3-D Mixed media Christmas Trees

Tis the season and all that! Time for me to realize I've missed all the post deadlines for international post and frantically making Christmas cards anyway!

I started by decorating normal copier paper with the Brusho Wax Resist Crayon.

I then crinkled up the paper and sprinkled on Brushos.

Add water with a spray bottle and/or foam brushes and you get some funky surfaces! Some of the pieces I added more crayon marks and more Brusho.

I made a tree shaped template and traced this onto the paper side of fusible web, I cut these out outside of my traced line and ironed them onto the RIGHT side of my decorated papers. Make sure to use something to protect your iron! (I use baking parchment).

I then cut one "base" tree out and sewed it onto a felt backing. I needed to freehand sew this as the fusible made the new paper product stick to the foot.

I then cut a second tree into strips using a zigzag scissor and sewed onto my base tree/felt sandwich.

I made sure to leave the base tree peeking through! 

There are a lot of different ways you can cut and layer your trees.

So much fun to do! And now I can glue or sew them onto cards and voila! Unique Christmas cards!

Hope you enjoy this project!

Wax resist sticks

Brusho 24 Colour Boxed Set

Clear Spray Bottle

Foam brush

Christmas ornaments

Christmas is coming and this year I have decided to make my gifts more handmade than I usually do. In between making tens of cards to send to my family and friends, I decided to work on some embellishments - they will either be hang on the tree, wreath on the door or form a part of gift tags which I have also on my to-do list.

The fun thing about them is that you can involve your little ones in making them!

Here's how to make them:

Roll out the modelling clay to approx. 3mm thick.

Using palette or craft knife cut out your desired shapes (I wen for a house, star and Christmas tree). You can also hand-roll a wreath like I did. 

Make sure you remember to make a hole for a hanging string in each of the shapes.

Once dry, using Eco-Acrylic Paints, colour the elements.

Draw the string through the hole in each element and you're ready!

See you next time.

Ewelina

Burst Bag

This week I've been adding surface layers to decorate a canvas bag. The techniques could be used to decorate a canvas, cards, a quilt block,  a baseball cap ...

The medium I used was EXpandIT 3D Expanding Fabric Medium which I coloured with  a couple of Adva-Print concentrated fabric colours 

I used the TCW287s Mini Burst stencil to create the design.

My bag was new so I washed it and then ironed it when dry.

Before you start decorating a bag, it is good to add some thick card inside the bag, to stop it from sticking together and also having the design seep through to the other side. This way you can decorate both sides independently if you wish.

First I added EXpandIT mixed with a little golden yellow using a sponge brush. Here you can see that I didn't cover the whole stencil design. 

Without waiting for this to dry, I added fluorescent orange to the coloured EXpandIT and added that to the rest of the stencil design. 

I then hung the bag up to dry.

Once dry I used a heat tool to expand the 3D medium paint. Keep moving the heat tool around to avoid overheating/scorching the medium. You can watch my burst design expanding here

I wanted to add a little sparkle to the burst design with foiling.

First I added some flexi glue holding the bottle at 45 degrees and gently squeezing. I put some on top of the expanded medium and a little just at the edges of the burst design.

I let this go tacky, then laid a foil sheet over the top. I used two different transfoil sheets, summer rainbow and rose gold.

You can see my transfoil technique here

Here is my finished bag design. What do you think?

What would you decorate using these techniques?

MDF Sun Plaque with Suzi

Good Day All, Today it is my pleasure to share with you my latest project featuring lots of wonderful products from the ColourCraft Range.  I've created my project using ExpandIt and Eco Acrylic Paints.

I've created a Sun Plaque;

Doesn't that texture look amazing, here's how I created it;

First of all I took a MDF Driftwood shaped plaque and drew a face and some hair shapes onto it.  I then added Eco Acrylic Paint in Yellow to the whole plaque followed by Cadmiun Yellow Hue Dark to give an indication of where my shadows where to go, along with some Titanium White for the Eyes.  Then using a spatula I added my first coat of ExpandIt.

Using a syringe I added ExpandIt for the Eyebrows, Nose and Lips before heating it all with my heat gun.

I then added a coat of Yellow Eco Acrylic Paint over the whole plaque.

I then left it overnight, whilst I decided what to do next.

I decided the hair needed some texture so I added some lines of ExpandIt with the syringe to give some definition to the sections of hair.  I also added more ExpandIt to the tip of the Nose for more dimension.  Once I'd heat set the ExpandIt and it had cooled down I started to add more colour using Eco Acrylic Paints in Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Hue Dark and Yellow Ochre.

I then added some shadows and details with Raw Umber. I also added more Yellow Ochre and Yellow in places.

At this point I decided I needed to add some shades of Orange and Vermillion, to add more warmth and improve the transition of colours.

I was much happier with the colour palette now, and added some more layers of paint where I felt it needed it.  

Then it was time to work on the details, using paint pens and Koh-I-Noor Polycolor Pencils I added details into the hair and eyes.

My plaque was almost finished now, I added a little more detail to the eyes with the Koh-I-Noor Polycolor Pencils and a White Gel Pen.

Here's some close ups of the wonderful colours and texture;

As you can see the ExpandIt gives lots of wonderful texture, and by adding a second layer to the nose I really managed to give it some dimension.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing how I created my project.  If you've not got any ExpandIt yet I really recommend you get some, it comes in Natural and Black and you can use it with so many different tools and techniques, I used a palette knife and syringe on this project, but you can also use your fingers, or a brush. It goes through stencils beautifully and works on so many surfaces. It's wonderful stuff, You'll definitely be seeing more projects from me using it.

That's all from me for today, Thank you for taking the time to visit with us.

Bye for now

Suzi

xxx

3-D Card with Eco Acrylic Paste Papers

I recently got a box of super yummy Colourcraft Eco Acrylic Paints and got the urge to make more paste papers like I did with the Metallic colours a couple of weeks ago. Click Here to go to my blog entry with basic instructions about paste paper.

So I started with some of my favorite colors, as well as a 300g paper and brushes, comb and a couple of other tools.

It didn't take long to make a bunch of totally fab papers!

I let these dry overnight and then sponged some of the paints on the backs of my favorite papers. I also sponged a piece with metallic gold from the Aztec Range.

After these had dried, I chose one of my papers and folded it in half with the paste paper design on the inside.

I then marked two lines perpendicular to the folded edge, and scored a line parallell to the folded edge, between my marked lines.

I then cut on the marked lines, and folded on the scored line as well as on the original fold line so my card looked like the following picture.

In the meantime I had folded my gold sheet in half and glued those two halves together, stamped a 

dragonfly from Rubber Dance Stamps a few times onto the gold paper, and cut those out.

Then I just glued my dragonflies onto the cut out, inside of the card and VOILA!

Super fun and easy to do! 

I had a lot of fun doing these colored paste papers.

I also played around with making one layer:

Letting this dry. And then making a new layer on top!

It would be fun to see what you make with paste papers too!

Take care and see you in a couple of weeks!

-Tamara

Eco Acrylic Paint

Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint

Foam brush