A Soul's Heartbeat: Playing with the Scraps from Midnight Masquerade

a Country Craft Creations project

What to do, what to do, when you have leftovers. My biggest suggestion, hint, observation is never ever nicely store them away!! Why??? Because I've found my nicely stored scraps most times stay that way, nicely stored away never to be popped out to play with again. Now of course this isn't always the case. BUT!, if you keep the scraps on your worksurface after your main project is done and just keep playing you'll end up, often times, with scads of projects and often a dozen or more cards.

Here's my first set of leftovers. My niece called one day from Crafter's Warehouse, a local store here in the SW Washington area. She said Aunty they have this set of 5 Kraft things for around $4 do you want one? Nope, get me two. And now I'm kicking myself because the 3rd set had some broken snaps and I told her no don't get that one, duh, what was I thinking? It's so rewarding to find a 'super buy' and watch it transform with paper, paint and embellishments into a gift or card you'd be proud to share with anyone. That's how I feel about these three items. Of course it never hurts to begin the process with a gorgeous paper collection like this one from Graphic 45 called Midnight Masquerade.

This set consisted of the three items here plus a large box (perfect for housing stamps, dies or embossing folders, watch for it a little later since I'm not sure how I'm altering them - I have 2) and a magazine holder which I always use to hold my 8 1/2 x 11" paper. I used Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Wilted Violet to paint everything before adding the papers and pretties. I did remove the front and back covers, painted all the edges, covered them with my main paper and then gently replaced them in the binding. Worked great.

Tammy Merrill shared this lovely collection with me so that I could play. She also had sent a gorgeous set of Petaloo flowers called teal Dahlias. Whenever I start with my leftovers I start searching my crafty spaces (of which there are many) for things that have the same color tones or things that I think would enhance what I'm playing with. I found another set of Petaloo flowers that were perfect to accompany the teal ones Tammy sent. These had hints of purple along with teal excellent for my cluster on the front of the notebook.

Also in the set of flowers was this one, well you tell me was this not the perfect headdress for this dancer? It complemented her outfit perfectly. Since I had two sheets of this paper I fussy cut this lady from the second paper popped her several times on light weight chipboard (fussy cutting each time) and then I inked the edges with a black marker. I find this helps the chipboard piece pop, almost like it has a heavy shadow around.

The second item was this little 4 1/2" square box. These items were all covered in Kraft which is easy to alter and my Wilted Violet paint did the trick perfectly. I covered the box with paper then added two pieces of black lace and then added the cut apart on top. The cut apart has a purple mat and black chipboard to pop it up above the lace. I used 3D Crystal Lacquer for the lady and gent on the top of the cut apart. I also fussy cut another flower to pop above the main sheet. Adding these simple elements gives the finished project a lot more dimension.

Here's a peek inside the box. The notesheets were included I simply tied a piece of colored seam binding into a bow around them. Country Craft Creations has almost any color of seam binding you could possibly want in the store. The lid has been lined with a purple paper from the collection, you can see there how perfectly the Wilted Violet paint matches it.

Using one of the chipboard pieces from the Decorative Chipboard package along with two embossed Embossabilty embellishments finished the inside of the lid.

I found, for myself, it was easier to put a glop of paint on my craft mat and spritz it with a little water applying it to the Kraft items with a brush.

The final item was this little pop up box. It came flat and the inside bottom popped down to create the box. I covered inside and out with papers from the collection and also again used the Wilted Violet to paint the exposed Kraft edges. This box is 4" tall and each side measures about 3". A great size to hold pens or pencils, fill with candy, add a small vase of flowers.

I always try to check out the close out bins and areas at the stores I'm shopping at. Even the local grocery stores have promotional, seasonal, items that close out at large discounts. It doesn't matter if it's red, white and blue for the 4th of July or red and green for Christmas, once you grab your paints, mists or whatever you can change it up to whatever you want. So look beyond what you see to what it might be. Have fun everyone and enjoy your crafting time,