Heart Hanging

It is time for the next challenge at Frilly and Funkie.  This time Suzz, who is our hostess, is calling it Knock om Wood and here is what she has to say about it:

For this challenge you need to dig through your crafty stash and look for some type of wood to incorporate into your art. This can be any kind of wooden object like a wood spool, a wood button, a mini ruler or even a branch. Create a vintage or shabby chic project that incorporates some type of wood content.

I knew I had some wooden buttons from The Funkie Junkie Boutique in my stash so I decided to use them in my project and to take my colour palette from them.

The first step was to cut a heart from corrugated cardboard and punch two holes at the top where I could add a hanger.  Your heart can be hand cut by making a paper template first, tracing around it on the cardboard and then cutting it out.  Fortunately I am spoiled rotten because my husband has a laser cutter so I just got him to cut a 9" heart for me.

Next I stripped the top layer off the cardboard to expose the corrugations but leaving a strip to add some patterned paper.  Once I had the corrugations exposed, I dry brushed them with some white Gesso.

I inked the corrugations with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and then added a hanger of jute through the holes.  I think next time I would make the holes a bit smaller because I had to do some serious knotting and run the jute around the top to keep the ends from sliding through the holes.

A combination of Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs Distress Ink was used to dye some lace and some seam binding.  The seam binding was crumpled up, dried like that and then formed into a loopy bow.

I used some Vintage Photo DI to ink a couple from the Paper Dolls pack, cut them down and adhered them just above the strip I left on the cardboard.  The lace was added next under the strip.  I tore some floral patterned paper from the St. Tropez paper pad inked the edges with Vintage Photo DI and added it on the strip.  Next I added three inked hearts made from old book paper that came in a little bag of goodies from The Funkie Junkie Boutique - a lovely surprise Linda tucks in each order.

Next I added the buttons and the bow along with a paper rose that I also inked with Vintage Photo DI.

Finally I inked a quote chip with More Vintage Photo DI and added it above the lace.

There you have it - a heart hanging in vintage tones with lots of fun elements, including some pretty cool wooden buttons.

Edit:  I thought my buttons were made from wood because they sure look like wood and are as hard as wood but when I was creating the links at the bottom of this post, I noticed that the description says they are Carved Coconut Shell buttons so I hope Suzz will forgive me.  I did look up coconut palms to see if the trees are considered to be wood and was happy to discover that they are and are considered a hardwood substitute in some countries - the six separations of coconut "wood".

I hope you will join us for this challenge.  It runs until 11:55 pm on Tuesday, March 27th and one randomly chosen winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to The Funkie Junkie Boutique while the Design Team will choose their top picks and the overall top pick will be invited to be a Guest Designer at a future date.