An Altered Birthday Plaque

This is a little plaque that I made for a friend's birthday.  She has a strong affinity to butterflies so I decided to use these somewhere within the finished piece.  I started with a blank chipboard sign that I bought from Sarah here : http://www.craftallday.co.uk/  I covered it with acrylic paint (a mixture of black and green) and whilst waiting for it to dry I took a sheet of scrapbooking paper with music score print and tore a piece diagonally before inking the torn edges with a Tim Holtz Distress Ink pad in Forest Moss; I also punched a piece of the same paper using a Stampin Up Artisan Label punch and inked the edges of that in the same way.  I used a Stampin Up mandala stamp from the Happy Day set on plain card stock of a similar weight and a definition stamp 'Dream and Love' which I also overstamped with an ornate key.  I tore around the edges of these stamps and again edged them with the Forest Moss.  Once the painted sign was dry, I layered all these elements up as shown, gluing them in place with a simple PVA glue.

After they had dried I stuck a small twisted wire butterfly in place on the punched label and a floral wooden butterfly lower down as if it were flying towards the mandala.  I also fastened a Tim Holtz Word-Stick to the bottom of the sign using a thin ribbon in a similar colour to the distress ink; using just a dab of glue to hold it in place.

I'm always a little nervous of giving my art pieces as presents as I'm never quite sure how they will be received - but I was really happy with this and I think she liked it :)

Sarah has just launched Craft All Day's first monthly challenge on her blog at : http://craftallday.blogspot.com/2013/12/welcome-to-challenge-1.html please take a look and have a go - I shall be working on an entry later this week.