Made It! Father's Day Framey

Backtracking - 15th June 2008

Time to get cracking with that frame for Father's Day, so got up early to finish my masterpiece (?!?!) Took the photo and matted it onto a background I had made that is a continuation of the colours on the frame. I also got brave and added some colour directly onto the photo (eep!) so the sand in it looks yellow. It just looked a bit odd having the photo completely black and white, and I think adding some light sandy yellow to it has made Freaky Deaky Dad and bro stand out more..?

Thanks to my Freaky Deaky Friendie introducing me to gel medium, glueing on the shells and beads was a piece of cake. I put my brain into "seaside" mode and added all and sundry I could think of that would be on the seashore...

• big shells
• pebbles/gravel (I smashed up a few shells and used beads to create these items!)
• driftwood (I used a bit of pot-pourri snaffled from some Mumsy was chucking out!)
• fishing nets (used mesh)
• fish (friendly plastic fish!!! Yay!)
• flotsum and jetsum (covers just about everything else I stuck on !)

I had some star washers - used embossing powders on to distress them, so they fitted in and looked rusty, and like they had been washed up onto the beach. I smashed up a few shells and did the same, used my embossing powders to make them look distressed. The finishing touches were simple - 4 doo-dads in using appropriate words "adventure" "explore" "play" "laugh", and finally, I stamped Brighton 1953 using my fave word generating rubber stamp, the provocraft wheel stamp, and attached with waxy flax, buttons and good old gel medium.

Freaky Deaky Dad was well chuffed, and the frame has pride of place, where else, but in the bathroom!

BTW, they are wearing woollen bathing suits - embarassing!!! All the rage in 1953 - or so I am told! ;)