Just Like Christmas Morning!

The Caked Crusader is not only an extremely talented baker and writer, she is also a very generous friend.  She mentioned a few weeks ago that she had dabbled in paper craftiness a couple of years ago but had decided it wasn't really for her and offered to let me have what I wanted from her crafty stash.  She sent me this photo and told me to select what I wanted.

It took a while to respond - I couldn't figure out how to say 'All of it!!!!' without sounding greedy.

We met for lunch yesterday and she arrived weighed down by a HUGE bag of the goodies and I've been oohing and aahing over it since. (The peacock stamp is beyond glorious.)

AMAZINGLY - none of it had been opened. This highlights a fundamental difference between the Caked Crusader and I. I open everything the minute it arrives and play with it as soon as humanly possible - she puts it away and it doesn't get unpacked until she needs it.  My head explodes if I think about that too much.


As a small thank you for her generosity I decided to make her a wall hanging - using lots of gold and glitter.

I started with my trusty Imagine, the Cricut Craft Room and a couple of cereal boxes.

I cut 'Caked Crusader' out of the cereal boxes six times, and layered them to get the right weight and thickness.  I painted the top layer with some gold mica watercolour paint, and then added 3 layers of Ultra Thick Embossing Powder mixed with gold glitter.

The frame was made from 4 layers of cardboard, glued together and then covered in paper mache.   I added splodges of paper mache on the final layer to give the polka dot effect.

Too impatient to wait for the frame to dry naturally (and I apologise to the planet for the flagrant misuse of energy) I sped the process up by alternating 30 minute periods in a low (100 deg C) oven and 20 minutes in front of a fan on full.

To make the most of my amateur paper mache skills I wanted to layer the colours on the frame to give some depth and provide a distressed look to the whole thing.  I started with a layer of deep blue, followed by black and then finished with some gold gilding cream.

I had a lot of fun playing around with the techniques in this project (particularly paper mache - I'd forgotten how much fun it is!) and I'm pretty happy with the final piece.

The Caked Crusader has reported it is now in her office and "is sparkling like mad - the glitter is practically radioactive.  Fab!"