Mini Catalogue Blog Hop!

Hello,

If you've just joined me from Vals page, Hello!! You'll be following the Blog Hop, and I hope you've enjoyed yourself so far.

Don't you love the mini? (tardy with the linkage, I know) but I'm sure you've been tempted to look through it by some of the gorgeous projects you've already seen. I have to say I was delighted as soon as I spotted the Botanical Gazette Papers and the Nature Walk stamp set (being a back to front reader, I got to them before the Bigshot, at which point I squeaked a lot, much to Dear Fella's amusement).

If you don't already know, I used to work in several museums and art galleries which I'd known since I was a small child and have many memories of peering into trays full of eggs, butterfly and insect specimens gathered from all four corders of the globe, and so together these inspired my project - My own little wall mountable Specimen Box.

 

The various componants were gathered from my garden and the local parks, which just put on their years blossom show and in the case of the eggs, pinched from an old easter decoration! The blossoms were squished between several heavy books (protected by a couple of layers of Kitchen paper) and dried.

The box was very simple to make - simply a flat gift box made from chipboard and covered with the beautiful Botanical Gazette Papers. There was so much variety in the pack it was hard to choose! The middle was cut out so that a Window Sheet could be put in and the whole outside was distressed a little more with Crumb Cake and the inks and sanding blocks from the Distressing Kit, just to knock a bit of the shine off. 

It doesn't show so well, but the small egg were stamped onto CS (Very Vanilla) that had been dampened and scrunched, before being distressed with inks from the Distressing Kit, and generally being treated rather roughly. The flowers and the darling little bees were stamped in Soft Suede straight onto the the backing paper, which again was from the Botanical Gazette Set.

To finish, i used some of the beautiful new Seam Binding Ribbon, which is so light and silky, and creases well to give that 'old' look. I used some of the ribbon braiding and wrapped the ends around the box and tied them in a bow. To finish, I used a couple of buttons (from The IB&C, but only because silly me forgot to include the gorgeous new ones in her order - Do'h!) and popped on a pearl, for they have to be included on everything now.

Thank you so much for popping by and off you go now to see what Jacqui has in store for you - bon voyage!