Surprise The Pride! With Just A Few Friends

Hey everyone! Hope you all made it through another week without too much stress. Mine started off returning from hot, hot, hot Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, recovering on Monday, then headed off to court for jury duty. The best thing about jury duty was seeing an old friend Joy, and catching up with her. Check out her blog here for her amazing projects! She is the shaker queen!

On to my project for the Just A Few Friends August Blog Hop. You should have come here from Suzie's blog, but if you didn't, be sure to start off at Kimi's blog here. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, our Den Mama, Elsa, and her baby Krystal will not be joining us this month, but be sure you check us out next month for the full Pride line up. The theme for this month's hop is "Surprise The Pride". We didn't have any guidelines - we could make anything we wanted. For me, not having any guidelines or requirements is a little difficult. For my other crafty Pride members, they are all such talented crafters that they went all out! Anyhoo, I needed ideas. So I've been prowling YouTube and have seen many altered paper bags, so I decided to give it a try. This is what I came up with ...

I used a paper bag I received in a RAK from my GF Jenny, covered it with kraft cardstock, my DP is from Prima called Nature Garden, and I inked everything up with TH's Gathered Twigs distress ink. I used two stamp sets called Girlfriends from TPC Studio and Free Flight from Penny Black. I also used my clear Rock Candy crackle paint for the first time on the bird on the card (below) and the entire birdcage and bird. I added a tiny clothes pin decorated with mini pearls and a baby rose to hold the paper bag closed.

I used Hug Snug seam binding in eggshell and colored it with Lindy's Stamp Gang ("LSG") Glitz Spritz in Sunset Pink, made two bows and layered them, then added a buckle and half-back pearl from Sa Crafters. I also dyed some white lace with LSG Moon Shadow Mist in Van Dyke Sepia but it was way too dark. So I took some LSG Starburst in Creme Brulee Cream, dabbed it all over the lace and the color lightened up to what I wanted. Then I layered some light pink flat back pearl trim over the lace.

Here's a video of my project - hope you enjoy it!

That's it for my August project and I hope you are enjoying the Hop so far! Next please head on over to Margaret's blog and check out her amazing work! Have a wonderful crafty weekend my friends! Until next time, take care!