Hey Everyone..It's Michelle here! I wanted to post a project I recently created for a friend. Although I do not have any step by step instructions, but I can explain what I did and let you know some of the products I used. It was a very simple project with minimal products.

This is the front view of my altered mirror..I know the flask kills it..but in my defense my video and step by step pictures got deleted by my wonderful likes-to-get-into-everything daughter, Aylssa got her hands on my camera. It was wrapped and ready for shipping and I had to unpack and take very quick photos of this project.

The Title of my mirror is "You Are Beautiful" I wanted my friend to know that she is beautiful everytime she looked in this mirror..and to never forget it!

To alter the mirror I used a crackle medium to achieve the crackle look..I also edged the frame with vintage photo and walnut stain distress inks by Tim Holtz, with a little spritzing using Creme de Chocolat by Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists.

For the embellishments I use my favorite flowers which you can find here at iamroses.com. They have a variety of flowers for a great price and you get them by the bundle. I also used a white resin flower that i had taken from a vintage necklace and some Prima Pearls.

I also used some Maya Road Ruffle Trim and some craft heart pearl trim. In the corners I used the Tim Holtz corner pieces,one of his clock piece with a cameo as the center.


I hope you all enjoyed this project even though the pictures we not as great. Thanks for stopping by our amazing blog and REMEMBER YOU ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL!

Hugs,
Michelle Viaje

A beautiful Torquise mini Album

Sarah here posting on behalf of cynthia, first of all im sorry im a little late on posting this, but just look how beautiful this album is, im loving the layers on the cover, ok i'l not keep you in suspence any longer, here is her project...



I re-used any old cardboard i could find


Then i chose my paper's & embellishment's I chose torquise tones
I coverd the card board in the torquise on both sides


To look like this


I started to build up the look of how i want my cover to look like


I used ribbons, flowers & jute to decorate


& used white wire to spell the name marcella & this is my fifnished project


I hope this has inspired you also
cynthia x

Tweet Americana Birdhouse!

Hi! I am Sue Kithcart from Upstate N.Y. in the USA! So this months theme is perfect for me!
July's theme is Americana or red/white and blue which is perfect for me as I decorate my patio in Americana theme! I also love birdhouses so I choose to altered a birdhouse for my project!

This is the wood birdhouse I choose but any birdhouse will work, paper mache or wood.
The first thing I did was to coat the entire birdhouse in white paint. The roof  was painted in white due to
the fact that I am crackling the roof in a two color crackle, but I also painted the house part so if any of the paper did not cover totally I would have a white base.

Once the white paint was dry I then took weathered wood crackle medium (any one step crackle medium will work. This is crackle medium not crackle paint) I coated the entire roof and sides of the roof with crackle medium.

Once the crackle medium is totally dry, I then took my midnight blue paint and painted the entire roof, right over the crackle medium. The biggest mistake people make with crackle medium is painting the top coat of paint too thin!!! Use plenty of paint! It will look almost gunky at first!

After the paint on the roof dried, I then took a scrap piece of paper and poke a whole where the perch would be in the center of the paper and made a pattern to cut my pattern paper with.  I then used YES PASTE and brushed it on the front of the bird house. (you can also use mod podge or whatever your favorite altering glue is) This is then done to the sides and back (if desired) also.

Now the fun begins.... Decorating the bird house! I punched out some stars to carry on the Americana theme and put stars on the roof with button centers. I decorated around the hole with flowers. Of course I had to add a few butterflies also!

Now if you have looked close you will notice I made a small error and did not cut the paper high enough just under the roof! NOT a problem, I added some white lace along the edge of the roof!

I hope you like my project and if you have any questions I would be glad to help!!!! I look forward to seeing your Americana projects and I would also love to see some birdhouse altering!

