Project Update: Wedding Present Almost Finished

For many weeks, I've had a partially completed wedding gift for my sister's step daughter on my worktable. The background has been finished for a while, but each time I would sit down to finish it, I found myself unhappy with the embellishments and would set it aside. On Friday, I realized it has been a whole month since the wedding, and that I needed to push myself a bit to finish it up.

The project is based on an IKEA mirror covered with patterned paper. I'm using a piece of glass over the picture. This is a picture I took of the happy couple a year ago. They can substitute a wedding picture in its place.

I purchased a 7 Gypsies clip to use to hold the glass and photo in place. I didn't believe a glue would hold the metal clip (with its spring) to the wood, but several people told me Ultimate would work. So I tried it. It not only didn't work, the glue adhered the paper background to the metal clip, separating it from the wooden substrata, creating a bit of a mess. I ended up using two screws, smashing my thumb in the process. But it holds beautifully and the repairs underneath are invisible. (I'm not naming the names of the people who told me this would work. You know who you are!)

Here is the project before the glue disaster (and subsequent screwing) with the word tiles roughly in place. I removed the glass from the photo because of the glare from the flash.



After getting the clip mounted, I was so excited about the project's momentum that I pulled out everything I had considered to use as embellishment. In the midst of this, I was invited to come and work at Melissa's house. In spite of technology problems, cell phone problems, and even GPS problems, I managed to arrive (somewhat late) and work on the project. After a few hours of snipping away at beautiful fake red roses, stringing seed beads and other beads to a very thin wire, and tying a huge bow with French wired ribbon, the project was nearly completed.



I wanted to give the glue 24 hours to dry before I finished fussing with the project. I need to trim the ribbon tails, turn the P into an R, and add a hanger on the back. (Did you catch that in the photo?) I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. If I was starting over, there are changes I would make.

1. I thought the letters would look better if the spacing wasn't so perfect, but I'm not quite happy with the placement I used.

2. I would rework the rose placement to make it higher. The rose seems to hang a bit low over the photo, even though it is not significantly lower than just the clip. I tried to keep the clip mechanism easily accessible so they can change out the picture later.

3. I would rethink the amount of embellishment. I had planned for more embellishment, but decided to simplify. I like the addition of the beads strung into the ribbon, even with the addition of new colors. Perhaps with the rose higher, I could have included a bit more.

Overall, I'm pleased that I've created a memory art item that captures their engagement and will hold a wedding photo. I think they will really like it. I do like this framing option, using a clip to hold a sheet of glass, and will use it again.

Fun Class Tuesday Night

Last night, I took the Book It class with Jennifer Wagner at Scrapbooks, Etc. She was fun, the project is adorable, and I had a great time. I'm going to modify the project away from the Father's Day/Men theme. I've got an idea about what I'm going to do, but I won't be sure until I get started. I'll post a picture of the book when I get to it.

My day job is going well. As I've mentioned, I have huge deadlines on Friday. But due to my client not being able to meet his deadlines, a portion was pushed back a month. This made it possible for me to make my deliveries today, two days early. That's why I felt I could take a class last night.

I've got a huge list of things I'm going to do with the next few days, including napping, resting, sleeping, and otherwise taking care of myself. I hope to spend some time in the studio, and hope to have some ART to share on my art blog. What a concept.

After I wrap up the wedding gift, my next project is a birthday event book for a friend's all grown up son from his surprise 18th birthday party pictures. I can't wait to dig into it. I've been buying things for it for a couple months now, shopping for inspiration. I'm ready to jump in!

Design and Production Notes

There are several projects on my work table. These are the ones that I'm currently working on.

Project 1: Wedding Gift

Several months ago, I saw a chipboard product that inspired this project. It was a picture frame that uses a clip to hold the glass (the picture goes behind the glass), and used a long screw as a leg. When I realized I wanted to make this, I went back to the store, but they had discontinued that item. I am not sure who made it. So I've come up with an idea based on that. I'm using an IKEA 10" mirror with a wooden frame. I'm not going to use the mirror, I'm putting the glass for the picture over the top of it. I found a clip (like a clip board clip) from 7gypsies. I'm going to attach it, decorate the background with papers, and perhaps add a red rose and French wire ribbon around the clip area.

This is for my sister's step-daughter's wedding, so I want to personalize it. The groom-to-be proposed by spelling out the big question inside of the Scrabble game, and she found it when they went to play. So I found some similar word tiles (had no luck finding Scrabble tiles!) and am going to spell out both his question and her answer. For delivery, I have a candid I snapped of them the last time sis came to town and the four of us went out to dinner. I'll leave a note to replace it with a wedding shot.

I've attached the background paper to the frame. I had a time deciding what adhesive to use! In the end, I went with gel medium, which did cause some ripples and bubbles in the paper when wet. I thought I was brilliant when I thought to use a sheet of wax paper and brayer over the wax paper to push down the paper. What I didn't expect: the brayer also pushed out the excess medium, which caused the wax paper to adhere to the background! I pulled it up carefully, but still managed to take off some of the paper in the process. Maybe if I had let it try and then pulled it away, or maybe if I had brayered less... or if I had dry fitted the paper better first. I'll have to work on that technique a bit. It left the background a bit distressed, which has changed the direction I had planned to go. I'm rethinking everything about the rest of the project now. I am thinking about using Stickles on top of the glass, or a flourish style stamp.

Project 2: Mother's Day

I just realized today that Mother's Day is this weekend. I somehow thought I had another week and that my gift would be on time. Thankfully, Mom is completely flexible about such things.

After Dad died, a wonderful orange tabby cat adopted my Mom. It had belonged to one of her grandchildren (my brother lives on the same block). He just moved right in, and after some initial resistance, Mom adopted him right back. It's been such a great thing in her life. The granddaughter named the cat Punkin, and we all call him Punky. He had a problem with one of his eyes, so soon after she adopted him, she took him to the vet and they removed the eye. He's a one-eyed cat who still climbs trees and chases squirrels.


The book is a collection of pictures of Punky around the house and the yard, doing some of the things that make her laugh. I'm going to call it PUNK'D. I decided to use a 4x4 format and wanted to use the same Maya Road scalloped coaster book as my Words to Live By project. But two different stores in my area didn't have it, so I picked up their 4x4 chipboard book instead. I spent yesterday reviewing all of my pictures, pictures from family member's cell phones, etc and cleaned them up, cropped them, and reduced them to 2x3 for that book size. They were printed at Walgreen's this morning.

I stopped today to pick up some papers for the project. My favorite picture of him (for the cover) is him laying in the grass, so I went with a green/green-blue paper scheme with orange accents. I have some ribbon in black and white that says "I love my cat" and some ribbons and yarns that will go with the colors as well.

This is the first project I'm going to work on, hopefully this weekend I'll find some free time.

Project 3: Gibraltar Travel Journal (continuation)

I have some blank spaces, so I went back through the photos and did some cropping so I have additional pictures to add. This project is nearly done.

I'm thinking about adding a copy of the article on Gibraltar from Wikipedia as a huge journalling block on one of the tags. I could print it out and fold it up accordion style. There is a lot of great info there, and it would make a nice reference.