Autumn Teaches Us That Changes are Beautiful MDF decor

I love autumn, the beautiful rich colours, the smell of fallen leaves and the rustle as you kick your way through a huge pile of leaves and the joy of reaching home after a day out in the wild. This piece celebrates the changing seasons and features the wonderful Mintay Papers Fall Festival collection - when I started this piece the 12 x 12 paper collection was in stock and it appears to have sold out so I guess that lots of you have bought it and hope that my home decor diorama will inspire you to get it out of the packet. The piece could however just as easily be made with the 6 x 6 papers with minimal adjustment to the layout as I had to trim the fussy cut chair with cushions to fit my frame.

I started my project by assembling the extra large baroque frame using the best glue in the world. Once the glue had set I then painted the outside surface with white sands rustic paint. This paint gives excellent coverage on unprimed MDF and adds texture at the same time.

The frame was then "gilded" with gold paste which highlighted the dimensional overlay of the frame as well as the gritty texture of the paint.

I chose a worn door/wood paper from the collection and then cut pieces to fit the back and sides of the shadow box. Even though I knew that I would cover a lot of the main piece as I layered more pieces on top I added some extra detail using Fabrika Dekor antique gold airy mouse through the Snipart  folk rosette stencil. Once this had dried I then adhered all of the background pieces in place.

I placed my fussy cut bench in place using cotton reels for both height and also for stability before tucking in pieces of torn cheesecloth. One of the joys of Mintay papers is that you get two of each design - just perfect for fussy cutting and then decoupaging elements on top of each other - I did this with the cushions, pumpkin, satchel and bottles adhering them in place with dimensional glue. The paper elements have little bows made from string and I chose to add natural hemp bows on top of these elements.

I knew that I wanted to add natural elements to the base of my shadow box and chose some dried flower heads and wood shavings from a pot pourri mix. However I also wanted to echo the pumpkins in the paper collection. To make these I followed the wonderful tutorial by Lady E and used extra light air dry clay, some twigs from the garden for the stalks and Weathered Wood Distress oxide ink to hihglight the shape. The natural elements and faux pumpkins were then adhered in place before adding little birdie shabby chic flowers.

Finally I chose my sentiment from the co-ordinating sticker pack to the top of the frame along with a fussy cut bow.