Old Manor

- MONDAYS WITH GILL -

For many of us the new year brings about the desire to throw out the old and maybe have a really good tidy up during the course of which we find many treasures that we had forgotten about. The paper line Old Manor epitomizes this to me with all of the little treasures that are hidden on the pages and so an idea was born. For those of you who have read other posts of mine you will know that one of the things I like making most of all are shadow boxes filled with papers, resins, bottles, foliage etc and thus the seeds of an idea began to take hold in my brain. 

I made up my chipboard shadow box - one that I know has been available in the 14 Craft Bar pop up shops over the last year or so and then lined each inside compartment with pieces of paper from the paper collection. I also covered the sides and back of the box to give the whole piece a cohesive finish.

I then gathered together my collection of ephemera. Some I fussy cut from the papers such as the cherubs on fountains, cages, jug, books and suitcases.  I added a collection of chipboard houses and chose some resin elements that I felt worked with the theme. To support some of my pieces I used small cotton reels. I added in lots of glass bottles filled with an assortment of glitter and and also some sead beads as used by jewellery makers.

I then set about decorating each room adding layers of elements to build up  a mini scene in each piece - some perhaps representing what might have been found tucked away in the garden shed and others that might have been found in an attic room or garage. I added colour to my resin pieces using a greenish wax by Finnabair.

I wanted to add additional textural and coloured elements and still remain true to my idea of found objects so I added in natural feathers, terracotta pots, foliage,  moss, berries and stamens.

My suitcases were cut from the paper and had layers of chipboard/mdf scraps added behind them to five them depth.

I tired to add pieces directly to the back of each panel - in this case the chipboard house which then had a resin plant added over the top - the papercut urn and cherub was supported with more mdf scraps and then in turn itself supported the next resin piece.

 Here the resin heart is attached at the back and the bird cage shaped and adhered with dimensional glue gel so that it appears rounded and hanging from the "ceiling".

The chipped jug is actually a piece of paper cut from one of the papers - this was shaped to give it dimension and then adhered using glue gel into which I stuck stamens to mimic a jug filled with flowers. The terracotta pot was filled with glue gel before moss was added to the top alongside the metal bird.

I like all of my pieces to have a title and so I used one of the smaller boxes to house the title which I created by cutting the name of the paper range from the cutoff strip of the 12 x 12 papers. This was then mounted on more offcut chipboard pieces so that the two elements sit at different levels.

I am sure that somewhere in every manor's garden there is an old and neglected bicycle so I added a resin piece coloured with gold paste in old silver colour to one of the compartments.

Bottles filled with left over bits and pieces are sure to have been tucked away just in case they might come in handy so one of the repeating themes in my shadow box was the inclusion of mini glass jars filled with beads/glitter etc but spices, tea leaves especially the contents of the fruit tea bags that are so popular now would work just as well.

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