A Little Wheel Barrow

This week I have a little floral deocation to share with you - for me this is a little project but it still has lots of details so I hope you like it.

The base for the project is a plywood wheelbarrow as the base to hold a pretty floral arrangement. As usual I started by laying out the pieces so I knew how it would be constructed.

I glued the pieces for the bucket of the wheel barrow together and then let them dry.

For the wheel and handle pieces I started by gluing the two wheel pieces together and then when they had dried painted all of the plywood with a copper metallic paint - the antique gold creamy acrylic by Pentart  would also work really well with the autumnal shades of the rice paper that I used for decoration. The wheel base was then adhered in place.

Next I added a crackle medium to the "bucket" - shhhhhhhh don't tell anyone but it will appear at the retreat in September so hopefully will be added to stock however you can use any crackle that works in a sandwich between two layers of paint. Once it had dried I then painted on some white acrylic paint. Alternatively you could use a thin layer of the Stamperia white crackle paste in which case there is no need to add a layer of white paint over the top.

Next I selected images from the flowers rice paper (there are lots of options if you want different flowers but you will need a paper that has small images on it). I tore out the images I wanted and then glued them in place over the body of the wheel barrow using decoupage glue making sure I covered the images on the outside with the glue too so they were sealed in place. Watered down pva glue will work if you don't have a specialist rice paper glue. Once the glue was dry I added some more of my metallic paint around the edges of the bucket.

To fill the wheel barrow I then added some floral foam deliberately cutting it so it was proud of the top of the wheelbarrow. Then I added some moss using hot glue.

To fill the wheelbarrow I then added a selection of flowers in colours that I felt complimented the rice paper I had used - rose and yellow crimped hydrangeas - pushing the clusters they come as into the floral foam (you may need to trim the stalk a little and also use a pokey tool to make a hole in the foam for the stalk to go into.

 Next I added a few yellow cherry blossoms. 

Finally I tucked in some greenery - leaf 127, leaf 091 and leaf 105/ Adding until I was hapy with my overall composition. 

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.

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.

Love as Noble as Gold

I do like a challenge - can you make something with MDF and with rice papers was the request and so I searched my stash and this piece was formed. It is very definitely a full on mixed media piece but I am hoping over a series of blog posts with rice papers I will be able to share with you some of the ways of using this fabulous craft essential (well it is for me).

The base of my piece is a teapot artboard which comes complete with attatchments to make hanging easy. they can be simply glued to the back of the piece if you want to use them or left off the choice is yours.

 Normally I would prime any mdf/artboard/birchply piece before painting but for this piece as I knew I would be adding lots of layers I simply painted the entire surface with salmon acrylic paint. Once the paint had dried I applied white one component crackle paste - so easy just use a palette knife to apply varrying thickness and you con't even need to cover all of the surface if you don't want too. Let the crackle paste dry - it is safe to use a heat gun to speed up the process. The crackle paste gives a white layer which is really essential if the colours of the rice paper you are using are going to be shown to their best advantage.

 

Next I took a blooming retreat A4 rice paper and drew around the imagery with a wet paint brush - this then allows you to tear around the images giving a soft feathered edge which is then easier to disguise on your project (hiding edges is one of the tricks for successful use of rice papers). Having decided where abouts the floral elements were going to be I then used decoupage glue to adhere them in place and over the top to protect them - you need a thin glue and there are lots on the market. 

The salmon paint showing through the cracks also shows through the rice paper helping to disguise that the rice paper is just glued ontop - it links the layers together. To further help with unifying everything I then added areas of gold stencil paste through damask stencil 16 and again left it to dry.

Having created my base I knew that I needed to create a focal point on top of it and yes I know that means covering up some of the layers but that really is the key to mixed media creating. For my embellishments I layered elements from the  rose buds and leaves chipboard sets placing some directly onto the base then a layer of distressed cheesecloth followed by faux fern leaves, although one of the faux greenery pieces I have used is no longer in stock the berries will work and I also added in leaf 11. On top of the faux greener  I then added flowers similar to lime daisies and lime poppies. The embellishment clusters were then filled out by tucking in more of the chipboard leaves and then everything was dry brushed with white gesso.

 

I chose a sentiment from the wedding inscription set and edged it with gold wax before adhering it in place. To finish the piece I then added more wax around the edges.