Monster Cheer Up Frame for Sanja

Servus, dear stamping and media mixing friends!

I know I have been quite quiet during the last weeks...which is mostly due to a really heavy inspirational black out I have been experiencing for quite some time now - still finding it hard to concentrate, relax or simply enjoy what I do without feeling that time's running out on me any second.

But I can at least share with you a project I did some weeks ago for lovely Sanja, who had seen this project on the Our Creative Corner blog and asked if I could do a similar one for her as well - as she urgently needed some cheering up too.

So we decided to do a swap and I received one of Sanja's fab and elaborate cards in return. Well - honestly I should say "in advance" as it took me quite some time to create my cheer up monster frame to send to her in return. As it isn't easy to get the Tando Creative frames with covers at my place I finally decided to build a frame on my own - using packaging material and cardboard.

I gave my friendly monsters some funny party hats - made from washi tape and glued in place before I cut out the stamped monsters and fixed them to the frame.

For a more detailed stepxstep visit Our Creative Corner - using the above link.

The circles were fixed to the inside of the cover with sticky foam pads, so they would stand out a bit and add dimension. The whole frame was first covered with a heavy coat of DecoArt white acrylic Gesso, the frame was coated with picket fence Distress crackle paint.

The outlines of the circles were drawn with a black watercolour pencil and then activated with a water loaded brush. The monsters were coloured using felt tip pens. The smaller circles were stamped using a cap of one of the felt tip pens and black jet archival ink.

The background panels behind the monsters were cut from a colour copy of one of my mixed media paintings. As I wanted to shade the edges of the panels with DI black soot I found it sticks much better to a copy than to the original with the acrylic paints and Gesso on.

Even though I had the trembling hands and struggled with the more fiddly parts of this creation I sooo enjoyed doing this project! The monsters are definitely one of Stampotique's most loveable stamps and I always have a lot of fun using them on my creations!

I hope you like it too! 

And thank you so much, Sanja, for the lovely swap! 

Wishing you all a fab summer and enjoy the holiday!!! 

Hugs and happy crafting/mixing!

Claudia xx