Welcome to Day 10 of the 2013 Artisan Award Winner Blog Hop!!  I am so incredibly excited to FINALLY be able to share, in detail, the projects I created for my submission to the contest.  If you came over from Jeanna Bohanon’s blog, Stamp Time Somewhere, I know you have already been impressed by her amazing work.  If not, you can just start the hop here and follow around until you get back to me.

Here we are on the last day of this hop!  I saved my favorite item for today (you can click on the pictures to see more detail).  This pallet idea spun around in my brain for awhile before I finally just went for it.  For scale, this is 24″ x 18″.  I started with plain old wood strips from a home store and my husband helped me concoct this pallet.

This is what is started off looking like.  First I stained it with a dark stain.  Then it was painted with an acrylic paint allowing some of the stain to show through.  Sanding was next to reveal some of the stain again and some of the wood.  Next up the lettering.  Here is my disclaimer.  If you have an e-cutter this would be much, much easier!!  I used letter punches in MDS to create the words I wanted to use.  I printed them out and then used an exacto knife to cut them out of contact paper.  The contact paper was my stencil.  This took a while.  Again, with an e-cutter and the SVG files of MDS…super easy.  I sponged on paint over the contact paper.  Once it was dry, I used my Stampin’ Sanding Block to distress them a bit.  Then I stamped randomly with the flourish from Creative Elements using Early Espresso Ink.  I sealed it all with a spray sealant.

Next up was the final decoration.  I used my Beautiful Butterflies Die to create a forest of butterflies out of the Tea for Two DSP and started playing around with them to find what worked.  I sponged them and formed them so that they would have dimension and attached them with hot glue.  The balance was still a bit off so I added a strip of the Tea for Two Fabric that I tore (I liked the shabby edge) and some Naturals 7/16″ Ribbon.  Finally I added the tag attached with a decorated clothespin.  The tag top was created with the largest Ovals Framelit.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these projects as much as I have enjoyed sharing them.  Thank you for the kind comments you have left for me.  I really appreciate them!  Starting on August 13th, the whole team will be back for our first Artisan Wednesday Wow hop.  Every Wednesday we will be here to provide inspiration!

Now on to see the amazing Mercedes Weber of Creations by Mercedes!!

Thanks for stopping in today.  See you soon!

Stamp:  Creative Elements; Paper:  Very Vanilla, Tea for Two DSP; Ink:  Early Espresso, Calypso Coral; Accessories:  Big Shot, Beautiful Butterflies Die, Tea for Two fabric (ret), Victoria Crochet Lace, Flower Trim (ret), Naturals Ribbon, My Digital Studio, Stampin’ Sanding Block, Clothespin, Wood, Crystal Effects (as glue), hot glue