Clay Tulip Frame

This week on Paper Artsy, Sue Carrington has been back as Guest Designer making some tremendously inspirational pieces. I particularly liked her box frame here which has inspired my make, which I am entering into the challenge here.  Coincidentally I had already painted and crackled a deep frame and covered a piece of chipboard with canvas to go inside it and it was knocking around on my craft desk. When I saw Sue's I had intended to copy it as I had most of the same stamps but the peachy-pink I had already painted my frame spoke to me of flowers so that dictated my choice of stamps. The lovely Petra had kindly lent me her Lin Brown tulip stamps and the matching die and I also had a new Hot Picks set with a flower spray on it and a couple of new stencils from the Newbury show. I started off by using the script from LP 014 which Sue had used all around the frame with Fresco in Orchid.

I applied grunge paste through the Mini Ledger stencil onto the canvas piece and then sponged various shades of Fresco over it and highlighted the ledger with Treasure Gold in Ice Fire. I painted the bloom from the Hot Picks set with Frescos. I edged the canvas piece with tiny blue beads to fill in the gap between canvas and frame.

For the frame I mixed Frescos with Grunge Paste and applied through a flower stencil, isolating the individual flowers, and the reversed chicken wire stencil. I didn't overdo it as I liked the patches of crackle. I used a leaf stencil and highlighted the grunge paste with Ice Fire.

I made the tulip out of clay and painted it with various shades of Fresco, finishing off with Metallic Glaze. For the stem I stamped with Frescos onto grungepaper for some strength as it would be overlapping the frame. Finally I stamped the word Artful Blooms at the bottom of the frame in black.

I kept things quite simple and didn't fill in every spare inch as it was looking so pretty and I didn't want to cover up what I had already done. I tend to overdo things. In real life the colours and shimmer are lovely. Pauline was admiring this whilst she was here this week so I'm going to give it to her!