Flat battery

I don't even want to think about how long it's been since I blogged but I think the title of this entry sums it up really, I feel as though I've got a flat battery which means no energy, on a go slow, whacked out.

As the whole of the UK succumbs to flu my office is no exception, I had 3 of my team out before Christmas and1 out on return in the new year. I think I've got something (hence the lethargy) although having the flu jab in the autumn means it just lingers rather than coming out in full force (not sure which is worse).

This is what I've been thinking about / working on for about a week, I was determined to get it finished today so I could blog.

I like wreaths whether they be rustic twigs, shabby flowers,raggedy fabric or scraps of paper (all in the pipeline for production). This one is a bit of a prototype for valentines craft day I'm thinking of doing with my girlfriends.

A standard IKEA frame with some Tim tissue tape and Terra paste stamped with a PaperArtsy hotpicks text stamp. I then painted over with a variety of paints trying to find the colour combo I was trying to achieve (soft, muted, vintage) - off white, stippled over with a coffee, raspberry and then baby pink, finally added some pearl to bring it back down. Various cream buttons hot glued on for a bit of variety (and yes I got completely glued up myself with the hot glue gun).

Inside I embossed some water colour paper with the Tim postcards folder and brushed over Linen and Spun Sugar DIs to pick out the embossing.

The centre square is a 3" square of patterned scrap paper. I inked all over with with Victorian Velvet to tone down the print and the edges distressed with an old scalpel. I glued it onto a scrap of mount board to give some weight and then hot glued to the background to give some height.

The circle is a pipe cleaner wound into a circle and then red and pink raffia wrapped round not too tightly to give a rough shabby look. This was then hot glued on to the patterned square and a heart stamp added to the middle in fired Brick and then burlap DIs.

On the top I tapped in 2 pins and then wound some copper wire round and made into a heart. I'd put the wire in a plastic bag with some raspberry alcohol ink to see if it would colour it, not sure if if it did but it looks OK. You can't really see it in these pictures,but trust me it's there.

I quite like it, what do you think?