Frilly & Funkie; 2018-The Year of Challenge #2... "All You Need Is LOVE"

 

 Whenever I hear the phrase "All You Need Is Love", my mind immediately pictures those four guys who made up The Fab Four; aka THE best band....EVER. Way back in my very young years, when I could still hear, my earliest memories involve The Beatles and hearing them on the radio. In 1970, I had my first heartbreak at the tender age of 4&1/2 when the news showed Paul McCartney coming out of some building and a reporter saying the Beatles were officially breaking apart. I guess I must've been born 'old' because I'd watch news or hear things on the radio that would set me to worrying. At that time, all my mind understood was that MY Beatles 'were no more'. I didn't realize at the time how their MUSIC would not just disappear. I happen to be a "saver" of sentimental things; not hoarding, but definitely you can see 'collections' throughout our home. One of those is our vinyl albums both my ChiefHubby and I have hung onto from our teen years- his being of the Beach Boys. 
             So as soon as I saw the Challenge's title, I knew right away my theme! And it matches with Valentine's Day just perfectly since that same week is when the "British Invasion" began with The Beatles appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 1964. My mind 'hears' trumpets sounding those first notes of "All You Need Is Love" during the live televised "One World" concert (above middle & above right photos) where their musical contribution included many other famous Rock&Rollers. However, the song originally came out during a film the Beatles made, "Magical Mystery Tour", in which the four are seen coming down the stairs in matching white tuxedoes (above left). This was the image where I drew my inspiration from for this project.

              Let's get some pics on here of how it came together....

I started pretty simple- during the Souper Bowl Party where we gathered at church to play cards, eat, and watch the Patriots (finally) get stopped. (No offense here, but I live in Indiana where we are Indianapolis Colts fans. "Deflategate" is still a subject here....lol!)

Getting the stairway right was the first adjustment I had to make....the next photo will show why.

Making sure the heads of the 'dolls' wouldn't be sticking out as it folded. This meant either making the stairs smaller, or the actual card (holding the stairs) longer. In the end, BOTH needed to be done.

You can see the card with the stairs in the background- I used 'braces' of cardstock inside the stairway, to help it "pop" back out without folding in toward the fold side.

A thicker inside was needed to help the dolls stand up stronger without extra support. So I used matte board- Hobby Lobby uses this to frame your photos with. When they get a lot of scrap leftover (the inside rectangles of scrap where your photo took place inside) they usually put it in the Clearance section of the store. You can get a pile of it packaged up for $5 to $10.

Then I used Glossy Accents to glue the backs of "skin" to the doll body "frames".

I keep the cartoon faces of The Beatles in my scrapbook files.

* IMPORTANT* Most people don't keep as much as I do on a computer. And that was the reason for my longer-than-planned absence from my Blog: I was still running on Windows XP until June 2017 - FOUR YEARS after they stopped supporting it! I just hated to give up all those old photo programs I LOVED! But, alas; my Android cell phone received a virus and it passed into my pc. Then passed onto the ChiefHubby's Vista-run pc and Android cell phone just days later. FOUR very expensive (my pc was custom made via my specs) items to replace. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD "fun stuff" in those messages on your cell phones! iPhones are safer and we ended up with iPhone 6S for me and 7 for him. Plus 2 brand new setups and headaches to find new photo programs for professional photo edits I do.

Here, you see both sides of the body. Just line the faces up with the Sizzix Doll Body die and cut as usual.

This is where you can get creative with the various outfits that are available for the Sizzix Doll Body die. I have more outfits than this, but I chose these for what I needed to form a "tux" for each doll. In this case; the Firefighter's turnout coat made the back and front for the tuxedo jacket. The Policeman's pants and the shirt... aided by the tank top (from the Body die) and a hand-cut bowtie...formed the rest of it. The shoes were from the Graduation die. They looked 'dressier' and with an added topcoat of Glossy Accents- viola: shiny tux shoes !!!

Ringo....sans moptop hair. lol!

Choosing the 'little touches' from my stash of Tim Holtz IdeaOlogy items- probably my FAVE things !!!!

...and choosing the paper for the outside of the card....

....which needed to be extended, so I decided the perfect thing to do would be to add some psychedelic color pattern !!!

Those Tim Holtz RubOns again!!!

And playing with some Alcohol Inks to make the originally silver drawer-pull into a mottled-gold. The feel of it is pretty cool after you get done coloring/smudging/scraping to get it roughed up enough to look- and feel- distressed.

I also had to make 3 red & 1 BLACK rose boutonnieres. I used the TH IdeaOlogy Roses- the smallest sized worked great for these and added that last bit of perfection to take the outifts over the top!

(The black rose was a first for ME. Wild, man....wild. But don't forget: Paul was still 'dead' at the time! Double lol!!)  

The finished project:

The FRONTSIDE of the card....

SIDE VIEW- unopened...

BACKSIDE of card...

FULL INSIDE VIEW...

FINALLY got my hands on some TH IdeaOlogy Typography lettering! I used Watermelon Alcohol Ink to coat it (very heavily, so it would sort of "gather" on the top of the lettering. Just let it soak a bit till it dries.
This pic shows a closeup of word "LOVE" -which was a requirement...

Adding the TH IdeaOlogy Monocle was an idea from
another Crafter's SUPER IDEA from a project I saw a a couple weeks ago- that's what SHARING is about!!
THANKS!!!

Ringo, George, and John in their red rosed tuxedoes...

Paul's black rose stands out from the others as it was intended to.... even though Sir Macca is very much ALIVE!

(And in 2014, my ChiefHubby scored 2 tix to see him "Out There" in Indy- BucketList Item checked !)

(This last one was just for the fun of it- a timelapse of the video short....I stuck this onto Instagram. :)

We come to the end, finally. I'm not trying to make these as long and painful to read as I can, but I DO like to show how I came up with something- especially when I am really pleased with how it turned out! :)  This project is one of my fave I've ever done! 

And before I sign off this Challenge, I must give a huge SHOUTOUT to a few folks:

1. The Funkie Junkie Boutique - for sponsoring PRIZES for these Challenges ;

THANKS FOR CHOOSING MY Challenge #1 Entry "LOVE" as the top pick !!!

(Especially with so many hugely talented Crafters putting hard-to-choose-from entries in there!)

My winning entry allowed me to receive an invitation to be their

GUEST DESIGNER

for Challenge #3 coming up next !!!!

( I am both excited AND nervous

to have such an honor bestowed upon my hands and imagination !!!)

2. The folks at Frilly And Funkie Blog : the talented Designers, and awesome friendly people who take time to get to know each other, and encourage each other !

3. A few very special friends: Candy Colwell, Linda Ledbetter, & Susan Mostek 

These wonderfully TALENTED crafty-sisters held a de-stash sale last fall and invited me to join them. I was able to add to my Tim Holtz collection of Alterations Dies, finally finding several of the retired dies that I'd been wanting for years! It was through the purchase of the TH Alterations Heart & Wings Die that I was able to play around with some honeycomb paper, the TH Movers&Shapers Journey Die, and the TH Queen of Hearts Mini Embossing Folder, which all ended up with the winning entry "LOVE" for my "word theme" of 2018:

THANKS, GIRLS !!!! Having you ladies as friends is such an HONOR to me!!!

The win is just as much YOURS as it was MINE!!!

                          

As always: THANKS for checking in, and I hope you're inspired to join us in

"2018- The Year of" Challenges.

Please take care, stay safe, and...

HAPPY BLOGGING!