Go Green for Art With Heart

Thank you to all the lovely people who have become new Followers (and those who continue to follow me), I really appreciate having you along on this amazing journey!

Eileen Hull has a new challenge on her blog HERE at Art With Heart and the theme is 'Go Green'.  You can create a project for St Patrick's Day, or up-cycle something or create something with an outdoor Vintage Travel theme.  Eileen always has fantastic prizes and this month is no exception, I hope you will check it out!

I decided to go on the up-cycle route and transformed some drinks mats for my project.  I also made a holder using one of Eileen's fabulous Scoreboard XL dies - The Caddy - an extremely versatile die.

One side of the holder, complete with the finished drinks mats.

To create the holder I die cut two caddies from Mat Board (Mount Board) and painted all of the pieces with DecoArt Chalkboard Paint in black.  This fantastic paint coats in one and gives a wonderful semi matt finish.  If you do want to use it as a chalk board, I would recommend two coats but one was sufficient for my needs.  I painted the top of four well used drink mats in the same way (sorry I forgot to take a 'before' picture).

I applied a fairly thick coat of Weathered Wood Crackle Medium (by DecoArt) to the caddies and also the drink mats and let this dry.  To make the top coat I mixed some Cobalt Teal Hue DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic with some Titanium White (a mix of approx 30/70%) which gave me the lovely blue that you see on the caddy and the mats.

I stamped my favourite flower from the Tim Holtz Flower Garden stamp set - I know, I keep using it but I am ever so slightly obsessed with it...  it was stamped onto tissue paper, painted from the back with more DecoArt paints and attached with Ranger Matt Medium.  Another coat of Matt Medium was applied over the whole of the mats to seal and protect them.

As I had cut two caddies, I put them back to back so that I could pop a block of memo note paper into the other side and also attached a butterfly to both sides of the caddy, using a Stampendous stamp from the 'Butterflies SSC028' set.

A view from the side to show the whole piece.  The ribbon is Tim Holtz Crinkle ribbon coloured with Tumbled Glass Distress Stain.

 So, you don't have to use green if it is not your thing, just up-cycle something, or create something with an outdoor Vintage Travel theme and come over and join us HERE in our Go Green Challenge.

Thanks so much for looking and I hope to see you again soon!  Hugs, Anne xx