It's all about Babies, Buttons, Brads & Buckles on the Emerald Creek Dares Blog

It's all about Babies, Buttons, Brads & Buckles on the Emerald Creek Dares blog for this weeks two week challenge. For this challenge I wanted to focus on the babies, buttons, and brads part as there seems to be a lot of babies born in the spring. So, for my project I decided that I would create a baby girl clipboard, which works easily as a home decor piece. Make sure to read through the entire post as there is a surprise at the bottom. Lets get started on how you can create my Baby Girl clipboard at home.

To start, you will need to unscrew the top off so that you can gesso the clipboard base. Once the top of the clipboard is off, cover the edges of the clipboard surface with a layer of gesso. After the gesso dries, apply 3 coats of Antique Linen Distress Paint. Because Distress paint is opaque, the more coats you apply the less of the gesso you will see.

After your finished painting you clipboard base, it's time to move on to painting the clipboard piece.  Apply a layer of Antique Linen Distress paint over the entire top of the clipboard and let it almost completely dry. While it is slightly wet, take a piece of paper towel with a bit of hand sanitizer on it and rub off some of the paint. This gives it a slightly distressed look.

While your still working with the Antique Linen Distress Paint, you will want to cover the top of 4 Flower Wheel Brads with the Antique Linen Distress Paint. And then repeat the same steps as you did with the top of the clipboard. This is the last item that needs the Antique Linen Distress paint.

To add some interest to your patterned paper, take a heart stencil and apply texture paste to give it a 3D look at the top left and bottom right hand corners. Once the texture paste is dry, with a blending tool apply a layer of Antique Linen Distress Ink over top of both heart stencil patches. This will get rid of the white from the texture paste.

For the flowers, you will want to use the Tattered Florals Die from Tim Holtz and cut out a variety of patterned flowers. You will need to cut out 4 small ones and 1 medium sized one. 

After the flowers have been cut out, take your blending tool and Antique Linen Distress Ink and ink the edges of the flowers. Once the edges have been inked, sprinkle Iridescent Embossing Powder on the edges and emboss with your heat tool.

Some finishing touches that you will want to add to you clipboard is some cream tulle underneath the banner strip. Once the tulle and the top image have been adhered then you can start working on your flowers. Place a brad through one of the small flowers and then adhere it to the top left hand corner. Adhere a small flower to the middle of the medium flower and then place a brad through the centre of the small flower. Adhere the medium flower to the bottom right hand corner in the middle of the corner. For  the remaining two small flowers add the last two brads to the middle of each flower and then adhere one to the left of the medium flower and adhere the other to the right of the medium flower. To add some extra detail, take some glossy accents and apply it to the centres of the blue flowers.  To finish the clipboard off, add a cream bow to the top.

Products used from Emerald Creek:

- Iridescent Shimmer Embossing Powder

- Flower Wheel Brads

Other Products Used:

- Ranger/Tim Holtz: Distress Paint: Antique Linen and Distress Ink: Antique Linen

- Ranger Ink:  Texture Paste and Glossy Accents

- Ranger/Dina Wakley: Palette Knife and White Gesso

- Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous: Heart Stencil

- Tim Holtz/Ideaology: Mini Clipboard

- Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Tattered Florals

- Graphic 45: Precious Memories: Baby's Breath, Cuddle Time, Cherish, Cutie Pie, Sugar & Spice, and Pat-a-cake

- Melissa Frances: Cream Tulle

- Hug A Bug Seam Binding Ribbon: Cream

Since I couldn't leave out the baby boys, I created a Baby Boy clipboard also. To create the clipboard, it's the same steps as the girls clipboard, the only difference is you will use Broken China Distress Paint and Ink as well as adding buttons and twines to the clipboard instead of tulle and flowers. 

Products used from Emerald Creek:

- Metal Button Brads - 4 hole

Other Products Used:

- Ranger/Tim Holtz: Distress Ink: Broken China and Distress Paint: Broken China

- Ranger Ink: Texture Paste and Glossy Accents

- Ranger Ink/Dina Wakley: Palette Knife and White Gesso

- Tim Holtz/Ideaology: Mini Clipboard

- Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous: Heart Stencil

- My Minds Eye: Twine and Buttons

- Graphic 45: Precious Memories: Baby's Breath, Cuddle Time, Puppy Dog's Tails and Pat-a-cake

- Hug a Bug Seam Binding Ribbon: White

Make sure that you go and check out the rest of the Emerald Creek Dares Design Team as they have all created fantastic pieces for this weeks challenge:

Cathy

Shilpa

Claudia

Pam

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my Baby Girl Clipboard. Don't forget to enter your project into our Emerald Creek Dares Challenge for your chance to win a $25.00 gift certificate for the Emerald Creek Store!

Until Next Time!

-Katelyn