2019 #20 A Bit of Sparkle: A Star Flower Bauble with ESA, ECF, I&D {by Amanda Pink}

2019 Topic 20: A Bit of Sparkle

With an almost creature-esque flower appearing from the centre of a grungy sparkly bauble, Amanda has put loads of metallic texture into a wonderfully dimensional decoration. 

Hi everyone, it's Amanda (ink-a-pink) with you today, and I'd like to share with you the project I have created for out current topic: A Bit of Sparkle.

Now I'm not really a sparkly, blingy type of girl, I'm more a grungy girl so I have 'sparkled' up the 'grungy', just a bit and created a Christmas bauble decoration. It features a star flower created from a PaperArtsy star stamp on the front and a place to write a personal message of love on the back. 

I created a master board that I used to cover the MDF bauble substrate and create the star flower. I worked on PaperArtsy Super Smoothy card with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic paints: Mahogany and London Bus. 

I blended them together as I wanted a rich Christmassy red and London Bus lightened up the deep rich tones of Mahogany and gave me the colour I was after.

Ok, so I had a lovely Christmasy shade of red but I wanted to make it shimmer and shine so I applied a thin layer of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Metallic Glaze over the painted card.

I used a paintbrush to apply the glaze and with the paint colour being dark the brushstrokes were very visible. It's a lovely effect and the glaze definitely gave the paint a metallic sheen. 

I was after a grungier look though so using a PaperArtsy brayer I brayered over the metallic glaze painted card using PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints: Metallic Glaze, Snowflake and White Fire which is a Metallic acrylic.

It was looking much grungier now. 

Shimmery too and the card felt almost like leather to the touch. After covering both sides of the bauble with some of the masterboard I added some stamped detail using one of the stamps from PaperArtsy Eclectica ECF04 (Courtney Franich) collection. 

The stamps in this stamp set are so versatile and lend themselves to almost any project.

As you can see I used a second stamp from the set to lightly stamp a small MDF circle that I painted with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Acrylic paints: Snowflake and Metallic White Fire.
This is the mount on which the star flower sits.

To create the star flower I used the remaining piece of master board with the star stamp from PaperArtsy Eclectica ESA04 (Seth Apter) collection. It's made up of 4 stamped stars layered on top of each other. Each stars vectors have been manipulated to give the star a more flower like form. 

By layering up the manipulated stars the flower has some great dimension. 

For the necessary bit of sparkle I added touches of Cosmic Shimmer twinkles to the star flowers petals and a sparkly Tim Holtz Ideology gumdrop to the centre. 

The twinkles sparkle in varying colours in different light but were a bit of a devil for the lens to capture well and do them justice! 

I like how they look in a darker light. 

Some also found their way onto the bauble itself.

To decorate the back of the bauble I covered another small MDF circle with a brayered offcut and stamped it with a sentiment from PaperArtsy Ink and The Dog Noel Plate 6.

I left room below the stamped sentiment so a personal message could be added if the bauble were to be given as a gift.

Although I describe this as a 'Christmas' bauble it could with the sentiment circle removed or adjusted accordingly be a piece of art on the round that  is displayed year round. You could use any colour variations too and any creative style. The star flowers are fun and addictive to create and they can easily be made on mass to use on other projects. Hey, why not have a star flower making party with friends? It's a great time of year for a party! Just a thought...

Thanks for stopping by today/ tonight.  
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 
Keep on creating
Amanda 
x 

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