Butterfly Shrine { with Hot Picks and Lynne Perrella Stamps by Kirsten Sheridan}

Hello! My name is Kirsten ,it is a thrill and an honour to be this evening’s guest designer on the PaperArtsy blog. (After all the drama and angst of my #3UP project last month, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the PA team had wanted nothing more to do with me!)  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I change my mind a lot. My finished piece is completely different to my original intention.

My idea was to make something in honour of the Summer Solstice, happening on June 21 and when I chose my daily oracle card on the day I began this project, I got the word ‘transformation’, with images of butterflies. It all seemed to fit together.

The base is the leftover wooden frame from my #3UP project. I used Grunge Paste through a stencil on the sides then I glued pieces of the Tim Holtz Trellis Frameworks die cuts to the sides, gessoed and sanded the entire frame then painted on a thin layer of Snowflake Fresco paint.

That was followed by a few coats of Pansy, I scraped on a thin layer of Crackle Glaze in a few areas. When that had dried I painted on more Snowflake and once everything had crackled and was thoroughly dry, I then sanded back all the edges and added Silver Treasure Gold.

For the back of the frame I die cut more Trellis from kraft card, adding varying amounts of Grunge Paste, painted all the pieces with Concrete Fresco, glued them onto a piece of acetate with Glossy Accents, then added Aquamarine Treasure Gold, for a verdigris effect.

I die cut some arches from  Smoothycard and used them to make a shrine, painting the pieces with Lilac and Pansy Frescos, adding crackle stamping and gold embossing. Onto this I mounted my Lynne Perella images from LPC 028. 

LPC028

These were stamped on to acetate with black Stazon and painted on the reverse with Nougat and Smoked Paprika for the face and  Zesty Zing, Yellow Submarine and Smoked Paprika. ( As smoked paprika is now a discontinued colour you could use it's replacement Autumn Fire) I built up thin layers of paint, trying to get a graduated effect and then covered the entire piece with a coat of Snowflake.

For the flowers and  leaves I used Lin Brown stencils, (ELB002, ELB004). I used a stencil brush for the flowers; this gave a slight feathered effect to the edges, which I liked. I used a white Signo Uniball pen on pale green vellum for the maple leaves and a black PITT pen for the tall stems.

I painted some half spools with a layer of Snowflake Fresco first, then Tikka and Smoked Paprika and finished with two coats of Metallic Glaze. I glued the tall leaf stems to the inside and used hot glue to stick the two ‘flower pots’ to each side of the frame.

I painted some acetate and shrink plastic  butterflies, using the gorgeous stamp from HP 1301. You can see I didn’t flatten all the shrunken ones, I liked how they were curled when they’d finished shrinking.

HP1301

Finally, it was time to put everything together, I added a few tiny wooden ladybirds, in honour of the masses of ladybirds and  ladybird larvae in my garden at the moment.

I hope you like my garden shrine. Thank you very much to Leandra and Darcy for their support and  encouragement and to everyone at PA HQ for being so fabulous.If you would see more of my work, please do visit my blog 

Kirsten. 

A huge thank you to Kirsten for joining us this evening and providing a fabulous feast of inspiration. There is nothing more beautiful than a garden full of flowers,ladybirds and butterflies. For those without gardens this is the perfect way to bring nature indoors. 

If you would like to join in our weekly challenge with any of this week's guests who have blogged since Sunday night, then join in to link up your creativity HERE you will go in the draw to win PA stamps of your choice! You need to link your entry by17:00 (London time) Sunday 15th June 2014