Using wood for UPA

The new Unruly PaperArts blogozine is published today and it is all about using wood in your crafting projects. There are the usual Reader’s Art Quests (RAQs) and columnist articles over the month. But sadly this will be the last month for UPA as Shar the creator and editor can no longer find the time to keep it going. It is such a shame.

This is my RAQ sample using a flat wooden birdhouse and a couple of wooden embellishments.

These birdhouses can be picked up quite cheaply and I got mine from the Range in the UK.

I had seen a video made by Leandra at PaperArtsy and decided to use her techniques to colour up and get some texture going. You can find the video tutorial HERE, where the process is described in detail and is very easy to follow.

I also painted the back using Fresco Finish paints and a piece of foam.

I gathered some wooden embellishments together, not sure which ones I was going to use at the time and I painted them all with white acrylic paint.

I decided to use the large bird and small dragonfly and painted them again with FF paints, then over-stamped the bird with a Tim Holtz stamp.

Using a small piece of twig also painted up I glued in a perch..

You can see the textures and layers of paint here.

Have fun working with wooden pieces this month and please enter your projects into the two RAQs which are 1. To use wooden accents and 2. Make a 3D wooden project. I think I have covered both with my birdhouse lol.

Thanks for joining me today, have fun.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Layers

It is my turn to choose the challenge at Country View Crafts’ Challenges and I chose ‘Layers’ so that whatever your style you get a chance to play along.

I have seen so many of those fabulous pop-up cards on the blogs over the past few months and thought it would be good to do one, but as I don’t have a die to help me out I knew I was going to have to start from scratch and design my own. When I was a teacher in the classroom my children always made topic books and putting pop-ups in them was great for them to apply some art and technology skills and they were really good at them, but I have kept to basic rectangles on which I have added images and ephemera.

Let’s start with the front cover though.

I have used Tim’s French Industrial paper stash and added a frame (cut for me by my friend Lucy), part of a tag from a TH purse, a stamped ticket and a crown and Fleur de Lys die-cuts. The frame was painted with distress paints, black acrylic paint and pewter treasure gold added (you wouldn’t believe it started off as a piece of white card would you?) The picture came from the paper stash.

The die cuts were black card and I coated them with distress embossing powder. For the fleur de lys I covered it in black soot and then sprayed it with a shiny varnish and put some pewter TG on it, but it faded into the background so I alcohol inked it with pitch black.

For the inside I cut a piece of the paper stash to size and turned to the back drawing in the lines I wanted to cut and to fold.

I pushed the pop-ups inwards folding in the appropriate places and then set about adding layers of card, images, ephemera, washi tape and words until I was happy with the effects.

So a very simple pop-up design but I think it looks ok

Looking forward to seeing you join in with the challenge this month. Please pop over and take a look at the inspiration from the DT and the winner and Top 3 from July will be joining us over the weeks too.

Have a creative week.

Thanks for reading.

hugs {brenda} x0x