CRAFT is celebrating love, glitter, and craftiness with the Crafty Chica Love Shrine Challenge. Preserve your memories and tell your love story by building a shrine that creatively reflects your personality and expresses your hopes and dreams.This type of project is all about personal self expression. I began by digging through my collections of postcards and love letters. I sifted through my memories, photo by photo, reveling in the nostalgia of my drawings and notes from days gone by.
Certain things caught my eye, and whatever inspired me was set into a pile. Then I collected all the little treasures that I’ve gathered over the years — things like old wooden letters from a printing press, the tiny ceramic deer that my grandmother gave me, and a little gift box with a perfect bow. Finally, I went through my craft supplies and pulled ribbons, fabric flowers, pieces of bark, feathers, and seashells. Distill the materials that you’ve collected into themes. Look for common threads in your items that tell a single story. I didn’t have any expectations for an outcome, and I started by just pairing up colors, textures, and associations. I found three distinct stories in my materials, and then selected the core “anchor” pieces for each shrine. Everything went into a big pile on my work surface, and I sat down with a drink and my current favorite playlist on the stereo.
This week I will share each love shrine and my step-by-step process for creating it. I hope that you will join our challenge and make your own individual shrine and add it to the Crafty Chica Challenge Flickr pool. Be sure to include a little story that describes your intentions. The reward is the beautiful shrine, but winners will be chosen to receive great ilovetocreate prizes too.
Materials
Boxes
Paper ephemera including magazines, photographs, cards
Ribbons
Embellishments including figurines, tiles, beads, flowers, glitter
Scissors
Glue stick
Hot glue gun
Directions
Step 1: Gather your materials and choose a box that will accommodate them. Find a container that is sturdy, and that has a bit of depth to it.
Step 2: Add paper collage to the box. I cut images from a magazine cover, from a poster, and from a photograph. I used the glue stick to cover the back of the box with ribbon, and then added the photograph and poster piece.
Step 3: Frame the shrine with dimensional elements. I added garlands of beads to the top corners of the box with the hot glue gun. Next, I attached the magazine cover cut out like a crown to the top of the box.
Step 4: Complete the story with your embellishments. I set a large feather butterfly in the bottom corner, and glued a second one to the back of the box. The girl in the photograph has flowers in her hair, and I gave her an extra vintage fabric flower. I set in 2 mah jong tiles, one that says spring, and one that says plum. Because love is a gift, I set in the tiny red gift box with the beaded raspberry balanced on top. Finally, at the very last minute, I compulsively added a blue bow. Done!
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