Paintbox Poppets present

Mom's birthday was this month (Happy "21 again" birthday, mom! Love you!), and so I finally got to share a project with her that I've had in the works for a few weeks.

The lovely Kathy over at Kathy's Double-K Krafts did a project (scroll down on the post to see it) using the Paintbox Poppets CD available at Crafter's Companion, and it really struck me as something absolutely perfect for my mom.  So, I ordered the CD.

I expected maybe 10 projects we'd want to do from the CD....

Try more like 50?  Those who have reviewed the CD to say it is packed with projects weren't kidding, nor were they exaggerating.  It took me over an hour to decide what project I wanted to do.

This is what I decided on...






The project as presented on the CD is a box frame, and as first printed it comes out so that the full thing is not quite 5 inches square. That made the girl inside a bit smaller than what I really wanted. I found that by telling Acrobat (which you do need for the frame projects) to fit to printer margins, it made the whole thing closer to 6 inches square. I also ended up printing 3 copies of the decoupage page and making a decoupage frame instead of using the box frame that printed with the original project. For my tastes, the box frame that was printed was too deep for the project and overwhelmed the girl. That's not necessarily the case for all of the frame projects, though.

Anyway, after cutting and applying the decoupage pieces (of which there are 5 layers), I used my sakura glaze pens to add some dimension and shine to the fruit and the honey, then used flowersoft on the flowers. I also touched up the girl's skintones with a light touch of the prismacolor colored pencils and discovered that just the tiniest bit can make a subtle but significant difference in appearance.

For the frame, I didn't just want three layers of a flat square, but didn't like any of my dies for embellishments, either. What I ended up doing was cutting a lacy edge on corner triangles, then outlining the edge with a green glaze pen for just a touch more dimension.

Finally, I used my nifty envelobox creator to create an envelobox for the project, and used a dimensional sticker for the clasp. A touch of tombow glue allowed to dry to be repositionable made the finishing touch so the box would close and stay closed yet be easily openable too.

Viola! Birthday present for mom!