Altered Key Cabinet

The other day, my friend Carol and I got together to have a play day and decided we would alter some key cabinets. We each had one from a well-known high street store with initials in its name, which I find is a good source of small mdf items to alter. In the past I've had mini chests of drawers, tool caddies and a key rack. (OK, it's T K Maxx)

Anyway, they both originally had rather lurid pictures of roses on them. For some reason I NEVER like images of roses. I love the flowers themselves, and I like other flower pictures, but I never ever like rose pictures, not even photographs. I forgot to photograph the cabinets before we started, but here is the front of another piece waiting to be altered, with the same dreadful rose on it:



Carol and I chose quite different approaches - she is a very tidy and classic designer, I tend more towards slap it on and see where it goes, and it ends up more grungy. I started by taking the door and the door knob off to give myself a blank canvas, then I cut a piece of corrugated board to fit. I distressed the board with a bit of brown emulsion paint and some gold acrylic paint, very roughly dry-brushed on, then I embossed the edges with some Cosmic Shimmer EP in a greeny-black colour. I stuck this on with PVA. I took 3 tags and decorated them, firstly by inking the edges and then stencilling with some of the new DI's then I stamped with my new Tim Holtz set "Purely Random" which has a gorgeous elephant among other things! I embossed the edges very roughly with more cosmic shimmer and an unknown EP that my friend Sue was chucking out before moving house. I then added some short ribbons and stuck them on, allowing for the door knob to go back! I had some new Marianne dies that I bought from Paddy's Stamping Place so I pinched a bit of K&Co paper that Carol had with her and chopped out some leaves and flowers with my trusty Cuttlebug, distressed them then stuck them on with Pinflair glue. (that stuff is brilliant!)

Carol painted hers a lovely dark red with some emulsion paint then stencilled swirls over it with Crushed Sapphire DI. She made a lovely 2 dimensional butterfly and added some gems to it and stuck that on the front. Hers is what I would call sophisticated and elegant! Quite a contrast to mine which I can only describe as "rustic" ! Forgot to take a pic of Carol's, sorry - if I get one I'll post it another time!
Here's mine anyway:

Play date cafe 17

This weeks colours for the Play Date Cafe challenge were great I thought, until I tried to use them and found that nothing I did turned out right!


Meanwhile I had been making tags to cover art journals with, (see previous post if you would like to have a look at them) so I thought I might try one of those as they seemed to be coming together well, so here it is, mounted onto a card decorated with a Martha Stewart punch. BTW I met some people last week who did not know she had been to jail - how did they miss it?



I love putting little bits of things inside those Tim Holtz book plates and filling them with Glossy Accents to seal it all in.

Back to Basics!

These 2 little cards are a definite step back for me, almost to when I first started card-making! Although I wouldn't have used stamped images then - instead I would have cut something out and stuck it on. That phase lasted about 3 weeks I think! Then I discovered stamping via Glenda Waterworth on TV, then grunge, then Tim Holtz, Craft Stamper, Sue Roddis's wonderful Altered Art .... then I visited Paddy's Stamping Place and life was never quite the same again!
Anyway this week I wanted to make some cards for non-crafters who really don't appreciate anything too "out-there" so out came the glue and the pretty papers (these ones were free with a magazine) and the ribbon. I was pleased with the result - I think the colours work well. I may use the designs again, next time a bit more "from scratch" though. Let me know what you think? It would be easy enough to make the background paper with inks and stamps and get similar effects.