Crafters Corner : Folk Art "BLENDING GEL"

Good morning!

Rupa here today with my post for Crafters Corner. It’s the month of festivities and this month seems to be slipping by so fast! Diwali is around the corner and its always nce to papmper your loved ones with some surprise gifts. Well I did manage to make for my daughter who is 7rs old. I don’t know how much she would cherish this but I have a lot of memories attached to this project…

You want to know what I started out with???

Here is an old and favorite T-shirt of my little girl when she was 3yrs old and this is the box which came with her first set of shoes and some toys on her 1^st birthday. I have been holding on to these for years now and just got to make something that she can have for years to come. I want to keep all things related to friendship and her growing years in this box.

I have used just these ingredients from Crafters corner, have a closer look and look what this magic ingredient on the extreme right can do…Shall we start???

Grab a cup of coffee or tea if you are like me and sit back…loads of pics and pictorials to catch up on!

Step1- I was fortunate that the box was white already, so I started by cutting the focal pic on the tee and adhere ring it with modge podge. Then I gessoed the whole box.

I took out a floral stencil from my stash and some crackle texture paste and covered the empty space on the top of the lid. I started from the fabric so that you wouldn’t see the rough edges of the cut fabric.

Next was waiting time for the cracks to appear…I decided to make the lid of the box open like a suitcase, so snipped the back and stuck with red tacky tape. Secure for sure!

Step2- The cracks were just beginning to appear but I wanted to give its natural drying time but had no patience to sit and wait! So covered the base of the box with yellow Folk art multi surface paint…smooth as satin, really!

Then swished out the magic ingredient…have a look. This is the Folk art BLENDING GEL. Curious to know what this is…this extends the drying time of the paint and give you time to think and play with paints. Isn’t that AWESOME…just right for what I was planning to do for the base.

The yellow paint had dried in seconds and them I pot a blob of this gel on the craft mat and some blue Folk art paint by the side. Dipped my brush in the gel, picked up the blue paint and spread it like butter over the yellow base.

Now I was looking for a rag cloth…wait I had just kept it close to me but couldn’t find it…oh My! I wasted close to a minute to find this…but no worries the paint was still wet and waiting for I wanted to do, lol! Thank god…

Watch closely now…I scrunched up the rag cloth and rolled over the wet blue paint and Voila!

I lovely texture revealing the base yellow color was formed! I continued rolling all over the base and look at this amazing texture.

It is just NOT possible to do this without this gel, trust me in spite of the time lost in looking for the cloth, I managed to get this texture done.

The same process was repeated on all sides of the box, except this time, I didn’t loose the cloth, lol!

Step3- The magic on the base was over I was so happy with the outcome! I had no patience to cut pattern paper and stick on all sides, I wanted something different and yes…this gel made it happen.

What say??? I must have if you want to add painted textures to your projects. Go for it.

Once done admiring my new technique, I decided to add color to the cracked texture on the lid that had dried.

I gave a base color of the chalk paint which was grey (castle)and then rubbed off immediate so that the cracks took that color.

Then I brushed in some blue paint on the top and rubbed that too randomly and this is how the lid looked when done.

I fixed the handle and wrapped some sparkly ribbon toad more glitz to the project. Little girls love bling, so I colored the rim of the lid with silver Inks gold and the metal closures too. A handmade tassel with paper scraps and laces from my stash added that extra bling!

Step4- I wanted the inside of the box to be equally beautiful and couldn’t resist myself from picking these lovely papers from Bob and Betty, Ornate Anne pack. I cut them to size and decorated the inside.

The colors were so complimenting to the work outside and I could visualize myself filling up this box with her growing up memories. I wanted it to be special. This will be safely kept with me till I think she can handle it.

Here is a look of the complete box.

I hope you give this gel a try, great for any texture work on altered art, mixed media or art journaling. Now grab that old shoe box and a favorite tee and start this one!

I am going to see you soon with another magic ingredient soon for more texture.

Until my next creative journey,

Happy crafting and recycling.

Cheers,

Rupa.

Products used from Crafters Corner