A Midsummer's Challenge ~ Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge

Hello everyone...

Hope you've all had a wonderful weekend but hasn't it flown by again?!? Where do these weeks go?

Today, is the start of a brand new challenge over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and this week's challenge is ~ A Mid-summer's Challenge. Mid-summer is a time of hot temperatures, long days, longing for more time spent by the water. Whether your creative mind wants to take a vacation or be inspired by Shakespeare and a starry night ~ we challenge you to create and share with us.

For me, the title of mid-summer instantly made me think of a Midsummer's Night Dream with fairies dancing around a garden filled with flowers and fauna. So with this in mind I created my project and as always, I hope you love what I've created. 

To begin with I took a piece of corrugated card, ripped from the side of a box and then started to tear away some of the surface to reveal the corrugation. Once that was done, I applied a layer of PaperArtsy paint, let it dry before applying the Crackle Glaze. Once this layer was dry, I then added a coat of Snowflake Fresco Finish paint over the top and let the crackles appear.

After drying this layer throughly, I added some Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste through the Stars Tim Holtz Layering Stencil onto random areas of my background. Once the paste had hardened, I then added touches of Gilding Wax over the top.

The Ornate Frame is die cut from chipboard and then painted with Antique Bronze Distress Paint before being spritzed with Prima Color Bloom Gold Foil Spray. I added a piece of card behind the frame and created a cloudy sky on this card using Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. I then attached the frame with foam pads to give it some dimension.

Now to create the garden and for this, I began by die cutting all my petals, using a combination of the Tattered Florals Bigz Die and the Tattered Garland Strip Die. I coloured all my petals using Picked Raspberry, Shaded Lilac and Squeezed Lemonade Distress Inks and then layered and shaped them to give each flower dimension. 

The stamens of the flowers are made by using an old Martha Stewart Snowflake punch and layered together before adding a pearl embellishment centre.

I arranged the blooms around the base of the frame, together with some Distress Stained cheesecloth and die cut Garden Green foliage, painted with Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint Distress Paints and inked on the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and then added the Prima Marketing Resin Butterfly and the Angel, (which was in stock when I made the piece but has since become unavailable ~ sorry).

To complete the piece, I used the Love, Wish, Dream stamp and masked off the other words to leave me with "Dream", which I stamped in black Archival Ink onto card, distressed with Distress Ink and attached the banner using a Memo Pin, together with a little die cut birdie from the Mini Bird and Cage Movers and Shapers Die.

I popped some Mirrored Stars into my framed cloudy sky and added some hand dyed vintage ribbon to hang this piece.

I really hope you've enjoyed my photo tutorial and loved my interpretation of our challenge theme for this week. As always, if you're looking for some more great ideas and inspiration, then you need to look no further than the blog to see all the wonderful creations from my very talented Design Team members and every week, one lucky random participant has the chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. Good luck....

Thank you so much for all your visits today, I really do appreciate them all and love reading all your comments!!

See you again soon...love Emma xx

Products used:

Tim Holtz Sizzix Garden Greens Die

Tim Holtz Sizzix Ornate Frame Die

Tim Holtz Sizzix Tattered Florals Die and Tattered Garland Strip Die

Tim Holtz Sizzix Mini Bird and Cage Die

Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Rubber Stamps ~ Love, Dream, Wish

Tim Holtz Layering Stencil ~ Star

Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste

Distress Paints ~ Tumbled Glass, Antique Linen, Pumice Stone, Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint

Distress Ink ~ Walnut Stain, Tumbled Glass, Picked Raspberry, Shaded Lilac and Squeezed Lemonade

Distress Stain ~ Antique Linen, Old Paper

Distress Paint ~ Antiqued Bronze

Prima Gold Foil Color Bloom Spray Mist

Prima Shabby Chic Resin Butterflies

Idea-Ology ~ Memo Pins, Mirrored Stars and Crinkle Ribbon

We R Memory Keepers Cool Metal Wide Eyelets

Treasure Gold Gilding Wax ~ Classic Gold and White Fire

Cheese Cloth

Archival Ink ~ Black

Melissa Frances pearls

Martha Stewart Snowflake Punch from my stash