Crafty Cardmakers & more challenge 144 - Anything but a card

Carole is hosting today and would like to see your creations that are anything other than a card. So tags, gift boxes, altered art, home decor. Anything as long as it's not a card.

My project is a standing Friends word made from MDF.  

It came in the standard brown colour, so I painted it with some cream base paint  and then applied some crackle glaze.  When dry, I overpainted it again with some matt green paint and waited for the crackles to appear.  I don't think I had applied enough glaze, as the crackles weren't significant so I enhanced it by adding some pebeo gold gilding wax to the letters as well.

I had bought the small figures earlier because I liked them, with no real idea of what to do with them.  But when I was thinking of decoration,  I saw the width of the base of the friends stand and I thought they would be perfect to go there!  Last September when I went to Ally Pally, I bought some dried flowers and things from the Anna Marie stand and I used those to decorate the base of the stand, along with some red pine cones I had bought in Hobbycraft.  All were stuck down with hot glue, around the figures also stuck down with hot glue.  

I really like the effect I got with this - the final touch was that I used the Crafters Companion big score board to make an oblong box to put it in and it was ready to be given as a gift.