What I've been playing with....

Hello everyone and welcome back to my humble blog. I just want to share a mixed media project that I've been working on for a few weeks. The back story for this is when our daughter lived overseas for a few years she sent me an array of beautiful hand-written cards, postcards from all the Countries that they visited and entertaining emails filled with details of their day-to-day life and all the challenges that come with living and working in a different Country.  She also sent me a few small pieces of memorabilia. I've had all this sitting in a bag waiting for a permanent home. I finally rummaged through my "empty box" stash and found a sturdy, cardboard box just crying out to be altered and this has become the new home for the two years worth of happy mail from our girl :)

I have to say that this project has ended up nothing like it started out. I thought bright, happy colours were the way to go with lots of texture. However my mood changed after I layed down my original colour choice (and sadly those of you who know me more closely will understand why this happened). But in the end I still went with one of my favourite colour tones. The original texture is still there underneath all the layers that I added. Here is the finished product:

I rusted up some of the metal and chipboard elements then added paint and inks. I also used Inka Gold to swipe over it in random places.

I added some tiny seed beads to the inside of the frame.

My box full of memories...

So now that I've got that out of my system, it's time to get cracking on some Christmas cards and projects.  Thank you for dropping by once again xx