Anything Goes @ Tando

Hi folks and welcome to my blog post for today. It's an 'anything goes' week at Tando this week. 

So, I chose to play with the Tando Ministry of Mixology Kate Crane Journal. Everyone loves a journal, but creating your own cover makes it even more personal and I had so much fun with this project.

Here is my creation...

Firstly, I chose lots of different fabrics and ribbons with lots of texture such as lace and hessian. I adhered these bits to the front cover of the journal, layering and overlaying different pieces to create lots of texture. And because there was so many layers to stick, I adhered them with matte heavy gel medium rather than a standard glue. 

I then raided my trinket box - which is masssiivvvveee!! It is full of metal embellishments, fabric and paper flowers, buttons, broken jewellery bits, cameos... along with bits and pieces of allsorts and everything. So, I had a good rummage and pulled out a few items.

I then arranged, re-arranged and re-arranged the trinket finds on to the journal cover. Again, using the matte heavy gel medium I adhere the embellishments on to the cover.  

When all the embellishments were fixed in to place, I covered the entire journal front with DecoArt black Gesso and left to dry. 

Then came the fun bit... I pulled out a selection of colours of DecoArt Media Acrylic paints. I used Blue Green Light,Cobalt Teal Hue, Colbalt Turquoise Hue, Primary Cyan, Yellow Green Light along with white and black DecoArt Gesso. 

After splashing a bit of paint about until I was happy, I let everything dry. Then I applied a couple of coats of DecoArt Media Ultra Matte Varnish to make sure everything looked ultra matte and to add a bit of protection to the cover. 

I hope you have enjoyed looking at my latest creation. If you would like to leave a comment please do so, I love to hear what you think. 

Toodles for now,

Lisa xxx 

Here is everything I used, which is all available from the Tando website. 

                           

I would like to enter this creation in to the following challenges:
Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge - challenge #31

Tando Christmas Scene Box step-by-step

Hello and welcome to a special blog post for Tando Creative. This post is a step-by-step to how I created the Tando Creative Christmas Scene Box kit.

Here is my final creation...

Step-by-step...

Firstly, I got all the pieces of the kit out of the packaging and laid everything out on the table. (Tando kits are usually pretty straight forward to put together but I always do a dry run first before I start adding decoration just to make sure I am decorating the right side and I know where to add glue etc..)

I then painted all the pieces of the kit with DecoArt white Gesso on both sides and left to dry.

On the back part of the box, which would be on the inside of the box, I used DecoArt white modelling paste through the Tando Creative 6 x 6 snowflake mask.

Next, I built all the flat house pieces in to 3D houses, gluing the flaps down and adding the roof to each house. 

I put PVA glue in a container and added a few drops of water to make it more runny. I spread the runny glue on to the bottom piece of the box, which would be on the inside of the finished box, and added tissue paper. I did this over and over to build up lots of layers to create a paper mache hill. I wanted the hill to have lots of texture with added lumps and bumps to eventually look like a snowy mound. 

Next, I made a batch of extra thick home-made texture paste. This is a mixture of PVA glue and baby powder. I start by putting the same quantities of each ingredient in a large container and mixing together. Then depending on how thick I want the paste I add more PVA/powder to the mixture until I am happy.

Sometimes, I add other ingredients like beads, sequins, paint... or in this case building sand. The sand makes the paste more gritty which adds extra texture.

When all the ingredients are mixed well together, I used a spatula to spread the paste on to the houses, the tree and the paper mache hill.

I mixed DecoArt Media Metallic Gold Fluid Acrylic paint with DecoArt white Gesso and painted the houses. 

I painted the box sides, top and bottom, front and back with DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Cobalt Turquoise paint then added DecoArt Orange Flicker Metallic Lustre using my finger to just softly touch the embossed areas. 

I painted the tree with DecoArt Media Phthalo Green-Yellow Fluid Acrylic paint and dabs of white gesso and added the Orange Flicker Metallic Lustre.

I used the Metallic Lustre on the houses.

And to the snowy hill.

I adhered the tree to the inside back of the scene box.

I then adhered the finished houses inside the box scene.

To finish, I attached the top piece to the rest of the box.

And, here is my finished creation.

Some close-ups....

Everything I used is at the bottom of the blog post and is available from the Tando website.

Thank you so much for popping by, leave a comment if you wish as I love to read your thoughts.

Toodles for now,

Lisa x