Altered Eiffel Tower

Hi everyone, or should I say Bonjour :-).  Jen here, hope everyone is having a good month so far. Thanks for joining me today for my mid month project. I have loved our theme this month so far, using pretty pastel colours. I decided to do something a bit different for this project and altered an Eiffel Tower that I picked up from a local shop. 

When I bought the Eiffel Tower is was a black metal, I knew I wanted to shabby it up a bit so this theme was perfect.

I gave to Tower a couple of coats of Gesso to prime it. This stage took me a few days. I then used some pastel pink acrylic paint to give it the effect that I wanted. I used a round cake tray as the base, glued on some Kaisercaft paper. I used doily and brick stencils to add some texture to the base. These were both from Crafters Workshop.

I added one of Marivic's stunning tags to the second level of the tower, it fit my Parisian theme perfectly. The pink doily and the metal flower from my DT kit were perfect additions. The flower was originally red, I gave it a coat of Gesso and some pink paint.

The metal locket embellishment was also in my DT kit and available in the Etsy store.

The trees and vintage Parisian ladies were downloaded from the internet and glued on to the base. I used cocktail sticks to give them some extra stability. The beautiful lilac trim is also available in the Etsy store.

Another close up of Marivic's tag. I love these handmade tags. The photo underneath shows the 3D dimension added to it.

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Thanks for joining me this month and taking the time to look at my Eiffel Tower and Parisian street scene.

Until next month.

Jen xxx

Ribbon Flower Tutorial

Hello everyone! Riikka here today with my second project for May. Today I want to share with you an easy ribbon flower tutorial together with two projects I made using the ready flower. Materials are from my Zeus and Zoe kit. 

First of all, cut three identical pieces of a ribbon. I used a beautiful lace and velvet ribbon by May Arts. 

The lenght of the ribbon depends on what you want to do - for the brooch I cut about 11" pieces but an little embellishment for the card only need something like 2½ to 3" of ribbon. The lenght is roughly twice the size of the flower. Wrap the pieces into figure eights and attach with a few stitches. You can use hot glue, too, if you want.

Then stack all the loops on top of each other so that they form a flower. Attach with a few stiches. Now the base is ready!

Then comes the fun part - adding some layers and embellishments! I used a crocheted doily and some metal flowers to mine together with a beautiful button and a piece of jewellery. All these were from my kit. 

You can either leave the flower like this or add a few pieces of ribbon at the back like I did.

Here's the finished piece. I added two ribbons at the back togerher with a safety pin and thus created my very own brooch. This would make a great little gift or an embellishment on top of a gift.

Like I said, the same tutorial can be used also in a smaller scale to create embellishments for cards or scrapbooking pages. Underneath is a card to which I made a small lace flower. The shape is the same, only smaller. You can even do one to this months challenge - the mood board had a few different ribbons on it!