Fragile Papers - Inspired by Lucy!

Thank you so much for stopping by Magpieheaven in the depths of winter! Life has been busy here with lots of secret creating going on that I will reveal next month. In fact I thought I might not have time to play along with the wonderful new PaperArtsy Challenge here! If you haven't done so already, please do catch up with the amazing projects the design team have created using 'Fragile Papers'. They've all been incredibly inspiring from Lucy's delicate tissue flowers that got the theme off to a fabulous start to Alison's stunning altered book that literally radiated light from within! Last night Helen Chilton treated us to a great tutorial on using Portfolios with tissue too. I've been dreaming of fragile papers for the last two weeks, but I thought dreaming was all I was going to do until Corinne Rollet encouraged me to join in with a lovely French saying " Plus on est de fous plus on rit ! " The more the merriest!

I loved the flowers that Lucy created from PaperArtsy damask tissue and I think her idea to reinforce them with packaging material was an excellent one. My box was so tiny, though - only 4.5 centimeters! I decided to create a mini  vintage trinket box and here it is, photographed with a book and liqueur bottle to give some idea of scale...

I kept with the idea of paper flowers, but I created one big rose from drawing-book paper coloured with Frescos in Irish Cream, Chalk and a touch of Toffee!

I decided to add interest to my lid with a tiny damask butterfly, using Lucy's great tip to reinforce his wings. His antennae are little flower centres cut to size. I took the lid apart and stenciled it with some Chalk on Irish Cream and a Rebeccah Meier doily stencil. I just swirled some Florentine Treasure Gold around the edge with my finger.

To give a vintage look to the lower part of the box, I first took some masking tape and stuck this lightly around the lower part of this section before painting over with Concrete Fresco. When the tape was removed, I had a box that was half coloured and half natural card. I sponged Potting Soil Archival by Wendy Vecchi over the natural card and then took tiny torn fragments of Damask tissue and adhered them on the reverse side with Satin Glaze. On one I stamped this lovely Lin Brown sentiment 'There are always flowers for those who want to see them'. I made sure that this was heat-set before fixing it carefully to the box. To add to the 'shabby' effect, I stamped some text from a PaperArtsy mini without a block in Potting Soil Archival. Another swirl of Florentine around the rim finished off this this part of the box, but I was not going to throw away my masking tape!

I painted it with Toffee Fresco, stenciling with a Lin Brown stencil of tiny circles in Cinnamon and Chalk. I then stamped over the tape with a stamp from LPC004 - the first Lynne Perrella stamp plate I ever bought!

Thank you to Lucy for the inspiration and PaperArtsy for a fabulous theme to start the New Year! I had so much fun just spending an afternoon playing with papers and creating this little box! Thank You for taking a look. Have a lovely weekend - you might just have time to create something with fragile papers too and link it before 5.00pm tomorrow!