Encore - Lovers Love The Spring

Encore Posts

While I'm away, there are some scheduled posts with new creations coming your way, but I'm also taking the chance to do some catching up here at Words and Pictures.   Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook.  I'm calling them "Encore" posts and they're formatted differently (all the way down the centre), so you can spot them easily.

Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

Hello everyone, catch up time here again at Words and Pictures, with a project which originally appeared over at Calico Crafts in their previous life.  These days they offer a fabulous range of Calico Craft Parts which are pure delight to create with, but I still remember with fondness the eclectic range of crafting goodies they used to supply.  Here's what I wrote back in February 2014.

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I'm delighted to share a little touch of Springtime and a little touch of Shakespeare with you. I was even lucky enough to catch 10 minutes of sunshine between torrential rain showers for some of the photos.

I'm always amazed by the difference in colours depending on whether it's in sunlight or in shade...

It's another hanging created on a side piece of the same chopped up book box as the last one... waste not, want not. (Calico don't stock the history books box set I'm afraid!)

I painted the thick cardboard with DecoArt White Wash acrylic paint and added a coat of One Step Crackle Medium (also DecoArt) around the edges.   Once it was dry and crackled, I rubbed Burnt Umber paint into it and wiped away the excess with a babywipe.

Then I began assembling my Spring collage pieces.   One of the joys for me at Calico Crafts is they have such lovely things that you really don't need to do very much to create something special!

The grapevine heart is 8.5cm across, and comes wrapped about in plain wire.

I have to admit that I unravelled that and re-ravelled it (yeah, I don't think it's a word either!) with rusty wire - a bit fiddly, as I had to re-ravel before fully unravelling so as not to have the whole thing disintegrate on me, but I think it was worth it... but then I'm a rusty wire junkie!

These adorable little speckled eggs - they've just had a whisper of gesso added, and then the white splatter at the end.

And the ruffle roses have had a couple of coats of gesso to rough them up a little and make them a touch paler.

The three driftwood planks absolutely delight me and, again, they've just had a rough coat of diluted White Wash paint for an even shabbier chic look.

Being a rusty wire junkie, I couldn't resist wrapping the planks up with a bit more of the stuff.

And the whole thing is layered over a piece of script paper torn from the Kaisercraft Timeless Classics 12x12 pad.  I inked the edges with Jumbo Java Versamagic Chalk Ink, which is a lovely rich colour, perfect to add definition to the paper behind the twigs of the heart.

The words - ah, the words - are from one of the songs in Shakespeare's As You Like It. The first verse is at the foot of the post... it's not necessarily his finest hour, but it's pretty!

They're stamped using the Artemio Typewriter Alphabet stamps onto lightly inked paper, and then edged with the Jumbo Java Chalk Ink again.

Some rusty wire through the eyelets at the top, some hot glue gun action, a little white paint splatter and we're done!

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I hope you like it, and I really, really hope that Spring will be here soon in reality.  According to the weather forecasts I've been looking at at the time of adding these top and bottom paragraphs, the weather in China is likely to be an improvement on what we've been having in the UK - so fingers crossed for all of us!  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you again soon.

It was a lover and his lass,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonny no,

That o’er the green corn-field did pass,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, Hey ding a ding, ding:

Sweet lovers love the spring.

Song from As You Like It by William Shakespeare