Caroline's Graduation

I would like to apologize for the quality of the pictures.  I did not realize they were not the best for blogging until  I added them just now.  I can't retake the photos, because the plaque now resides with Caroline.

My granddaughter Caroline graduated from high school this past Saturday and I made this plaque as a graduation gift.  Caroline has wanted to be a hairdresser ever since she was 4 years old.  She cut her own hair at 5 and proceeded to cut cousins, dolls and classmates hair.  We tried hiding all the scissors, but the little stinker was determined to cut and style hair.  We were not sure what we were going to do to stop the problem until our hairdresser, Debbie Thompson, blessed angel that she was, lol solved our problem.  She talked to Caroline "hairdresser to hairdresser".  She told her that only licensed hairdressers were allowed to cut hair.  She told her she had to go to school and get a license before she was allowed to cut hair.  Well, thank the Good Lord, Caroline listened and stopped cutting hair.

Caroline has now graduated from high school and will be attending Aveeda school in September.  She will finally achieve her goal to be a hairdresser and this proud Nana is looking forward to many free haircuts!

I made this plaque as a graduation gift for Caroline after seeing a similar project on my friend,  Cec's blog, CW Card Creations.  

Cec designed hers for a sewing room,  but I   saw it as a hairdresser motif.  Cec is so fabulously talented in the shabby chic/vintage style.  It is a style I have difficulty with, so I tried to follow her design as close as possible.

When I showed my friends at my LSS, Cec's design, they decided to help me gather the things I would need.  Irene, Carol and Joene brought me bits of lace, doilies and hairdresser charms even some paint.  I made several trips to Michaels and AC Moore for wood, paint and charms.  I wanted a larger pair of vintage scissors and couldn't find them.  The owner of my LSS, Scrapbooks By The Sea, Rayann had scissors on order from Ken Oliver Crafts, but they wouldn't be in in time.  She let me take a pair of hers off of one of her cards and use them.  Ever heard the expression, "It takes a village....."  Well this project certainly was a joint effort.

To make  this project, I used  a 2 wood plaques from Michaels, painted them both with Diana Wakeley Gesso, and then a painted a layer of Dreamweaver's crackle embossing paste on the sentiment layer.  I stenciled with Dreamweaver's Embossing paste.   I used TCW stencils.  All the embellishments were from my stash, or friends stash and were glued on with E6000 and then painted with Gesso. 

After the layer of Gesso, I sponged a layer of pink paint from Studio and then a layer of white paint watered down a bit to give the white washed look.  I sponged a bit of gold paint here and there over the whole plaque.  The sentiment is a Yvonne Blair sentiment stamp from Impression Obssession and stamped with Black Archival Ink. 

Happy Graduation Caroline and thank you to all of my crafty friends who contributed their stash to make this project possible.  Cec thanks for the inspiration!

Challenges I plan to enter:

http://stampsandstencils.blogspot.com/2016/05/think-pink.html