All Decked Out!: NSD Challenge 2015

And for my final project, Amy challenged us to come up with a nautical themed project.  She posted an awesome heat transfer vinyl t-shirt with anchors and a matching card that had a cute little crab.  If you are a cricut circle member, be sure to go check it out! 

I had been thinking about this project for about 2 months and Amy's challenge was the kick in the butt that I needed to complete it.  I had several pinterest projects that inspired this.  Some were chalkboard projects and some were quotation pins.  I just put them together into one canvas.  I gesso'd a flat 8 x 10 and then painted it with chalkboard paint.  Then I made stencils for the letters using some system fonts I have, Botanicals and ChalkBoard fonts.  I used a chalkboard marker to create the letters on the canvas.  I added some doodling dots around the words and along the outside edge of the canvas.  I heat embossed the ship with white detail embossing powder.  I was stumped on what I was going to use for the anchor until I walked into Joann's one day and there in the summer section were these 5 inch metal anchors - ON CLEARANCE!.  Providence I tell you!   I wrapped it with jute twine and popped it off the canvas with - wait for it - magnets!  Before I adhered to magnets to the canvas with E6000, I took one of my granddaughter's blue sidewalk chalks and rubbed the long edge across the surface of the canvas and then wiped with a dry paper towel for a really chalked looking surface.   I made this for friend going through some rough times right now.  I think it fits.

Thanks for stopping by and I cannot WAIT for next year's NSD challenges!

~How many nuts are you?

The weekend challenge that inspired this card was to create a project, card, etc. for a celebration or party.  For some reason, I had squirrels on the brain that day.  I think it was because they were irritating me by eating all the seed out of the bird feeder.  ;-)

Anyway, I digress.  The card is really not a card, but an oversized tag for a birthday.  I used the acorn tag from Close to My Heart - Art Philosophy at 6".  I then cut two solid tags at 6.25 and 6.5 to layer it.  The squirrel was cut from Folk Art Festival at 3".   I pieced together the phrase from many different carts as follows:

How - Lyrical letters at just over 1"
many - Opposites Attract at 1"
Nuts/You - Just Because Cards at 1.5"
Are - Just Because Cards at .5"
? - Chalkboard Fonts at 1"

A little ink, a little ribbons and voila!  I will save this birthday card for a special someone having a special day who may or may not be driving me "nuts".  Haha!  Thanks for stopping by!