waste Open Size
Stampers Anonymous: Way With Words
Dylusions Sprays: Calypso Teal, London Blue, Fresh Lime, Vibrant Turquoise, Cut Grass
Distress Embossing Powder: Faded Jeans
White acrylic paint
Large Hanging Icon Board
Staz-On: Black
Ranger Archival: Cobalt, Viridian
Versamark embossing ink
Texture Paste
Pearls from stash, acetate packaging