LOVE Project

This project was fun but for some reason it took me 2 days!  Ok, I must confess I was at a crop with a lot of friends so they MAY have distracted me and I was busy distracting myself.  LOL!  The LOVE and chipboard pieces are available HERE on the Southern Ridge Trading Company store. 

Here's the finishing project but I'll show you more as we go along.  

The first thing I did was cover the LOVE piece with white acrylic paint, then Crackle and then white paint again.  When you add the 3rd layer, that's when the cracking starts.  

I chose to use white under my first layer because I was going for a shabby chic look but if you wanted a more vintage look, you could paint the bottom color a brown or anything you wanted and it'll show through. 

My next step was to distress all the edges with Momento cocoa ink.  I also distressed the bottom of the V and E quite high because it does end up sliding in the base of the LOVE piece. 

The next thing I did was fit my picture into this sweet heart frame.  Yup it was a bit finicky but it worked.  I then painted the heart border with pink acrylic paint and sprayed with Prima's new color bloom "Cotton Candy" then "Worn Leather" and let it dry. 

Here I covered the picture with Versamark called "Frost" and then loaded it up with UTEE 3 or 4 times to get this effect.  Cracked very easy all on it's own at this point.

My next step was to add some more dimension so I mixed up some molding paste and colored it using a brown colored gelato.  At first I thought it was too dark but after all the embellishments were added it didn't too bad.  **Don't forget to do your base as well.

Just bare chipboard to a beautiful piece by adding some gold embossing powder. 

My finished hearts with a few Wild Orchid Crafts flowers (which Karen happens to sell at crops) and finished it off with a simple piece of lace.

For the top piece I covered with some chunky shabby white Stampendous embossing powder and then added the gold to the ends as well.  The piece underneath is just the raw chipboard with Versamark "Frost" and UTEE.  It's gorgeous this way as well!

Finished piece under a gorgeous Prima flower.  

The Cupid is covered with pink chunky Stampendous embossing powder.  So cute!  

Now everything starts to come together.  One thing I didn't take a picture of but you can see here is that I ended up adding some shabby chunky Stampendous white and gold embossing powder to different area's.  Wahoo ready for embellishements now!!  I always lie down my lace or ribbon first because I like building over top.  

So again, here is the completed product.  I also went around and touched with some gesso for a finishing touch . From Prima there are flowers, butterflies and the "US" bulb, Wild Orchid Craft flowers and some gorgeous resin pieces.  

All of these pieces are available from Southern Ridge Trading Company separately but for your convenience Karen has put together a package of all 4 pieces of chipboard and the wooden LOVE piece.