Fruit of the Spirit cabinet card

I'm calling this a cabinet card, but am not sure if that's the term for it. If it's not, what is the correct term? Anyway, I picked up six of these at a thrift store for 33 cents each, thinking I'd find a way to use them in my art. And so I did. I worked on this Friday and yesterday, and it came together fairly easily. I'm happy about that. This was made for an online art friend, and will be in the mail to her soon.

The bottom two photos are scans, so you can get a better look at it. The first photo, from my digital camera, didn't come out too badly, considering I still haven't figured out how to turn off the flash. I used the same Lumiere gold paint on both pieces, but the leaf one looks much lighter, due to that darn flash. On the leaves, I frosted caulk over a stencil, let it dry, then painted it with Lumiere Sunset Gold acrylic paint. When that was dry, I rubbed black acrylic paint over the leaves with my finger. The base is frozen pizza cardboard, also painted with the Lumiere gold. Then I just taped the piece into the frame part of the cab card with double stick tape. That was much faster, easier, and safer than gluing it, and risking getting glue on the black card.

On the left, I experimented with Tyvek from a mailing envelope. I cut it out with deckle edged scissors, which I learned don't work too well on Tyvek. Then I painted it with the Lumiere gold and painted lines with regular black acrylic paint. I painted two twigs gold, then slipped them into slits at the top and bottom of the Tyvek. Then I put the piece inbetween two Teflon pressing sheets, and ironed it on the wool setting, the hottest on my little travel iron. After it cooled, I sealed it with Future Floor Finish (FFF) for a glossy finish. While that was still wet, I flicked some Pearl Ex pigment powder in Aztec Gold into it with a dry paint brush. I liked that effect. I let it dry, then sealed it with another coat of the FFF.

When dry, I glued it on with Craft Goop (comes in a purple tube). Initially, I wasn't planning on the Fruit of the Spirit part, but after all this was done, the idea occurred to me, so I went with it. I used a metallic gold paint marker to print all the text. I'm not totally happy with the placement of the words on the left, but I had already glued down the Tyvek, and had to write nine words around it, some of them quite long. If I'd known I was going to write the words on that side, I would've placed the Tyvek differently, to allow room for them.

So, there you have it. Regarding using the Tyvek like this, for a cool embellishment, I got that idea out of Sherill Kahn's wonderful Book, Creative Embellishments. Using the twigs was my idea, to make it look like a scroll.