Thinking Clearly

Happy Saturday, everyone! I hope you all had a fabulicious holiday! We had a great time with family and spent yesterday recuperating and playing with our new toys. Now that all the Christmas rush is over, it's time to start in on those special thank you's. Today's Our Creative Corner challenge is to add something clear to your project and you're definitely want to hop over to the OCC blog to check out what this week's Guest Designer, Jen Tapler made! And my fellow OCC designers (Amy, Cindy, Dawn, Denise, Jennifer, Laurie and Lynda) rocked the house with their clear projects this week, too.

This project started out with a clear acrylic page from a Scrapworks 3 x5" acrylic album. A hole was already punched in one side, so I used my Crop-a-dile to punch a matching hole on the other side so that I could hang it like a plaque. Next I glued down a piece of BasicGrey Urban Prairie paper and used a foam brush to paint around the edges with some beige acrylic paint. While the paint was still wet, I dusted it with some clear Martha Stewart glitter so it would be supah sparkly.

While that dried, I stamped the Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul quote from Beautiful You in Staz-on on clear acetate and then attached with sticky strip on the left side, so that it would be covered up by the flowers. {SIDE NOTE: Staz-on is really not very good for clear stamps. You can use it sparingly for projects such as this, but you want to make sure you clean your stamps immediately after use. And never use Staz-On or harsh solvent cleaners to clean them, or over time your stamps will start to break down or become hard and brittle. Water based cleaners or ones specifically formulated for clear stamps are the best.}

For my big focal point, I layered several primas and added a pearl brad from the BRIDE's collection at Michael's. Next I pulled out a paint brush and lightly coated the flowers with Crystal Effects and then poured some more of the Martha Stewart glitter on, for more sparkle. I finished off with some May Arts ribbon tied through the top holes for hanging.