Anything But a Card Challenge 21-The gift that keeps on giving...

Hello! Today is Father's Day here in the US and I will be spending part of the day with my two favorite guys, my Dad and my husband.  So it's quite fitting that today's project aligns perfectly with the Masculine/Dear ol' Dad challenge at Anything But a Card.  We are in week two of this challenge and it's my turn to share a project.  Be sure to visit the challenge blog and check out the team's inspiring pieces.  I would love to see you link up your projects too! Remember, they can be anything but a card-that leaves a lot of different art forms to play with!

For those of you who follow my blog, you know that my DH loves to give me a hard time about saving everything for my 'someday' projects.  Last year, his Father's day card included some corrugated paper saved from our souvenirs from Disney.  This year, part of his gift includes a lot of 'saved' items. Now you would think this would curb the teasing about digging through the trash, but I know him well enough to know that he will simply direct my eyes to the containers and shelves of things I've yet to use... Oh well!   I also had some assistance from my two girls on this project!

Before you see my altered shadow box, I need to apologize for the horrid photos.  I just couldn't get the shadows off of my shadow box!  I'm also not overly thrilled with the watercolor background, but I'm cutting myself some slack since I'm still in the experimental stage on this, and I had some input from my crafting partners that didn't quite achieve the effect we were going for. So I'm filing this one under the belief that art is in the process not the product.

The wood shadow frame was once the home to a kid's stamping kit.  The pieces, I'm sure, have long been lost, chewed up by Shadow (in his puppy stage), or visiting the socks that always disappear from the dryer.  The thin plywood back was cracked and loose on two sides so it was promptly removed, and the frame was put on the shelf with other 'someday' items.  When I was trying to decide on a project for this challenge, I just wasn't in a scrapbooking mood, which was my obvious choice, so I dug through the treasures on the shelf to see what might spark some creativity.  The frame kept catching my eye like it really wanted to be repurposed, so I decided on a shadow box.  The backing was a piece of watercolor paper cut to fit the frame, and I even managed to squeeze in some fancy chocolate liners behind the girls' pics. You should have seen the manly eyeroll I received for saving them...

I started by painting the frame with fawn acrylic paint.  When it was dry, I added a layer of clear rock candy distress crackle.  Then I set the frame aside to dry while I created the background.  I started painting all of the areas with crumb cake ink, when the girls got all excited about watercoloring.  So we added some wild wasabi and chocolate chip ink as well. Fawn paint was also dabbed on there to tie the background to the frame. When we were finished it reminded me of the camouflage fatigues  DH wears for trainings.  I added some stamping using chocolate chip ink.  See the index finger stamp and the special delivery stamps? They were two of my treasured finds from an antiques and craft fair.  The finger stamp was so caked with old, black ink, and the rubber is really hard, but I love the distressed style it leaves behind! I also used an alphabet set from my wonderful blogging sister, Lisa, to spell out different names for dads. The #1 is from the set Blue Ribbon.

The center space is paper from Woodland Walk.  I added fawn paint to this and the brown candy liners too.  A few retired chocolate chip corduroy buttons from my stash finished off the background.  By this time the frame was dry and I glued the watercolor paper to the back of the frame.  I also added some crumb cake ink to the crackle to make it stand out a little more.  The heart is a stamped sculpey piece that was sitting in a bowl waiting to be used, and the enamel dots are from another wonderful blogging friend, Sherry. They were a little too 'pretty' for this distressed piece, so I added a little brown sharpie ink onto them to distress them a little.  The natural trim ribbon was added to the center wood pieces to cover a groove that once held another divider (who knows where that went...).

So that's it for me!  I hope I've inspired you to make something manly for the special guys in your life too! Have a wonderful week and happy crafting!