Everything is coming up roses

The Take a Word challenge this week was Hearts and Flowers.  I  don't usually 'do' cute, romantic things,  I'm more of a brights and bolds type of person.  However, the aim is to challenge myself so off I went into a brave new world!

Hearts and Flowers Box

 I had the idea to take the challenge literally but knew the weight of the flowers and the heart would not be suitable for paper, so I decided to alter a small wooden box.

I have been playing around with the flowers for a few days now until I arrived at a method that resulted in something that looked like a flower.  Eventually I used white card stock, die cut with two separate Sizzix dies and then applied a treatment of water and distress ink.

The heart I made from white polymer clay and imprinted with a floral stamp before baking and colouring with a pale pink paint with iridescent medium, working it well into the grooves.  I then over painted with a colour to match the flowers which turned out to be a kind of apricot although the ink was tattered rose (pink)

 I treated the box to various distress techniques, from crackle paint, distress ink, distressed ribbon etc

This is a view of the crackle paint by Viva, I really like the way it cracks.  I rubbed the cracks with distress ink to get the ink into the cracks before removing the ink from the surface.

I made a video of how I did this and have put it on my YouTube channel here. 

How clever are you?

This is a simple page I made using the Phrenology head stamp from Stampers Anonymous.  I really love this stamp so much I have it digitised so I can produce it at any size for whatever project I'm working on. 

This page is from my A5 art journal.  I added a coat of gesso and then covered the page with various red, orange and yellow Inktensil pencil by Derwent and then washed over with a wet brush.
Next came a layer of mica spray in gold and some in red with gold mica.
The next layer I used a template and Barn Door red distress ink by Tim Holtz.  Next came the phrenology head which had been stamped on coated white card stock and coloured with flesh tones and pink water soluble wax crayons.  The final layer was used mostly a watery white wash and various techniques, splattering, dashed lines, circles etc.  There are a few other layers too but I lost track of the various things I did. 
Around the edges I used a black Posca paint pen and created some pearls with a Viva Pearl pen in white.