St Patrick’s Prayer Vignette Tray Home Decor

This weathered Vignette Tray is a decor piece I wanted for my home for St. Patrick's Day. It was inspired by a prayer of St. Patrick. I pulled three lines from his prayer to use on this piece.

Each year I like to add one or two pieces to my St. Patrick's Day decor for the whole month of March.  I really wasn't sure what all that would look like this year, so I set about mulling it over.  This is an important process for me. The mulling. Sometimes I end up with a fully conceived plan, and other times it comes to me in increments.  That was what happened here.

I started out making some backgrounds a few weeks ago with Watermark Resist and Distress Inks and Oxides. So I made a few using just green colors.

I put a piece of Sticky Grid on the Stamping Platform.

Then I added the Distress Mixed Media Heavystock.

There are a few Watermark Stamp pads on the market. I have used both, but I prefer the way the Ranger Watermark kind of soaks in the color of the inks. I don't know if that is what it is doing, but it seems like it to me.

I arranged the newly released Fragments CMS368 on the Heavystock so that it covers the whole paper.

Stamp three pieces of Heavystock with Watermark Resist Ink and dry.

Spray the pieces with Peeled Paint Oxide Spray -- don't forget to wipe the nozzle when you are done.

Then spray with Peeled Paint Distress Spray Stain.

Then with Shabby Shutters Spray Stain.

Spray all three with water. This really lets it soak in and softens the coverage so the Watermark stamping shows through.

You can see even before it dries that the stamped portions are soaking in the ink.

As it dries you will see the stamped images even more as they soak in the ink.

This is what the finished product looked like.

Then I cut the large and small faceted hearts out of each piece. You need three to form a shamrock, and a total of nine for this project. I assembled the hearts in groups of three and arranged them on the planks. Then free-hand cut three stems from left-over pieces of the green paper. I adhered the stems first and then the three hearts.

Here is a close up of one of the shamrocks.

Then I needed to cut the wording. I cut part of a much longer prayer by St. Patrick. I used a new (coming soon!) alphabet from Tim Holtz and Sizzix called Alphanumeric Label.

First I attached a piece of Sizzix Adhesive Sheets to the back of a piece of white cardstock. Then I cut out the letters and adhered them to some pieces of black cardstock.

The second idea that came to me was to make some wide wood planks out of wood. Now it goes without saying that I LOVE the Planks die from Tim Holtz. LOVE IT!  But I wanted something wider for a project, so I started experimenting and this is what developed.

I adhered the planks to the small Vignette Tray, as you saw at the end of the video and then set about trying to finish it. 

I cut the leftover planks into strips a little larger than 1/2".

Then I ran them through a new 3-D Impresslit that is coming soon, that is the star border. It cuts the border and impresses stars into it. I LOVE it! Then I roughed up the edges and inked them.

Here you can see the stars after I inked the border strips.  Then I adhered them along the top edges of the piece.

I really love the subtle interest this border adds. As well as the piece of cat hair courtesy of my fluffy calico Leota Toombs. :-D

In this photo you can see that I also added some nails to this piece. Those are found in the Vignette Hardware set from Ideaology

I think they are the perfect final touch.

I love how this piece turned out and that although there were a lot of steps, that went into this project, it still has a clean, simple look to honor St Patrick.
Thank you so much for checking out the latest in my March home decor pieces.
Tami

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