Junior Year by Summer Fullerton

Hello, everyone! Welcome to April and the next installment of my “Old New Borrowed Cool” series.

If you’ve been fortunate you’ve been experiencing unseasonably warm weather (hopefully minus the tornadoes!) and are completely in the middle of spring fever! In Kentucky our tulips are blooming, the dogwoods are open and Easter is just around the corner and my heart is singing with all the beauty that’s around me which inspired my desire to bring a little spring indoors for this edition of Old New Borrowed Cool!

I’m super excited to be sharing this month’s project with you as it’s very different for me! But before I begin I want to remind you one more about the premise for this blog series. Each month on the first of the month I’ll be bringing you a new post that incorporates something OLD from my stash, something NEW that I might have just picked up and something BORROWED from wherever I can get it to create something COOL to share with you! It’s as simple as that.

So are you ready to create something amazing and spring-y?! (I can hear your YAY all the way here!!)

This month’s selections were:

OLD: Some of my favorite stamp sets from BasicGrey, Hero Arts and BoBunny

NEW: An assortment of crisp tissue paper packages

BORROWED: A super fun technique found in my friend Vicki Boutin’s new book, Creative Foundations called “encasing”. Haven’t heard of it? Then keep reading! Oh – and a birdie nest yet I’m not quite sure of the “returning to the birdie” part!

COOL: These spring-time fresh decorated eggs just perfect for livening up your Easter décor!

Old New Borrowed Cool Supplies
Old New Borrowed Cool Easter Eggs

 

Here’s the story behind this month’s project. Believe it or not it goes back well beyond the wonderful warm weather we’ve had at this end of this winter, beyond meeting the fabulous Vicki Boutin and contributing to her amazing book – back so far as to my college studies! Ok, it could even go back further than that but for our purposes, I’ll stop there. (You can thank me later.)

You see, I was an art major in college. My preferred medium was acrylic paint. I LOVED to paint and I loved getting messy and dirty and having to scrap the paint out from under my fingernails. But then I graduated, funds ran dry and space was limited and my artistic pursuits were put on the back burner. That is until I found scrapbooking! Scrapbooking brought back to me my love of making things with my own hands….but I wasn’t out there getting my hands dirty.

Now enter Vicki and her amazing book, Creative Foundations. I had never even THOUGHT to marry my love of inky, painty type stuff with my scrapbooking until this book. It was like a brand new world was opened up to me once again. The techniques she shares are incredibly fun, incredibly beautiful and what’s even better? She makes in incredibly EASY!

So for these fun eggs I borrowed Vicki’s technique called “encasing.” I am going to be honest here and say I had planned on a few other techniques but some are a little better left to shall we say “flat” surfaces rather than an egg!  So my first step after I hollowed out my eggs and let them dry (http://www.ehow.com/how_15776_hollow-egg.html) was to coat them with Mod Podge medium and strips of tissue paper. I set them carefully on a non-stick mat to dry as I stamped some of my favorite nature images onto thin white paper and cut them out. Normally I would have done this step onto cardstock but I thought the thinner paper would form to my egg better.  Once that was dry I added another layer of Mod Podge to the egg and then placed the stamped images where I wanted them to go and then let it dry again.

Easter Egg Step 1

You’re seeing now where the patience comes in, right?! The final layer was another coating of Mod Podge, tissue and more Mod Podge which admittedly made it look a bit like a gooey mess.

But amazingly as it all dries, it turns into this gorgeous egg that looks completely handmade and very artsy – not to mention spring-y! My own final touch was going back over the design with a bit of a white opaque pen to bring out some of the details. That’s it! Just think of the possibilities!

Easter Egg Step 2
Old New Borrowed Cool Easter Eggs

I can’t wait to see what you create and have a wonderful April!

Kelly Goree Signature