A Vintage Book Box

For my make this week I have chosen to work with the wide mdf book box and three different rice papers -simply beautiful 01 simply beautiful 02  and simply beautiful 03,

To start with I laid out the pieces of the mdf kit before gluing them inplace and then letting them dry completely before starting to decorate.

Once dried I painted the entire piece with a blue grey paint and left it to dry before rubbing over with a candle and overpainting with white paint leaving the inside of the box element the original colour. Once the second layer of paint had dried I then sanded back the box to give a distressed feel. There are lots of paints to choose from on the website but for this effect to work it is important that you choose contrasting colours. My preference is a dark underlayer and a paler top layer especially when adding rice papers as they blend into a pale top layer more easily with out the need for lots of paint blending to disquise the edges. The inside of the box was dry brushed with white to co-ordinate the whole look

Having finsihed the painting I tore elements from the rice papers before gluing them in place as shown in the images- my preference is to use a dedicated rice paper glue but watered down pva will work. This book box has a very large spine area which I felt looked bare and so I added several lengths of shabby ribbon from my stash wrapping the entire length twice round the spine and simply knotting them together. You could use the ones that come it the seastories kit with ribbon and add a brown tone from the selection in store. Finally I added three handmade foamiran flowers to the knot to complete the piece.

A Perfect View - lavender card

 Hello, dears!

Today I'm here with another card inspired by my favourite Provence. This time it features a cute little window, which opens up to the endless lavender fields. Every time I use some polymer clay elements in my projects, I can't stop admiring them for their self-sufficient and beautiful decorativeness. So easy to create and so convenient to use, they add that special focal point to every composition. 

Provence, Provence...

Hello, dears!

Those, who follow me for a while, know, that Provence is my forever love. Every year I come back to this beautiful and extremely inspiring theme no matter how overused it might seem to be. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get bored with it and so far my answer is a big fat no :)

Altered Bottles

 

I don't know about you but I am a hoarder of bottles and jars of interesting shapes and sizes and decided it was a time I made a dint in the pile so that I could fill my Candy Cart from a next blog post with something decorative but still functional. 

The process for all of these items is the same. Firstly you need to clean the jars throughly and degrease the outside with alcohol  - hand sanitizer with do the trick and I am sure we all have plenty of that at home. Once cleaned I then applied bonding primer and let it dry. You will find it is better to use two layers - paint with a brush the first layer, let dry thoroughly and then dabb on the second layer and dry again.

Once prepped the bottles can be altered in lots of ways. I knew that I wanted to add rice papers to most of the jars and they are definitely best applied over a pale surface so the true colour shows. So I took my jars and added co-ordinating paint from Pentart over the jars and once dry applied white crackle paste varrying the thickness to get different sized cracks and giving me the white surface to add the rice papers too. To adhere the rice papers I used decoupage glue - mod podge or watered down PVA will work too. Once the images had dried in place I added splatters of paint to co-ordinate with the images.

 The rice papers I used were everyday a fresh start for the purple flowers and mantel clock image.

For the pink flowers I used the bouquet of roses rice paper.

For the last jar I actually used  paper from the Rose Parfume paper pad wrapping it around the center of the jar and adding the words which were fussy cut out.

My issue with using jars and bottles is how to disguise the thread for the lid which I did not want to use. My way of solving this was to wind string around the tops and secure in place before adding co-ordinating shabby ribbons and then some silk flowers that went with the papers though I am thinking that the new fabric flowers would work just as well.

I do hope you have enojoyed reading this and it encourages you to use the products in your stash and upcycle some of the jars we all have instead of throwing them in the bin.

Positive Affirmations - plywood wheel

So for this weeks post I am continuing on the how to use rice paper theme - and yes I can assure you there is plenty of rice paper in this project although I accept that you can only see snipits of it in the completed piece. However, the joy of creating is watching how a piece evolves as you add the layers to it.

This piece starts with a wooden wheel which is designed to have a central hub front and back making it quite dimensional. Ever one to not follow the rules the circular elements designed to stack have been used as embellishment pieces on my project.  The birch wood ply is quite pale and so I did not bother priming my piece before adding torn scraps of two rice papers - our love words and hard steel using decoupage glue. I continued until I had the whole surface covered. The joy of using rice papers for this is that it is easy to fold back the excess and also to sand it back - no need for precise paper cutting or getting the craft knife out. 

I love the collaged background this creates and I have no edges to disguise as the layering of piece over piece conceals where one is added because you can see through the layers to the one beneath so they merge beautifully together.

Next I spent a reasonable amount of time fussy cutting lots of elements from Wings of Freedom Extras set using almost all of both sets of the floral elements. I also cut out butterflies from teh extras set and also from the 12 x 12 papers. Whilst I had the papers out I also covered the ring shaped pieces of ply with paper too - sanding back the edges of these. I had a play about with the composition and added in lots of chipboard elements - botanical diary and spring flowers - there are lots to choose from if you look under chipboards floral and nature section. At this point I then glued everything into place - if you look at the finished piece you will see that elements got moved about quite a bit during this process.

 

My project still needed to feel complete and have a purpose. I love words and decided that I would add lots to this piece creating a piece full of positive affirmations. The words come from several different packs of die cut inscription chipboards by craft o'clock just have a look at the sets available and choose the ones that speak to your heart. Before gluing the chipboard pieces in place they were edged with gold wax. 

Finally I added a piece of shabby ribbon so I can hang my project up where I can see the words everyday and a shabby bow to complete the piece.