Art By Wanda: PaperArtsy Shades of White

Hello!!! I'm back on the PaperArtsy blog today sharing a project for their Shades of White theme and using Ellen Vargo stamps.

Ellen has some wonderful stamps!!! As I was flipping through them set EEV04 caught my eye and I decided I would create a poinsettia. The basic shape was there for the petals, I just needed to cut them out to look more like a poinsettia. However, I didn't trust myself to just freehand that so I stamped one on a scrap, drew around it, cut it out and then also cut out some of the center to make it easier to line this pattern up over the petals I would be using.

I took a piece of Heavy Smoothy Card, painted it with Chalk, mixed Vanilla and Gold (about 1/2 and 1/2) on my craft sheet, spread it out and used it to stamp five petals. After drying, I set the pattern over each petal, traced it with a pencil and then cut them out. My original thought was to make a simple poinsettia with just the five petals. I soon gave up on that idea and knew I needed more petals, dimension, and wow.

I also thought it'd be great to not have them all exactly the same color. I painted more heavy smoothy with Chalk. I decided I would mix with Gold for all the colors. I love the hint of shimmer you get as you tilt the pieces and I thought it would help keep everything "matching". I did a set of petals with a mix of Gold and Honey Dew and a set with a mix of Gold and Chalk. When I put the poinsettia together I used Honey Dew at the bottom, then Vanilla and Chalk at the top.

To give further dimension and details to the poinsettia, I pulled out my flower shaping tool set (Susan's Garden Tools and Mats from Elizabeth Craft Designs). I added veining to each petal with the leaf tool and pad and then shaped each petal by pinching with the tweezer and my fingers and using a ball tool on the back of the petal on the foam mat.

I used a punch from my stash that had a 5-petal flower as a small base to build my poinsettia upon.

Golden's Heavy Gel Matte worked perfectly to build my flower. It's heavy enough that the petals stay in place, with dimension, while drying. Drying takes a long time. I left it sit overnight.

I started this project thinking I would make a card but once I decided to wow the poinsettia then I needed to make more than a card. I took a piece of corrugated cardboard that has a backing so the back is flat. This came as filler in a package. It's not stiff so I added a piece of chipboard to the back for stability. I painted the front with Golden's White Gesso and while still wet wiped over the ridges with a baby wipe giving it a more distressed look.

I had thought that I'd do some stamping either directly on this piece or maybe onto tissue and glue it to the piece so it got in the bottom of the ridges also, but finally decided I just needed to keep this simple and do another panel that would come between this and the poinsettia.

So I splattered White Fire over the whole front of the corrugated piece. I love the White Fire paint and it was perfect for this theme because it adds a wonderful metallic but blends in perfectly for Shades of White.

I cut another piece of cardboard that was already white colored. I stamped images from the set EEV02 using Archival Ink Potting Soil.

Then stamped an image from set EEV06 with Archival Ink Leaf Green.

Then muted all the stamping by painting Snowflake over the panel.

Now for some texture and bling. I used the Tim Holtz poinsettia stencil. Since it wasn't large enough to cover the whole panel I decided to make a line down the center and then worked from the center out. I did one side lining up the pattern on the stencil with my center line, put Texture Paste through the stencil, removed the stencil and covered the paste with Distress Dry Glitter Rock Candy. I set this aside to dry completely and then repeated with the paste and glitter on the other side of my line. Once all the paste was dry I sprayed the panel with Mica Spray Pearl (Ranger Ink, Wendy Vecchi), blotted the spray from the glittered flowers and let it dry.

Another picture at an angle, in light, so you see all this yumminess.

I went digging through my stash to find a ribbon to cover the pencil line and found these fibers that I got years ago and thought they'd be perfect.

To finish the poinsettia, I used White Mini Prills for the center building up a couple of layers of the Prills for more fullness.

I attached the stamped panel to the corrugate with foam tape and then the poinsettia to the stamped panel with Heavy Gel. After allowing it to dry completely I added white brads, white wire, and a sticker from the Tim Holtz Holiday Talk Metallic pack. Yep, I should have added the hanger before I glued everything together but I didn't know I was putting a hanger on then, lol.

Following are several more pictures of the finished project. I completely love how this turned out!!!!!!!!!! I was actually quite nervous about putting something together in Shades of White but so glad I took the challenge!!!

Thanks so much for following along!! I hope you love this as much as I do!!!

Hugs, Wanda