The Cutting Cafe Inspiration Week XL!

Time for some extra large inspiration from The Cutting Cafe!  This week we're blowing up the files from the Cutting Cafe!  Here is what I made for you:

The idea was to take a file from the Cutting Cafe and see how big we could make it.  Well, idk if this is the biggest I could make one of these Acorn shakers.. but it's pretty big... considering it's normally card that fits in an A2 size envelope and I've used it to fill up this 12x12 canvas.

So I started pretty good taking pics along the way, but at some point I got lost in my work.  But here's where I started.  I had a 12x12 bulk canvas from Michael's.  I painted it with white gesso and let that dry.  Then I used a brush and painted on some orange acrylic paint very sloppily.  Then I took some yellow and gold and sponged over the top of that.  For these layers I didn't let it dry completely in between.  I just squirted some color on my sponge and started smashing it on.  I went over a few areas with the orange when I was done for good measure.  THEN I let it all dry completely.

After it was all dry, I used some gold embossing paste and a really pretty doily stencil from Prima and added some texture in two corners.  After that was dry, I took some leaf stamps and stamped them over the top in the areas where the doily was not using Hero Arts Gold Shadow Ink.  Here's where I stopped taking progress pics and you'll see these later.

I suppose I should back track a bit...lol!  The very first thing I did was decide what papers and colors I wanted for my acorn shaker.   I use a Cricut Explore and I use the SVG file format... so when I get my files from Regina, I print out the sheet for sizes.  I import each group separately into Design Space, open it in my workspace, leave it grouped and change the size according to the sheet.  Then I save it so that's the last time I have to do that!  In this case, I did all of that and THEN I re-sized it to what I wanted ... again leaving them grouped so the pieces all fit together nicely when they are cut.  Then I save as a different file so as not to save over what I'll normally use this file for.  For this project I wanted my acorn to be as big as I could make it to fit nicely on the 12x12 canvas so I think I went with about 11 1/2 in height, leaving the lock on so that the height and width adjusted correctly together.

Once I had it all cut out, I did my ink distressing and roughed up the edges of the background piece.   Then I assembled my large shaker and filled it with lots of sparkly sequins and there's a closer up pic of that at the end.  I used the Clear Cardstock from the Cutting Cafe Shop for my shaker window.  I doubled up on my foam tape to be sure I had a nice thick well for my many sequins and prills of varying sizes and when I did that, I noticed you could see the white foam tape a little... since that would just not do and you can never have enough gold, I added some gold paint to both edges of my acorn top... a happy accident I'd say.

 The larger pointy leaves are from the file as well and I sprayed them with some water, crinkled them up, uncrinkled and gave them a treatment of sponged on orange and gold.  I really love how they turned out and I cut them in an Olive color and was careful to be sure I let some of that show through.  Then I found a little baggy of maple leaves and white flowers that had been cut, distressed and sprayed with color shine already leftover from a previous project.. LOVE using leftovers!  They were perfect to use on this piece!

I also consulted my baggie of special handmade doilies from my friend Tracey (do yourself a favor and check out her blog here.)  Also, I got out my container of premade paper flowers, my baggie of winnings from my very first Lessology Challenge....

My ribbon drawer, my favorite gold fabric hearts from Fun Stampers Journey, some gold gems, some gold strands... so many items I LOVE on this one... can't wait to put it up.. um... in a month or two... !!

Here's a closeup of the embossing paste doily.... so happy I bought that stencil.

Here's a closeup where you can see the ever so faint leaves I stamped with the Hero Arts gold ink.

A different angle of this corner... finally used some of the ephemera from a Tim Holtz pack I got a while ago.  I die cut the one with the nest with a Spellbinders die I just got.

And the shaker... I used lots of different things in it... various sequins and such in gold and autumny colors.  I am so excited about cutting these shakers out in this large format that I'm planning on doing a Halloween one sometime soon... I'm sure I'll let you know about it when I do .. lol!

Thanks so much for stopping by and don't forget to stop over to the Cutting Cafe Blog on the 21st and check out all of the Design Team projects and maybe win some files!

Be sure to come back tomorrow for Atlantic Hearts!