Gypsy Spot - altered mailbox

 

For the most part I'm not big into altering things for myself, or even for very many gifts. So when we got the assignment to alter the Target mailboxes for the Gypsy Spot, I thought, what am I going to do with this when I'm done? :)  Originally I thought I'd probably leave it at Scrapaganza as one of my DT store projects for them, but as the creative spirit led me to create this, I realized I was totally creating this for myself. I think this is perhaps the first altered project I have made specifically for myself that is not some sort of photo thing. Nope, this was just for me, just for fun. 

So, to start off, I picked out a red one because I'm not really a pink person, and I thought in the beginning maybe this would end up in Kevin's room or something maybe it should be red. I'm glad I chose red because when I was picking out papers, I went with Graphic 45 papers. The primary sheet of paper was from the recent christmas line, but the printed design is a stylized vine with heart shaped leaves - perfect for a valentine theme too. The back side of that paper also went well so I used it for a couple fill-in strips. The nice thing about G45 papers are that some of the color schemes are used in many of the paper lines, so you can mix papers too, so I used a sheet from another line for the flag.  I picked up the pompom trim at Scrapaganza a while back, and it was exactly what I wanted for this project.

 The big flowers and leaves are made from Tim Holtz grungepaper. I used Tim's last of the 12 tags tutorials to make the roses. I inked them with Fired Brick Distress ink, the leaves with Peeled Paint. The roses were stamped with Studio 490  background stamps. Both the roses and the leaves were cut out on my cricut. Grungepaper cuts like butter! With the GP, I just use my regular blade and multicut 2 to be sure the cut goes all the way through. I treat it like thin chipboard basically. Tip:  put the suede-like side of grungepaper/grungeboard on the mat, it adheres better to the mat and is less likely to move while cutting. The roses were cut with a 6 petaled flower on the recently released Mother's Day cartridge, and the leaf is from A Child's Year, and I made the leaves fatter on my gypsy. That flower from the Mother's Day cart is practically perfect, I had to do much less cutting than Tim's tutorial suggested, as the flower was basically cut just as needed.  The flower sizes shown here are 3.75" and 3" (though that is not how big the flowers are!). I had also cut a third, larger rose but after I made it I realized it overpowered the mailbox, so I did without it.  The little flowers are K&Co, and I found them at my local "everything's a dollar" store. (I bought every package they had muahaha!)

These stamps are all Studio 490 (Wendy Vecchi and Tim Holtz are my fav stamp designers, and I'm not really a big stamper, but Wendy's are my all time favs). I stamped these after I realized this mailbox was for me. :)  The metal parts are Tim Holtz.

Those stamp stickers were in my pile of "will I ever use these?" stickers. lol... I love when I use stash up. I hung one of Tim Holtz's fragments off the flag stop, on the back of the fragment is a bit I cut from one of the G45 papers. Making Memories mini-alphas are on the flag.

Here's a closeup of the fragment, and the bit that I put on the bottom of the flag. The clock is cut from one  of the G45 papers I had, then I covered it with a layer of crackle accents from Ranger. The paper curled a little from that so I had to flatten it as much as I could and glue it to a base of grungboard, which I inked so it wouldn't be real visible. 

And the back end of the mailbox. These are Wendy Vecchi's Studio 490 stamps. 

Thanks for looking!  Now I need to write some love notes to MYSELF! :)

And, as Wendy Vecchi says... "Make Art!"