Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Holiday Chairs Tutorial

Hi everyone! Today I have a 3-D tutorial, for two chairs, one for Halloween and one for Christmas. This month the theme at Eileen Hull's Art with Heart challenge is Hauntings & Holidays. The team also got some lovely Graphic 45 papers to use. 

Layers of ink - Holiday Chairs Tutorial by Anna-Karin
I made two chairs with the 3-D Adirondack Chair die, both of them work either as decoration or as gifts, for Christmas and Halloween. These are real fun to make and very easy. I used papers from the A Christmas Carol and the World's Fair paper pads. 

Start by covering mat board with patterned paper. I used multi medium, but almost any adhesive will do fine. You need to of the leg pieces, one facing each way. This is an XL die, so you need the Extended Cutting Pads. This sandwich: Extended Cutting Pad, die facing up, mat board, second Extended Cutting Pad.

Sand the edges.

 Ink the edges and the backs with Ground Espresso.

For the Halloween chair, I only used patterned paper for the pieces to the left.

Sand and ink as before. Ink the backs and the bare pieces with Antique Linen and Pumice Stone.

Glue the back pieces to the chair and stamp with a skull stamp. Stamp the rest of the pieces with other Halloween stamps. 

Assemble the chairs by first gluing the chair part to the base and then attaching the legs with brads, as shown here.
 Layers of ink - Holiday Chairs Tutorial by Anna-Karin
I was happy to get some of these fun characters from Nicole Wright and immediately thought he would be the perfect size for an Adirondack Chair.

The skeleton needed some accessories and I made a crown by adhering gold Deco Sheet to Grungepaper and die cutting with the Borders & Hydrangea die.

First, I was planning that the skeleton should be reading in his comfy chair, but I changed my mind and made a little tablet instead. Anton drew a zombie game on the tablet for the skeleton to play. 

Here you can see the game playing in action. I made him a blanket by dying some cheesecloth with Hickory Smoke.
 
 The stamping adds nice texture.

 From the side, the chair looks like this.

 And here's a closer look a the stamped back piece.

Layers of ink - Holiday Chairs Tutorial by Anna-Karin
Doesn't he look pleased with himself?

Layers of ink - Holiday Chairs Tutorial by Anna-Karin
The Christmas chair holds three books, made from one of the papers in the A Christmas Carol pad.

I simply cut and folded inside pages and glued them to the spine. They are resting on a piece of left over fabric that I found in my stash, it originally comes from Christmas curtains that my Mom made.

I cut out a piece from the patterned papers as a sentiment. The arms were stamped with a snowflake background stamp by Tim Holtz. You can find another example of a 3-D chair here.

Here's a closer look at the little books and the blanket. I will add some text to these closer to Christmas.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! There is still time to join in the challenge!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:





Monday, October 26, 2015

Be You Journal Page

Hello friends! I hope you had a good weekend with some crafty time. It is Monday again, and of course a new Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge. This week we have a throwback challenge, which means that you can be inspired by any past challenge.
 
Layers of ink - Be You Journal Page by Anna-Karin
I was thinking of the challenge that made me start art journaling, something I am very grateful for. I love playing around in my art journals. If you haven't tried art journaling yet, I encourage you to do so, maybe start small such as in a Small Creative Journal, or simply on small pieces of paper that you can bind to create a journal. This week, I enjoyed using my new 8 x 8 in Dylusions journal for the first time. The square format is fun and if you do a double page you get a nice big surface to work on. 


Layers of ink - Be You Journal Page by Anna-Karin
The page was made mainly with products by Dina Wakley. For the challenge I was inspired by, the team used an art journaling kit, but the challenge itself was to use Simon Says Stamp Exclusive products. You can find those first journal pages that I made here
 
Layers of ink - Be You Journal Page by Anna-Karin
 I love Dina's Scribbly Fashion Figures and Scribbly Birds in Flight stamps and made them the star of my page. I was also really in the mood for some bright pink, red, orange and yellow, after having made quite many grungier projects lately.

I started by coating the pages with gesso and then added book paper scraps from three or four different old books. The book pages were coated with another thin layer of gesso and when that was dry, I applied Dina's paints with a palette knife. I love how the text from the book peek through here and there.

The colours were partly inspired by the fact that one of the papers I used was a dictionary page about oranges. After applying the paint, but before it had dried completely, I used the Halves stencil and a slightly moist cloth to wipe off paint through the stencil.

The women and the birds were stamped on tissue paper and applied to the background with gloss multi medium. If you tear around the images, the tissue paper practically disappears. Start with a layer of multi medium, carefully place the tissue paper on the surface and add another layer of medium on top. My page had a bit of texture and I wanted these images to be stamped without too many imperfections. Before painting the women and birds, I gave them a layer of white paint. When all the paint was dry, some lines were added back with a black marker.

I painted a black base, as ground for the women to stand on, and added some black all around the edges, as well as some pen work.

I love using letters and words, especially in my art journal. The Alphabetic stencil contain letters in different sizes. I started sponging white paint through the larger letters, adding them here and there. Later, I used black paint for the smallest letters. I like using the Mini Round Ink Blending Tool to apply paint through my stencils.

Words and sentiments from Scribbly Fashion Figures, From the Past and All the Gals were stamped repeatedly all over the page, making them both journaling and a design element. I placed the Halves stencil back on the circles and traced around it with a black marker, rubbing some of it with my finger to create a more distressed look. The white dots were added with SSS Medium Dots stencil.

The title was die cut from Slate SSS cardstock using the Alphabet Blocks die. I also used my new favourite Circle Loops die.

I hope you will join us in our Throwback challenge! As always you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. You have until Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.


If you want to, follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 



If you use instagram add #sssmchallenge to your challenge entry uploads, so that we can see them on there too.





Thank you for visiting today!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies: