Art Washes from the Soul by Gill Humphrey

"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life" is a very apt saying for many crafters who use their crafting as a way of expressing themselves and escaping/managing the madness of the world around us. So today I am sharing a piece made with one of the latest stamps sets from That's Crafty! - Zen Bumble Bee  together with the  Bee shrine.

I started by constructing the box part of the frame deliberately choosing not to put the front on until the inside had been decorated using That's Crafty! Yellow Multi Surface Paint. Once the paint had dried I added some detail to the back panel by spraying That's Crafty! Redwood Matte Spray through the new Flower Burst stencil. 

The front panel of my shrine was given a coat of Orange paint. When the paint had dried a layer of Crackle Glaze was added and allowed to dry completely before painting over a layer of Paris Linen Rich paint.  When adding the paint over the dried Crackle Glaze it is important to not overwork the paint - aim to get complete coverage with a single sweep of the brush as going back and forth can disrupt the cracking process which is almost instantaneous. The tiny hexagonal pieces that come out of the frame were painted Yellow.

I chose three of the same shaped leaves from the Butterflies and Leaves Craftyboard and Butterflies, Leaves and Flowers Craftyboard set coloured them with Mowed Lawn Distress Oxide adhering them to one of the papers from the Autumn Splendour paper set before cutting out to give me three elements that I could now use as trees. The edges of the "trees" were then distressed using Ground Espresso Archival ink.

I took the honeycomb image from the stamp set and randomly added this image using the brown Archival ink before adhering one of my "trees"  directly to the back of the box and the other two using wooden cotton reels of two different heights.

I stamped both the large and small Zen bumblebee images onto shrink plastic using black Stazon, fussy cut out the images and then shrank them using my heat gun before adhering them in place using Glossy Accents.

I then turned my attention to the front panel of my box adding more of the hexagonal images, this time embossing them with WOW gold powder. The tiny hexagons were distressed with Archival ink and then adhered in place. 

I stamped my sentiment from Inspirational Quotes 2 onto a scrap of paper remaining from the trees and then adhered in in place on the front panel which was then glued to the shadow box.