Chevrons and Stripes Home Decor with Design Team Member Steffanie Seiler

Hi! My name is Steffanie, Craft Warehouse Design Team Member and your guest blogger for today.  I'm very honored to be here and excited to share my latest project with you! 

The inspiration comes from a very hot trend right now---chevrons and stripes!  I received a wonderful package of goodies to get me started!

I wanted to do something other than a scrapbook page for this but still include some of my favorite photos.  After a bit of browsing at the store, I decided to make this wall hanging:

So lets start at the beginning.  I was sent these materials:

• 5 sheets of patterned paper from My Mind's Eye
• chipboard accents from Echo Park
• decorative brads from Echo Park
• coordinating ribbon

 I also used these items and tools, either purchased at Craft Warehouse or from my stash:

•  unfinished wooden wall frame (Craft Warehouse)
•  burlap (Craft Warehouse)
• Woodsies mini spring clothespins  (Craft Warehouse)
• acrylic paint and satin glaze
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink and Distressing Tool (Craft Warehouse)
• scallop circle punch
• border punch
• foam sanding block
• hot glue
• twine
• button
• Advanced Tape Glider adhesive (Craft Warehouse)
• Glue Dots (Craft Warehouse)

I began by lightly sanding the unfinished frame to remove any rough edges and loose splinters.  Then I painted it with two layers of paint.  First with a light color and then a dark color on top.  The reason for this was so that when I went back and sanded the edges, it would reveal the lighter color paint beneath and give the frame a worn look.  After sanding, I painted again with a clear satin glaze to give it some depth and a light sheen. 

 

I decided to divide my frame into 3 sections so after measuring the overall length and doing some simple math, I cut my patterned papers into 3 equal pieces.  I don't like white edges so I use distress ink on any and all cut edges.  Just a personal quirk.  I used my ATG (advanced tape glider) to adhere these to the background.

 

For more interest between the sections I created some strips. I punched both sides of a wide strip of paper (wood plank) with a border punch, then cut a thin strip of a contrasting paper (yellow polka dot) to place in the middle.  I made a clothesline by cutting 3 pieces of twine 9" in length, tying a knot and then braiding them together with another knot at the end (do this twice).  I hot glued the knotted ends to the frame.

The clothespins came unfinished.  I started by taking them apart and painting them with the dark brown paint and then applying the satin glaze (as I did with the frame).  After they dried, I reassembled and applied some embellishments to dress them up.

The flowers were created by punching 3 of the patterned papers with a scallop circle punch and crumpling them with my fingers.  The edges were distressed with ink.  Next I layered them and  embellished the centers with a decorative brad.  I hand cut burlap circles slightly larger than the flowers.  These were hot glued to the bottom of the flowers along with a bit of ribbon.

 

From here it was just a matter of arranging everything where I wanted it, adding some chipboard elements and making it all stick.  It goes without saying (if you know me at all) that the edges of the chipboard where distressed with ink before adhering to my project.

Here is the finished project before I added photos.  You'll notice that I ended up switching out the ribbon for twine to hang my frame.  I felt the ribbon alone was too overpowering.  I like it better as an accent along with the twine.

Here are some close ups with the photos.

That's it!  Thank you for sticking with me today and letting me share this project with you.  I had a lot of fun with this one and am so proud to display this in my home.  I hope I have inspired you to create something for your home today!

~Steffanie