Everything is coming up roses

 

I have had really good intentions to enter Linda Ledbetter’s Compendium of Curiosities 3 challenge.  I just never managed to find the time to sit down and make something.  However – when I saw Challenge 3 – I knew that I had to do this one atleast.  If you dont know about the challenge, here’s a little link to the rules of  engagement http://lindaledbetter.com/compendium-of-curiosities-3-challenge-faq 

The current challenge is to use the faux tea-rose technique on page 65 of Volume 3 of Tim Holtz’ Compendium of Curiosities.  I had loads of those left over when I did the April Tag for the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2014 challenge and I have been dying to try out an idea I have had in my head for a while. 

I saw these metallic drinking straws on Amazon and in my head, I saw metal pipes. I wanted to make an industrial type looking thing with pipes and gears and taps (faucets)  When I saw what the CC3 challenge was about this time – I immediately had a vision of a rose pipe-line.  And the idea gave birth to this piece above.  I love how it turned out – I really want to explore the pipe-potential in different configurations now.

To make the pipes – I just took ordinary drinking straws and painted them with distress paint and then I cut them to the sizes that I wanted. The faux tea-roses ofcourse are cut with the die mentioned in the book.  A cool thing I have been doing recently is cutting off the last few petals on the spiral – that gives me control over the size of the roses.  

The background is just a piece of cereal box board that I painted with gesso and then distress paint and the goldleafed a little.  I accidentally discovered a DIY way to make goldleafing – will write a post on that sometime soon.  I drew the black- lines in real hard to create the effect indentation with the aim of making it look like shingled planks.  I know this challenge is really about the faux tea-roses but all I am obsessing about right now are those cool pipes – the industrial/grunge/steampunk loving crafters will understand that.  I am going to have to make many more pipe-lines in the future just to get it out of my system. I think I am going to pipe-out my tag entry for  the 2014 12 Tags May Tim Holtz challenge as well.