Smeared and Smudged Valentine Blog Hop

The challenge went up in the forum Smeared and Smudged
"We are going to be doing Valentine’s Day Blog Hop Smeared and Smudged style! What exactly does that mean? It means we are challenging you this hop. The challenge is to create something Valentine’s Day / love themed, but there is a catch. Because we are Smeared and Smudged you can not use any of the following:
No hearts

No red or pink

Nothing ‘cute’ unless you make it uncute of course :)"

The gauntlet was thrown down.

Next poser then was "What to do?" Well the brain cell rattled about a bit for a few days and I very nearly didn't put my name down for this. Then Terra started up the mixed media classes again with steps to making "sculpture paper" out of kitchen roll. One of the pieces I made up was ideal for altering a box I had in mind. This also fits in with another of the challenges over at the forum set by our own fair Jane, "to make or alter a box and fill it".
Are you sitting comfy? This is a long post. Well a lot went into it.

So the project was started.

It's a valentine gift to ME. I used scraps left over from making my wedding dress. Our wedding anniversary was the 11th Feb. the 14th was fully booked up.

The paper before cutting to fit looked a bit like this - the light wasn't the best.

Painted with acrylics black with purple and a silver metalic rub on the ridges.

I made a flower from some of the dress fabric (yes, I got married in purple) adding a silver and black button in the middle and some smaller silver grey, purple and black chiffon roses sticking these to the box top after a final rub round the edges with the metalic rub-on.

Some more of the dress fabric round the edges and black velvet ribbon with some bobbles on to neaten.

The box base was coated with gesso and when dry, black acrylic paint stippled on to give a stone effect with some more purple paint in fine lines to (hopefully) make it look like marble.

Ok, so that's the outside of the box.


Inside
Some more of the dress fabric was used to make a cushion. This was to provide the resting place of my first home made piece of jewellery.


Various beads and the 6 discs have grumpies from Smeared Ink stamped onto shrink plastic. coloured slightly with amethyst promarker.








All 6 of the mini original grumpies have been used, these are just 2 of them.

I hope you're still with me because the rest of the girls I KNOW have some awesome projects lined up as well. Please go visit.
The list is
Terra
Tori
Alison
Lady B
Helen that's me
Kymberly
Berenice
Kelli
Lisa
Dianne
Teri
Rebecca
Steph
Jane
Sugar
Kapree
Black Dragon
Alex

I am entering this into the Smeared and Smudged forum feb challenge set by Jane
Other challenges
Little Claire's Designs - Anything Goes
Simon Says - Anything but a Card
One Stitch At A Time - One Year Birthday Bash - Make It Pretty