A Whiter Shade of Pale

Hello all, thank you so much for dropping in today... It's Friday, and time for a new challenge over at Fussy and Fancy.

I'm a little sad, as this will be my last project as part of the Design Team - it's been a fantastic six months (Six months?  Seriously?  Where did that time go?!) but both in real life and in crafting terms there's so much on my plate at the moment that something had to give.

But I'd like to thank everybody at F&F for the fun and friendship and inspiration, and lots of great challenges... I'll definitely be back to play along in future.

But enough of that... time to play!  We're looking for Circles from you this fortnight, and here's my offering for inspiration, using some papier-mâché hanging circles bought very cheaply at The Range.




Any WOYWW-ers out there may remember this trio of frames from my desk a couple of weeks back - I really went through the mill with this one.






The circles have been at least four different colours, and had several different stamped designs over them, then got covered in texture paste and repainted - each time pleasing me less and less.

Eventually I just lost patience and painted them white to give myself a whole fresh start.

At that point, Our Creative Corner offered up their latest challenge - to create something all White with a Decorative Edge... and at last I began to see a journey ahead.






Step number one was the brainwave of trying out some of the gorgeous Memory Box diecut Catalina Wreaths on top of the frames.

I don't actually own this die, but had bought some pre-cut ones from eBay.

To my delight, they were exactly the right size, so I started gathering other flowery bits and pieces.  I don't do flowery that often, so I thought I might as well do it properly while I was at it.









As well as the Catalina honeysuckle wreaths, there are some of the tiny mulberry paper roses, and some of the larger ones also bought for pennies at The Range.












As I looked at all the bits lying on my craft mat, it quickly became clear that "white" is a flexible term...  Even though all the flowers, the die-cuts and now the frames were "white" - they were all completely different shades.  I decided to paint everything to try to get them to match better.








So I tried a coat of gesso - still all completely different. I added a coat of Titanium White acrylic... still all looking pretty different, but now there was at least a sort of continuity of shade.  

I really like the look of the paint on the paper flowers and the rough brushstrokes visible on the delicate diecuts.










I decided to add some of the wooden flourishes from Crafty Emblies into the mix.  I love these, they're so delicate and intricate.  They look beautiful already in their dark wood finish, and of course you can also alter them, as here.











They got the same coat of gesso and paint as everything else, but I kept it only to the top surface so that you get the dimensional definition of the shape of the flourish.











So we were now pretty much all white - and according to the Our Creative Corner rules, the sentiment can be any colour you like.


At first, I stamped individual words on tissue paper so that I could try out the look of them in the circles, but they didn't have enough punch somehow.


So I turned to my favourite Idea-ology Alpha Parts, this time the Newsprint font.


Usually I mess around with them, altering with paints, and/or DIs, and/or alcohol inks to suit whatever project I'm working on (yup, those links all lead to projects I've used them on - and that's just some of them - I use them a lot!).







As I started to get the letters ready, I was thinking about painting their top surfaces white, as with the flourishes.  However, as I tried them out in the circles I decided I really liked the drama of the black.

So for once, I've left the Alpha Parts in their basic state!!

So there you have it, a shabby chic, romantic, all-white, circular extravaganza - probably about as flowery as you're going to see it get round here!




Be sure to pop by and see all the great projects my fellow DT-ers have created over at Fussy and Fancy - they're well worth a visit, and of course, we'd love to have you join in with our Circles challenge this fortnight - can't wait to see what you come up with!  For now, thank you so much for your company, and see you again soon.

Black and white are absolute... expressing the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquility, and unlimited profundity.
Shiko Munakata

White covers a multitude of sins.  (After four different goes with these frames, I couldn't agree more!)
Jonathan Milne

I'm entering this in the following:
Our Creative Corner are playing White with a Decorative Edge
At Craft-room Challenge they are looking for Monochrome projects
Allsorts are having a Flower Power challenge