Happy New Year

We're more than half way through January now, but better late than never to wish you all a very Happy New year, and good health in 2013.

Thanks so much for joining me through my tentative steps into Blog land since the summer of 2012.  

I’m looking forward with great anticipation to 2013 and all the possibilities it may hold. 
New year resolutions? Well...
I will try to be more positive in life and more active, (my exercise classes start on Tuesday, I need to get rid of my "Christmas pudding" tum, lol)
I hope to be more creative this year too, I need to make time for this, as it always cheers me up I find myself smiling more...seemingly for no reason, people must wonder what I've been up to... lol
... but in my head I'm thinking through ideas, projects, art, design, colours, stamps, inks, paints, texture etc.
when an idea comes to my mind and I smile until it comes to life as a finished project, then I'm truly happy.
I'm hooked on the good feeling I get through being creative.
Anyway, enough waffling. I wanted to share this frugal crafting  project I made using mainly Wendy Vecchi stamps, paint, ink, some recycled card from packaging from scrapbook paper packs I had, large frozen pizza boxes & cereal boxes.

I've not played much with stencils so didn't have embossing paste to play with or many pennies left to buy some after Christmas. I wondered if decorating filler would work, and was curious to see what happened. 

 So I used plastic packaging to create a stencil and a tube of DIY wall repair filler for texture.I wanted a raised leafy design which I don't have, so I used Wendy's leaf stamps on flat plastic packaging then cut away the image with a craft knife to create a stencil. 

This proved to be tricky cutting, and I didn't manage without mistakes but hay-ho I wasn't aiming for pretty perfection as I knew the messy stuff was to follow.

I made my no glue drawers first, I used the centre of the scallop rectangle thick cut sizzix die as my starting point then halved it for the side depth to make my template as below. 

By drawing around these the template turns out very slightly larger than the original shape so when decorating with the original die cut shape, it fits better both outside and inside the drawers.

The long sides have the folding tabs attached to tuck under shorter ends then fold the long sides down to secure the base... and no messy gluing, they hold together firmly just tucking the sides down. Amazing!

I then made a wrap around to complete the drawer, match box style.     I used glue to secure this bit though. I made 4 each of these using card from recycling bin. Then came the good fun and messy bit.....

I die cut 4 Sizzix rectangles to stick to the drawer fronts and sides and cut a Spellbinders grand lable to add to the top, then had fun decorating these with the stencil and filler which I found out puffed up when I speeded up drying with my heat gun, yaay! I like surprises! lol. 

I applied layers of blue, green, bronze and white acrylic paint along with a navy blue emulsion tester pot I had that I liked the colour of and a bit of white emulsion too, these were repeatedly painted over, blended, knocked back with wet wipes, dried and sanded until my heart was content. 

I added metal gilding wax to the raised stencilled leaves, then stamped the finished pieces with Wendy Vecchi stamps and black archival ink when I was happy with the background and inked over with vintage photo to warm it up a bit. The drawer knobs are game pieces which Lori sent me in my lovely bingo prize I told you about in a previous post. These were given a coat of paint then I gilded the fronts to put back the detail.

You can see the raised leaf design on the drawer fronts and a bit under the grunge paper roses. 

I lined the drawers with same Sizzix die cut paper which I stamped again with Wendy's wild flowers stamp.

If you want, please leave me a comment I love reading what you think and knowing you dropped by. 

Thanks for visiting.

Alexandra x

Edited after reading comments;

 Thanks for all your lovely comments and 

Thanks Marjie for suggesting entering the eclectic paperie challenge "altered boxes" with this. 

So I've been, gone and done it now.

Marjie Kemper is hosting the challenge here.

Very cool idea.