Wild and Free by Gill Humphrey

Creating home decor pieces from paper packs is something that I love to do, I can spend many hours hunting for just the right embellishment in my stash but sometimes it's as simple as going outside my back door and collecting things from the garden. Making use of what we have is something that most of our grandparents would have done without thinking about it and for those of us that may have a reduced income at the moment using what is freely available is something that should be embraced.

For this piece I have used a That's Crafty! Arch Upright and Craft O'clock A4 Papers Hummingbird Song. I started my piece by adhering a piece of paper from the paper pack to the upright part of the project using That's Crafty! Glue making sure that I did not cover the tabs. I also added a piece of paper to the base element. Once the papers had dried thoroughly I cut around the shapes, including the slots in the base piece using a craft knife and then tidied the edges up using coarse sandpaper.

To add interest to the back piece I applied That's Crafty! Fine Texture Paste through a Prima Finnabair Gothic Stencil. When this was dried I placed the stencil back on top and added Prima Finnabair Metallic Wax in Old Gold taking the wax round the edge of the frame. I also added some of the wax to the base piece along with a little DecoArt Antiquing Cream in English Red Oxide and Titanium White.

Having completed the panels I then collected my embellishments - I cut a tag and clock from the paper pack and edged them with more gold wax. I added a brad from my stash. Then on a scrap of paper from the pack stamped two birds from Prima Finnabair Wild and Free Stamp Set and fussy cut them out. The two paper birds were then shaped using ball tools.

The embellishment were adhered using 13 Arts Gel Medium. I added some metal bird pieces from my collection of jewellery findings and some tiny premade flowers and finally stamped the sentiment "wild and free" from the Prima stamp set on some scrap paper and adhered it in place.