A busy krafty bee!

Hello all!  I'm back with my second offering of the month to inspire you to come and play along with our Use Kraft Card theme at Country View Challenges... and I found myself with a very busy bee on my hands.

It started (as lots of my tags do these days) with the Mixed Media thinlits - and this time it's the honeycomb I've been playing with... and from the honeycomb it was a small but obvious journey to the Tim Holtz Layered Bee.

The background is actually one which has been sitting around on my craft table for a while.  I was having a play with my (then) new Mini Bee on Time stencil, and created various backgrounds.













This one involved gesso and lots of Wild Honey and Scattered Straw Distress Sprays.

Looking at it, I'm pretty sure this one was a flipped-over print to use up leftover paint after gessoing through the stencil onto another tag (the bee is non-gesso, and the surround is textured gesso).










Then it was onto the kraft card and the honeycomb Mixed Media thinlit.

Having cut it, I inked the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and a little Rusty Hinge in places, I think, and then reassembled some of the pieces (not necessarily back into the right holes, though some of them have made it there).










I applied Glossy Accents to some holes and pieces, and Rock Candy Crackle Paint to others.













I'm really happy with the effect... like glossy honey ready and waiting to be harvested.











The large bee was also cut from kraft card, embossed, edged with Vintage Photo and then given his own coat of Rock Candy Crackle Paint.

After it had crackled, I added sweeps of Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo and Wild Honey Distress Stain to give a little more depth to the cracks.

He had to be positioned very carefully so as to allow his gesso cousin to be visible beneath.

The WordBand has been altered with some Wild Honey Distress Paint as well as some rusty and gingery alcohol inks...














... and there are some dyed crinkle ribbons to top it off.









I hope you're inspired to Use Kraft Card this month.  Remember, there are new projects from the team almost daily over at Country View Challenges, so hopefully you'll never be short of ideas and inspiration.  We hope you'll come and play along.

For now, I'll love you and leave you, and I hope to be able to come and do some visiting soon!

There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection.  No living creature, not even man, has achieved in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own; and were someone from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.
From The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck, 1924

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
Henry David Thoreau

Find the ingredients at Country View Crafts:
Tim Holtz Layered Bee
Sizzix Mixed Media Thinlits
Distress Spray Stains - Wild Honey, Scattered Straw
Distress Stains - Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo
Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Rusty Hinge
Distress Paint - Wild Honey
Ranger Adirondack Alcohol Inks - Ginger, Rust, Teakwood
Gesso
Glossy Accents
Rock Candy Crackle Paint
Idea-ology WordBands - Observations
Idea-ology Crinkle Ribbons
Manila Tags
From my stash: Kraft card, TCW Mini Bee On Time stencil