Crafty Secrets Artsy Alphabet Challenge

This week our design team was given a challenge by our wonderful and extremely talented team leader, Vicki Chrisman. Our challenge was to create a card or project using the Artsy Alphabet stamp set from Crafty Secrets. Here is a close up of a couple of the letters from my project. Look at all the detail! I love all the tiny little flourishes in each letter, it makes creating with this letter set so much fun. Here is the project I created using the Artsy Alphabet stamp set. You can click on all of the pictures to see a larger picture with all of the detail. I love the beautiful earth tone colors of fall. To me the colors of fall are so rich and creamy and comforting. I used ivory, browns, gold and golden orange with a little touch of green to create this beautiful Autumn frame. Each letter was stamped on Cryogen White CS using Ranger Distress Ink, Vintage Photo , sponged around the edges and then I added some sparkles to the tiny flourishes in each letter using the Spica Orange Glitter Pen from Copic. The letters were punched out and then I added a popdot and a larger brown square punch out to the back of the letter for a mat. The frame is 14 1/4 x 7 1/4 and the designer paper pads from Crafty Secrets work wonderfully for this size of frame. I only had to cut off just a little of the designer paper for the perfect fit. The designer paper is from the Earthy Paper Design Pad. This piece already had some script writing and flourishes on it. I wanted to add some more detail to the paper so I stamped the edges with one of the flourishes from the Flourish stamp set using a gold ink and then embossed in gold. I filled in some of the detail in the flourishes with the Spica Orange Glitter Pen from Copic.
The beautiful picture of the pumpkin with the apples, corn and wheat is from one of the Seasonal Heartwarming Vintage Booklets, Celebrating Seasons & Holidays. I also added a little sparkle to the fall picture using the Spica Glitter pens. I used the Gold, Organge, Melon and Red glitter pens.I also wanted to share with you a few before and after pictures. Here is the frame before.Now here is the frame after I did a little bit of painting and altering. I used Coffee Bean paint to paint over the entire frame and once that was dry then I painted over that using Daisy Cream paint. When I used the Daisy Cream paint I went over one section of the frame at a time and then used a rag to wipe off some of the paint before it was dry. Once the paint was completly dry I used sealer with a satin finish.Here is a picture showing the before and after results of the fall leaves. It's amazing what you can do with a little ink! The leaves were a little too bright for my project and I wanted to tone them down a bit. I used three different colors of the Ranger Adirondack Inks, Terra Cotta, Butterscotch & Bottle to get the color I wanted for the leaves.Here is another view of the frame so you can see some of the dimension.Also don't forget to check out the blogs for all of the other ladies on the Crafty Secrets Design Team, I know they will have wonderful projects to inspire all of you!!

Here are the links for all of the Ladies on the Crafty Secrets Design Team. Don't forget to stop by each of them and leave a little love! Also you can click HERE to check out the Crafty Secrets Blog.

Lisa- http://shabbychickjunk.blogspot.com/
Vivian- http://www.vivlyndesigns.typepad.com/
Pam - http://pamhooten.blogspot.com/
Marisa- http://marisa-isa.blogspot.com/
Anna- http://sweetmissdaisy.typepad.com/
Vicki- http://vickichrisman.blogspot.com/

I hope you have enjoyed my project using the Artsy Alphabet! Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope you have a wonderful week!!

Smiles!
Heidi