Finished!

As I mentioned earlier on this blog, one of my good friends is getting married in a little more than a month! Since their marriage begins the first time either of them has set up their own household, I wanted to help get their household set up and contribute to chipping away at their registry... but when I got an invitation to his fiancee's bridal shower, I saw the chance to also make something for them homemade. :)

I've been seeing lots of "love" ideas lately on my crafty blogs (Valentine's Day is right around the corner!) and all these ideas, combined with the pile of antique skeleton keys that another friend gave me, settled into an idea in my mind.

I hunted high and low for a frame and a thick mat to accomodate the skeleton keys. It ended up being easier and cheaper to buy framed art and cannibalize it for pieces.

This is what the frame/print looked like (before I attacked it). I didn't take any pictures of the steps in between, sadly. :( Next time! Pretty mod and unromantic, huh? :) Once I had my frame, I gathered the rest of my supplies - a 12"X12" sheet of red print scrapbooking paper, Mod Podge, gold spray paint, two skeleton keys, and a sheet of papyrus-style cardstock.

I gently tore everything apart, separating the frame, glass, mat, and art. I laid the glass aside and sprayed the frame with the gold spray paint. Once that was laid aside drying, I tore the scrapbooking paper into various-sized strips, making sure that the edges were "ragged" and had plenty of white showing.

I mod-podged the strips over the mat until it was completely covered - I went pretty heavy on the mod-podge since I wanted a nice glossy finish. When the first layer was done, I hit the frame with a second coat of gold.

I reserved a few pieces of paper and didn't apply them to the mat; when the mat had dried, I mixed a bit of gold paint and mod-podge and sponged that over the entire surface, then immediately wiped it off. This left behind a nice gold-flecked "stain" effect which sank into the white edges a bit. :) When that was dry, I randomly positioned the last pieces around the mat, mod-podged into place, and let it all dry completely. It gave the mat a bit of dimension. I covered the frame in a layer of mod-podge, too.

With the mat and the frame mostly set, I turned to the art that was going to go inside. :) I printed out this quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes on the papyrus cardstock in a nice font: "Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness." I cut it to size and mod-podged it to the existing art. I hit the two keys with a spray of gold paint, then gave them a layer of mod-podge. Once they were dry, I glued them into place.

Once eveything was dry, it was time to put it back together again! :)

All in all, I love the way it turned out. :)