Faux Mosaic Altered Tag

Hello Altered Artists! My name is Heidi Bound and I am an artist in New York City. I am honored to be designing for such a creative and exciting blog. I love creating altered projects, scrapbooking, card making, jewelry and mini albums. I hope you check out more of my art by going to my blog at Gotham City Stampers.

I am going to share a fun technique that was taught to me by one of my dearest friends, Pat. She calls it Faux Mosaic which is a perfect name! It also looks a bit like stained glass with some faux soldering.

To start, grab some scraps from your stash. These can be papers that match or simply "make sense" together. You will want to use some a chipboard or heavy cardstock shape for this-make sure it is something that can handle a lot of wet adhesives without curling up. I picked a chipboard tag and some red, white and blue vintage-looking scraps.

Cut the scraps into little shapes and bits-don't overthink this part of the process. Spread a thin layer of glue on your chipboard. Now, cover your chipboard with the little bits and leave a small sliver of a space between those pieces. You will need room to do your soldering in a bit. If some of your pieces hang over the chipboard, that is fine-trim those off once you have all of the pieces glued down.

Once the pieces are stuck and the glue is dry you are ready to solder your piece. I used Liquid Pearls from Ranger-they are a variety of colors and have a neat metallic look when they dry. You will want to do a line between all of your pieces and all around the outside of your tag. Liquid Pearls can be tricky to get used to at first so do some practice lines on a scrap paper until you get the feel for the product. Let those lines dry all the way before moving onto the next step.

On this tag I used Ocean Blue Liquid Pearls which really pop on the tag.

I wanted to see what a more neutral color would look like with these color scheme. On this tag I used Bisque which is a creamy light tan color.

Once the Liquid Pearls are TOTALLY dry, flood each section with Glossy Accents or Crystal Effects. There are many products that will work-just make sure it is a clear lacquer. The Glossy Accents will level out on its own but try to spread it in each section so it doesn't overflow over your Liquid Pearl lines. I use a hatpin to carefully move the lacquer where I want it to be.

You will do these in all of the sections of the tag. Glossy Accents take quite some time to dry-depending on where you live (and how humid) it may take longer. This is a perfect time to set your art aside and browse the rest of this FABulous blog!

Once your Glossy Accents is completely dry, have fun embellishing your project. You can add flowers, trims and other fun embellishments to personalize this. Tags are not the only possibility-I have made birds and butterflies using this technique and added a pin to the back for a perfect one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry. The possibilities are endless! Now...GO MAKE SOME ARE!

***July Challenge Submissions***

In this post i will be adding any other projects that are submitted, but for now check out these fabalishious projects!!
From:-

Jennifer Babock, her blog, glittermyday.blogspot.com


Nathalie Leonelli, her blog, anounceofcreativity.blogspot.com


Sandy Ang, {i need your blog addy if you have one?}She made this with a beer can how fab is that!!


Please keep them comming girl's!!

Edited: to add more fabulous submission's!!!
Here abby henderson made 2 mini's & a cup, here is her blog also http://scrappin-abby.blogspot.com/






If anyone else would like to enter for the £25 worth of tim holtz products!!!!! You still have a chance just email me at sarahslade77@gmail.com  I was suppose to get these photo's up last week but life as you know it had a different opinion!!!  So i will call the draw at the end of august now

Happy Dayz
Sarah x x

July's challenge & a June WINNER!!!!!

Ok first of all {becoz i dont mind keeping announcing the winner in suspence, lol} I wanted to remind you about the JULYs "red white & blue" challenge. If you wish to take part please email me your projects {they dont have to be put into tutorial form, just the finished project} at sarahslade77@gmail.com

I will put them up on the blog here for everyone to see & for inspiring others too, i'l link up your blog if you have one & you'l have a chance of winning TIM HOLTZ products worth £25!!!!!!  WooooHoooo

See here http://alterdprojectinc.blogspot.com/2011/07/red-white-blue-competition.html for more info

Ok so now who wants to know who the winner of the JUNE compititon?........anyone??

ok ok just to let you lnow how i went about doing this, i wrote down your names all of those who left links & advertised this blog for us, as i found them in the blog replies, then i asked my husband to pick a number, i counted down to find that ALANNA has won the may kit from MY SCRAPBOOK NOOK

Congratulation's girl, if you can email me your snail mail & i get it sent to you, asap

Can i also say a big thank you to MY SCRAPBOOK NOOK  http://myscrapbooknook.org/forum/forum.php for sponsoring the alterdproject blog for the month of JUNE.

