Saturday Step x Step - Flower Fairy Hanging

Hello, it is Cec here and it is my turn to bring you the Saturday Step x Step feature this time.  I am going to give you the details on the Flower Fairy hanging that I created as my project for the current challenge.  This is a pretty simple one so not many photos to wade through.

The challenge is called It's Not Easy Being Green and in honour of Earth Day we were asked to recycle or upcycle something.

As I mentioned in my post my husband worked in the traffic department of our local municipality before his retirement at the end of 2015.  He saw this in the scrap bin one day and brought it home to me thinking I might be able to do something with it.  This is the lens from a set of LED traffic signals.  It would have covered one of the lights - red, amber, green or an advance arrow.  I stashed it in a cupboard and forgot about it until Suzz set this challenge and then I had a light bulb moment and knew I could alter it.

I had my husband drill a couple holes on the edge so I could add something to hang it with later.  The next step was to coat it with Gesso but after three coats I gave up because I realized that it wasn't making it opaque as I wanted.

So enter plan B, which was to cut a circle of white card stock, emboss it with flourishes from a Wendy Vecchi stencil and glue it into the bottom of the lens.  If you notice on the bare lens there are all sorts of little marks on the rim and I knew I didn't want them to show so I dug out some of the pretty lace that Linda sells in her shop and carefully glued it around the edge and then glued all the points down.  This made the edge of the card stock circle less visible - love when you can kill two birds with one stone.

I also decided it needed a bit of sparkle so I painted some Craftsmart clear glitter paint on the flourishes.

The next step was to choose a number of papers from various Graphic 45 pads that I thought would make a nice floral "bouquet".  I used the bloom from Wendy Vecchi's Build A Blossom Stamp-It, Stencil-It set and some of her Tree Branch Archival Ink to stamp 2 each of five different papers.

I shaped each bloom using a large embossing stylus and a felt pad - I do not wet the flowers when I shape this way.  To get flowers that look like this, I clip between the petals, turn the bloom over and emboss each petal with the stylus going in a circular motion down the length of the petal.  Then I turn the bloom back over and emboss in the very centre.  Once embossed I joined each layer making sure to turn the top layer slightly so the petals were alternating.  I added a large pearl to the centre of each flower.

I die cut one of the branches from the Tim Holtz Garden Greens die and painted it with Shabby Shutters and Peeled Paint Distress Ink using a water brush.  I cut the branch up into small segments for use in this project.

Next I fussy cut a bunch of fairies - and one frog - from the Graphic 45 paper.  Then I started to assemble my hanging using Scor Tape and felt pads to adhere everything and provide dimension.  The final step was to thread a narrow satin ribbon through the drilled holes to make a hanger.

I think this turned out to be a sweet marriage of pretty papers and industrial waste.  I hope you will recycle or upcycle something and join in on Suzz's challenge.  You can find it here.