Altered Project

Hello! Today I am sharing something a little different than I normally share, but a project I’ve been thinking about putting together for a really long time. This is a part of my FINAL for Level 2 of Altenew Educator Certification Program.

The challenge for this portion was to create an Altered Item/Upcycled Project. I have been wanting to create a show piece for my craft studio display, so I gathered together some old items, and some items I’ve been collecting from packaging: some corregated cardboard, paper shred, shipping paper, and an old dark shadow box frame.

I took the packing paper and taped it over the glass to protect the glass from getting any paint on it. Then I spray painted multiple layers of white paint on the frame.

While that was drying I stamped multiple layered Snapdragon stamps from this Altenew stamp set.

I also took the corregated cardboard and used some Altenew spray and Distress Oxide sprays to get a greenish-blue interesting background with plenty of texture! Corregated cardboard makes for an unexpected backdrop. I found some old paper shred in various shades of green and then my project really started to come together!

To make various layers of snapdragons, I used small strips of the corregated cardboard stacked up onto each other and attached it to some of the flowers with foam tape. This gave me so many layering options and I didn’t have to use or waste layers upon layers of my foam tape.

Since the colors of my craft room and blog are yellow and turquoise, I decided that I would use only the yellow snapdragons on this project. Besides, yellow is one of my favorite colors!

Snapdragons remind me of my grandmothers (both are deceased now), and so I wanted a sentiment on this showpiece that would also remind me of them. I played around with different ideas like: CREATE, JOY, LOVE, and HAPPY, but none of them seemed just right.

THEN I got the inspiration I needed and settled on the right word: SMILE! I die cut the word twice using my favorite Large Alpha Die set; once in white and once in gold glitter paper. When I die cut the glitter paper, I only die cut 1/2 of each letter so I could stack it onto the white letters.

I put the whole thing together, adhering the snapdragons in multiple layers. I attached the sentiment directly to the cardboard backing, and added in some of the green paper shred. It’s a little reminiscent of potting moss!

I think it looks like a big barrel of snapdragons. I can almost pinch them now to make them “talk” to me, just like my Grandma used to do!

I hung it on the wall in my craft studio (with a little help from my hubby)…this is just the right place…

I had to take a picture at an angle so as not to get a glare off the glass front! I hope you can tell there is so much dimension to this piece…with all the textures and layers. The gold glitter dipped sentiment is now my favorite!

I hope you enjoyed this project today! I had a lot of fun making it, even though it took so much longer to make than I expected. I took about a week to get it all done as the drying time between layers was a factor.

A BONUS: I have plenty of colorful snapdragons to add to cards now! Since I originally thought I might use a rainbow of flowers, I stamped a bunch of options at the same time.

You can bet I’ll be making a bunch of cards soon with these! Thanks for stopping by today.