Beelieve.

Are you sitting comfortably? This is going to be a loooong post. 

I started off with a 12x12 mdf jigsaw that I purchased on an InkBuds weekender last year. I gave the sides of the pieces a coat of white paint to take away the bare mdf look and glued them to two papers from Craft Consortium's 12x12 Tell the Bees paper pad. I made sure I got the text the right way up! I roughly trimmed the edges of the paper and then sanded them to get a good finish. (Apologies for the dodgy photo, the sunlight was too bright!)

I then went round the edge of the pieces with a piece of cut and dry foam with a tiny bit of blueberry crush chalk paint on it.

Yuck. Too much contrast, so I went back over it all with the same technique but with natural stone chalk paint to knock it back.

Much happier with this. To secure the jigsaw and stop it falling apart, at this point I flipped it over and added sticky tape across the joins. I then found some 12x12 paper in my stash that I didn't like and stuck it across the back with cosmic shimmer. I continued until I had 4 layers of paper stuck on, which made it very sturdy.

You can see on the above photo, resting on the back of the jigsaw, the honeycomb die from the A5 X-cut Beekeeping set, that I cut in kraft card and then covered in Pinflair gold buff it before snipping them up ready to go on the jigsaw. I also sponged a bit of Starlights Rich Gold paint on parts of them to add a little more interest.

I die cut the hive from the same X-Cut set 3 times in kraft card and then pressed them into a versamark pad and heat embossed them with white embossing powder. I gave them two coats to get a good finish, before adding them to the jigsaw with foam pads to add dimension.

I die cut various flowers from both the Tim Holtz Wildflower sets in kraft card and coloured them with a mixture of blueberry crush chalk paint and distress and distress oxide inks to get the colours I wanted.

I then tucked the flowers around the hives with cosmic shimmer glue, cutting them down where necessary.

I die cut the sentiment using a Sweet Dixie Die and layered it up twice in kraft card to add some dimension and painted it with blueberry crush chalk paint. I also bought some amazing mdf bees from StickerKitten and painted them to highlight the details.

I then arranged the bees, sentiment and honeycomb pieces on the jigsaw and secured them with cosmic shimmer glue, before going around the edges of the jigsaw with my finger dipped in a little Pinflair gold buff it and then with a tiny amount of Starlights in Amethyst to finish the piece.

For some reason, the main picture is registering more blue than purple, so hopefully the following picture is more colour accurate.

Still with me? Go and get yourself a large tipple of something, you deserve it!