Reneabouquets: True Love

Hi everyone! Melissa here with a guest design team page for Reneabouquet.com! I'm thrilled with all of the beautiful and high quality things I got to work with, especially Renea's own Beautiful Board.

I've used one of my son and fiance's professionally done engagement photos.

To make this page I first mounted the photo on watercolor paper. I used a piece of cardstock under the pic and attached it with double sided foam tape, then a piece of foam core board under that. There are two layers of foam core board between the watercolor paper and the bottom paper.

Using a Prima stencil and a credit card I put on a thick layer of texture paste. I used foam tape to put the photo on the page. I decided where all the BB was going to go, then took a photo of it to help me remember. I glued all the BB on with glossy accents,then added the big flowers.

Here's what I did with the BB:

1.- Sanded surface with a little sandpaper to help gesso to stick.

2. Painted texture paste on. Where I could I stretched out a strand and put it on with a brush, but the paste was pretty thick, mostly I just dabbed it on.

3. Used a paintbrush to paint on gold paint.

4. Put on a layer of Rock Candy Clear crackle

5. Added more paint and gold mica powder in random areas.

6. Used glossy accents to adhere micro beads.

6. Using a detail brush I painted the inside edges of the BB with black gesso.

I painted the stenciled areas.

To add visual interest I added leaves,pearls,pink glass glitter, clear glass glitter, dried flowers, black tulle, gold metallic lace, seed beads, metal glitter, glass marbles, shells, feathers from the birdbath in my yard, and more.