hearts and butterflies ATC matchbox collection

Today I have for you all another of the ATC Matchboxes complete with coins and cards

This one has a more mixed media feel with lots of texture as the matchboxes are very deep, perfect for  allowing you to build up dimension on your pieces

as with all Tando Grey board these matchboxes, coins and cards are easy to put together and will take a variety of wet mediums without bending, buckling or distorting so they are perfect for all your different technics and lots of layering

i have used four of the ATC cards as individual art pieces to go inside my box and the remaining fifth piece as a topper to decorate the outside top of my box.

I have used the same blue and purple theme throughout so that everything co ordinates

Each of the cards have been layered with first a decorative backing paper taken from the  12 x 12" Stamperia Cosmos Infinity Scrapbooking paper pad.

I used a matte pva glue on both the backing paper and the grey board which allows for a bit of movement when aligning both surfaces, this had been trimmed roughly to size, allowed to dry thoroughly and when dry the edges sanded to create a  professional finish.

 I pulled colours used in the backing papers from my stash that would compliment and coordinate (in this case, ice blue Antique paint from Majas Memories, Finnabair Sparks in Iris Potion and  ginger magic from the carnival collection) and used these to colour elements from the Tando mini tags you can  find the butterflies here and the hearts here

I  have incorporated a  little of the  paint colours onto each piece so that the foreground and background pieces have some continuity, just a few splats is enough to bring everything together

I used the same colours to  paint the sides and base of the drawer as  well as  the  inner  sleeve that the drawer slides into and more of the ginger magic to paint the inside of the drawer and to edge the pieces

on both the  coins and  cards you can  see I have embossed  some of the added elements this is a  big advantage of  grey board over mdf and similar and provides an extra dimension that can be highlighted with wax to bring out the embossed detail

I didnt have enough of the same paper to decorate the coins in the same fashion but wanted all of my pieces to match so I used mural paste texture paste from Majas Memories to create the same feel as the  texture portrayed in the papers and used  paint to emulate the same effect. I think it coordinates quite well. the  added texture was created using rubber stamps from the Cosmos infinity range and an inkpad before the same butterfly and hearts  elements from the mini tags were added

I have  coloured stripes of cotton self adhesive surgical tape with polite purple squirts from Lindy's Stamp Gang and used a piece like washi tape under all of the elements as well as adding single word sentiments edged in black to match the typography

Hope you like this  project and will share your version with us

Art Angel x x