Made with Martha!

I was so excited when I saw that Debbie had some of the Martha Stewart supplies in the store... escpecially the glitter! I had heard great things about it, and I had definitely eye-balled it elsewhere on numerous occasions, but I am trying to limit my support of the big-box stores and showed great restraint. Now that it's at Scrapbooks-Plus I had no excuse... so I bought it!!! ...and am I glad! A lot of people don't like to work with glitter because of the mess factor. Martha's packaging helps a lot: the shaker built into the lid makes it easy peasy to put right where you want it without having to empty the container, and the wide mouth jar is a cinch to get the extra back inside where it belongs. The other great thing about the glitter is that it is extra fine. If you ever ended up with the cheap, extra-chunky glitter you know what I mean. The fine powder sticks better and looks shinier too.

Well, now that I had the glitter, I needed to use it on something. I decided to make a decorative piece for the holidays. I snagged some of the free chipboard at the store counter and cut out a cute cardinal on the Accucut die-cut machine. Once I was home, I painted him red and black before adding glitter to the red portions. (I used a general purpose craft glue - Soho made by Delta - for this. I used a foam brush to brush it on quickly and allow me to glitter the entire piece at once without stressing that it was going to dry before the glitter was on.) Once he was dry, and sprayed with a touch of hairspray, I mounted him onto a chipboard frame painted with "Frayed Burlap" crackle paint from Tim Holtz and added a sprig of berries for him to stand on.

I backed the frame with scraps of patterned paper and some vellum that I've had in my stash for years. I used to pick vellum up all the time when I first started scrapping, but rarely used it. This sheet has some pieces of glitter embedded in it, making it look a bit like falling snow to me. It really helps to mute the patterned paper behind it and soften the look. A seasonal message stamped on top (from Papertrey Ink) and a ribbon for hanging finishes it off!

thanks for stopping by!

erin