Happy Days
Sarah x x

Altered Jigsaw Puzzle Background

Hi everyone. My name is Yatie. A few months back, I altered a jigsaw puzzle set and a lot of people have asked me how I made the background. So I was thinking, I might as well make a tutorial on the how over here. Ok let us start.

You will need:

Jigsaw puzzle set
Gesso
2 contrasting colors of acrylic paints
1 paint brush
2 foam brushes
Distress ink
Rock Candy crackle paint
Foam adhesive
Wet glue (not in picture)

First, apply gesso all over the jigsaw pieces and don't forget the sides of the frame too.

Squeeze out the acrylic colors and using the foam brushes, dip them in the colors respectively.

Dab the brushes up and down alternately on the jigsaw pieces (make sure the gesso is completely dry), mixing the colors in some areas. 

Once the paint is completely dry, ink the edges of each jigsaw piece with distress ink.

Adhere the jigsaw pieces back onto the frame.

Leave at least 2 jigsaw pieces off. You can fill in the empty spaces with black marker if you like or just leave them as they are.

Using foam adhesive, adhere the 2 pieces down, twisting them to the sides a little.

Lastly, apply Rock Candy crackle paint to the sides of the jigsaw set.

Once the crackle paint dris, cracks will appear giving the jigsaw set a unique look.

You can now decorate the puzzle set. Here I've made it into a mini layout.

A close up view of the altered background.

So that's it. Hope you'll give it a try and do share you work with us here. Just link up your takes in the comment section.

Take care, everyone and happy altering!!

Yatie
xx

Napkin Holder & Straw Decorations

Hello everyone,
My name is Holly and I am sharing my first project with you at Alterd. I am from Australia, therefore we do not celebrate 4th of July, however our flag is pretty much the same colour so I created a couple of simple decorations for 'Australia Day' which falls in January.

Back in highschool I made this hideous looking letter holder that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I decided it would actually make a pretty simple napkin holder for Australia day parties.

I created some cardstock roses from a youtube tutorial here. And put together a few pieces of ribbon and a scrap of thin card which came off some packaging.

I attached the white card to the back piece of wood, folding it to cover the back also. This got rid of the unattractive hump shape of the wood (what was I thinking). I then tied a couple of pieces of ribbon around the back panel and tied a bow to the side.

I then attached some scrap doily over the front wood panel, in the centre between the panels and then attached the two paper flowers, using foam dots (I would recommend a heavy duty adhesive, such as helmar/mod podge).

This is an example of making use of something that I could have just as easily thrown out since it was not very pretty. Now it has a purpose at least once a year for celebrating Australia day... or any other day when red, blue and white seems like a nice idea.

With some scraps of my flowers I also created some straw decorations. To do these, I cut 3 pieces using a Spellbinders nestables label set. You only need 2 pieces of different sizes, however I wanted to have the red, blue and white incoroporated. I then folded them each in half and cut 2 horizontal lines with a craft knife into the front piece. This creates a slot when folded in the opposite direction.

Once the 3 pieces were stuck together, I then slid a bendy straw in the slot.

This would look great with stars for 4th of July. However it can be done with any shape so here is another example with butterflies, perfect for a baby shower or little girls birthday party.

You are only limited by your imagination in the case of both of these projects.

Please let me know if you have any questions about these two altered projects as I am happy to assist ... and I am only a newbie to tutorials :-)

Have a great week,
Holly xo