STILL in ‘collage mode’ . . .

Getting a few ‘Valentin-ish’ ones made.

These wood hearts with wings were purchased unfinished from Dollar Tree several years ago.  Glued vintage sheet music to it first then embellished a bit.

Just slightly altered gift box.  Such a sweet faces little cherub on this thrift store box, I HAD to buy it!  I filled it with my custom blend of paper shred (as I do with ALL my gift boxes) and added the love definition on the left side, the stamped ‘bliss’ tag and gave her a hand cut gold glittered crown.

Super simple bird collages.  Scrap book embellishment birds mounted on old book pages in repainted and antiqued thrifted frames.

More birds in similar frames but with a more layered background.

The birds have a little bit if shimmer to them.

Old dictionary pages and scrap-book paper with script writing for the background.

More layers of papers and paper lace on this backing.

Having used up all the birds I had, it was time to move on to the sea life embellishments.  Seahorse in a tiny frame and pair of starfish on dictionary page with tea stained backing.

Seahorse and starfish.

Seahorse and sand dollars.

Sea shells.

In the past, I have also done assemblages like this using REAL shells.  Leave the glass out and use a sand paper or burlap backing to glue the shells to.  (for gluing on bulkier things like that I use e6000 adhesive)

Another KEY collage?!?!?  This one is just a sticker though.  I’m really trying to USE UP a lot of the scrapbook paper and embellishments I have ‘invested’ in over the years.  I buy a lot of this kind of stuff but so seldom actually USE it.  And I am NOT even a scrapbooker!  I just love the STUFF!!!!

Paris chic fleur de lis.

These metal fluer ‘charms’ (BIG charms!) I bought at the craft store.

Wishing now that I had bought more of these when they had them.  Thinking they would be neat to use on furniture.

Metal pocket watch ‘charm’ bought same as the fleurs.  Wonder what they were intended to be used for???

Bought these glitter crowns a while back from a wholesale website and had NO IDEA how I would use them.  finally came up with this.

I hand stamped the saying.

NOW, I really have to start doing some OTHER kinds of crafts!!!

More crafting . . .

Vintage wicker picnic basket, as found.

And here after a ‘five minute dry brush paint job’!  I LOVE dry brush painting!

The latches and handles take a ‘little more time’ to work on, but STILL it’s a very fast process.  You’ll find the instructions for dry brush painting under my FAQ’s category.

I just might have to KEEP this one for myself!

Thrifted gallon jar without the lid (which usually means they are CHEAPER!)

  I just added some burlap ribbon (Hey Beth?!? Recognize this stuff???) satin ribbon and old keys to dress it up a bit.

Big ole jars like this are very useful for displaying small stuff in my booth at Stars.

Cloches with metal shell on top.  I’m not really sure WHAT these metal shell things were originally.  They are quite heavy, and have a ‘slit’ in the top, so maybe place card holders?  These cloches already had a little ‘stem’ , so I  glued the knob on top of the stem, then wrapped the stem with ribbon.

Making some ‘full size’ vintage sheet music crowns.

This one is mine, and displays on the wire hat display in my living room.

This one is for sale at Stars.

Slightly smaller ‘Winter Queen’ crowns are also for sale at Stars.

Front of crown.

Winter Queen tag hangs slightly off to the side.

Happiness Queen crown for sale at Stars.

Silver plastic glittered crown.

The plastic glittered crowns are ‘real’ size and for sale at Stars.

Black plastic glitter crown with silver tinsel trim.

You probably already noticed these table top trees in the last pictures from Stars.  These are just closer up views so you can see the decorations.    Lime green metallic tree with ice blue decorations.

Light blue tree (was white, I spray painted it blue!) with lime green and clear blue decorations.

LOVE how these 2 trees look side by side!  Sure wish I had a third tree to round out the grouping!

Little cherub candle holders in the front.

I filled the candle holes with ‘soft’* styrofoam peanuts and glue.  (* the soft styro peanuts are more spongy, as opposed to the ones that CRUMBLE and make a mess if you scrunch them!)

Took the bases off some little flocked white bottle brush trees, added a bit more glue to the candle hole and inserted the trees into the compressed styro.

LOVE the face!

A snowflake and gem for the top of the tree, and a crown for the cherub OF COURSE!

Better shot of the white tree tops.

One for sale and Stars and one for my etsy shop.

Sweet white cherub with little bird and little crystal angel mini candle holder; just add crowns!

Vintage porcelain baby shoes and bleached green bottle brush trees.

Stuffed the shoes with the soft popcorn styro peanuts and glue like the previous project.  removed the base from the tree and glued  and screwed it into the styro in the shoe.

Little stars on top are the perfect finishing touch!

Thrifted finial with added embellishments.

Little birds; from spring to Holiday BLING!

Had just a few of these little resin birds with the wire feet left over from spring, and decided to try and do something with them for the holidays.  I tend to mostly design stuff with birds for spring decor, but birds really are popular decor items year round.  Here’s my first attempt to Holiday Bling some little birds:

First I added some irridescent white glitter to just the wings and tails.

I usually make the little crowns out of cardboard or cardstock; but these were SO SMALL that  I couldn’t roll the cardstock without it creasing.  So I just used a double layer of paper for these.  Glued 2 sheets of paper together and let dry.  Sized and cut to fit the birds heads (used a big old magic marker to roll it around) and glued into a circle.  Let dry again, then hand cut the points; apply glue to entire outside of crown and roll in silver glitter.  Shake off excess glitter and let dry overnight.  Used my hot glue gun to attach crowns to heads.

I don’t have the rest of my holiday crafting supplies out yet (still working on Halloween!) so I don’t have anything else to ‘work with’ to create a vignette to display the birds in.  Maybe stand them amongst some votive candles on a tray?  Or build a nest out of silver pipe cleaners?  Or in bowl of glittered pine cones???  What would YOU do with these blinged out birds???