Framed Shamrock

St. Patrick’s Day is just a few days away and I’ve done nothing yet to decorate.  I don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day – mostly because we have four kids with birthdays in March (yup, four!), and there is also all the basketball playoffs, and the Relief Society Anniversary Party.  So there is no time to celebrate the green day or Pi day.  About all I’ve been known to do for St. P’s day is wear green and put some green food colouring in the milk.  The girls are always a little startled to be pouring green milk on their cereal in the morning!
Anyway, Krystal at Sassy Sanctuary did this cute shamrock craft and I thought to myself, “I can do something like that!”
So I went to my stash of frames, and bingo – found the perfect little chalkboard frame!!!  With moving and building, I hadn’t seen my stash in years.  I have no recollection of ever getting this little chalkboard, but it must have been from a dollar store or sale bins at Michael’s or Walmart, cause that’s how I shop!
I roughly painted the outside edge in a beige, being sure to miss lots of spots!!!
I’m not set up for cutting out wood yet, so I decided to let cardboard be my shamrock base.  I am set up for cutting with an exacto knife!!!  I just traced my pattern onto the cardboard and green paper.
I think the part of this project that took the longest was choosing the green paper – again, from my stash!  Then I distressed the edges and mod podged it together.
I used my Burnt Umber oil colour paint to distress the edges of the frame (after lightly sanding of course!)
Just lightly rub it on with a cloth, after rubbing most of it off on paper first!
Wait, what’s this?  A blue frame?  Well, this is the backside of my chalkboard!  I thought it looked pretty usable too for something else – but that’ll be another post someday!  Stay tuned!
When I did my top layer of mod podge – after letting the bottom layer get really dry (don’t want any bubbles in my shamrock!) I put a piece of fabric on top of the wet mod podge.  Pressed it down firmly and then peeled it off right away.
It gives the top finish a “canvassy” look, which I like better than brush strokes.
The next step was simply to tie the shamock to the frame with some jute and add some words . . .
I love it!  And you can be assured that I’ll be changing out that shamrock for other shapes for different holidays.
You often hear people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky!” but I think the more accurate phrase would be, “Oh, you’re so blessed!”  Hence my words “Lucky means Blessed”.
The St. Patrick’s Day shelf . . .. . . add a few hydrangeas, burn candle wicks so they show up, and voila!  (Oh, and I just added the hooks to my shelf – check out that screaming deal here!)
Thanks for the inspiration Krystal!

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