Birthday Calendar Hanger

Morning everyone, this is a project I have wanted to share with you all of last week and now this week but have been waiting to give it to the recipient - my good friend Helen. (Merry waves to Helen) (Oh, and a special wave if Joy and Anita have a sticky beak).  This is her birthday gift.....birthday was in December and I have been working on it since then and finished it the weekend before last.    Finding the parts and the time is what made the creating such a long process.

Due to flooding and a friend's illness is why it took us a bit to catch up but last night we did.

I started with a Kaiser Craft Welcome MDF banner.  Firstly I painted it a chocolate brown colour and sprayed with my gold smooch to match the KaiserCraft papers that I found in my collection.  It was all too dark and I wasn't happy.  So then I mixed up the aqua colour to match the background paper and repainted.  Used a crunched up (clean) tissue to take off a little paint to reveal the brown underneath.  Again sprayed with my gold smooch....love this stuff.

The flower arrangement I created from what I have in my collection.  The skeleton leaves I bought from Pizzazz Aplenty.  Not sure where the beautiful and perfect centre brad came from.

The chipboard letters I searched high and low for online and offline.  I had originally bought a smaller set of letters from a local craft shop as they were the most appropriate at the time. I am so glad I found these online but I can't remember where exactly now.  This my first time at doing any sort of chipboard letters or mdf banner so all a learning curve.  Once I covered the letters I went around the edges with my Copic pen to cover up the chipboard edge.  Love Copic pens as on two letters I slipped and accidently drew a line on the letters.  'D' and 'A'.  Thanks to my colourless blender you would be none the wiser.  Brilliant.

I used Shrinky Dink plastic to create the discs for each birthday.  This is such fun stuff to play with, I should so use it more often.  I cut the circles out with my Spellbinder die, rough the plastic up with my emery board, punched a hole in the top and bottom........after doing 12 with just a hole at the top and shrinking them down to realise that I need two holes. Duh! I used my Copic pen again - BG34 as it was the closest match I had to the banner colour and coloured all the circles.  Then had fun with my heat gun shrinking all the discs down.  Love how the Copic colour intensifies and sticks so well.

Next I dragged out my Grafix  Rub-Onz pack.  I typed up all the birth dates and months and printed them onto sheets from this pack so that I was able to create my own rub-on.

Added three little gold chain links to each disc and attached the person to the appropriate month.

I originally had little wooden hearts all painted up and gold smooched to use instead of the discs but when I went to screw in the tiniest (and cutest) gold hooks and eyes they split the heart shapes.  I was disappointed to start with but am really happy with the end result.

Well I hope you all have a terrific weekend.   I will catch up with you all again on Monday.

Before I go a quick reminder that today is the last day to get your Easter entries into the Unstmapabelles challenge here.  If you are looking for an idea of what to do check out the Unstampabelles blog as the Design Team have been very busy creating.

I would like to share my hanger over at Make It Monday's #82 - Always Anything Goes