Crafters Corner : Playing with PLAID TOOLS, part 1

Good morning!

Rupa here with my last post for the year! It’s been 6months now with crafters corner and I hope you have been enjoying the tutorials here. I hope to play more with their products next year too!

Today I would like to explain some quick and easy ways to distress wood and create textures on backgrounds using these 2 amazing tools from PLAID. These help in creating amazing backgrounds for Decoupage and decorating any objects. You will see soon how I have used them to create not 1 or 2, but 3 different projects with the same tools.

Let me first start with a recycled project…of course, how else would it be??? Here is what I started off with…

Yes, a Swarovski box …it came to me empty, lol! Yes, a friend had kept it carefully so I could work on it. And here is what I made with it…

Of course the process in making this project is priceless than what originally would have been inside it! Really…I made this box in just 1 hour flat! That’s how easy it is to distress and make patterns with the tools that I am going to show you.Here are my 2 buddies for the day who helped with this project..

You can see how loved they are!

Let’s start off…As always its a picture heavy post! Hope you stick around till the end!

Step1- I gessoed the lid with white and the base of the box with black gesso.

I then applied black paint to the rim of the lid and when that dried, applied some white candle wax to the areas where I wanted it distressed. After that, I gave a top coat of Folk art multi surface paints and when dry, took out this scrapping tool from Plaid.

I just had to lightly peel off on the areas where there was wax and voila! The magic distressing happened to reveal the black base coat.

This scrapping tool comes in 4 sizes and just perfect to create that distressed look however big your project may be!

Step2- I had this lovely tissue in my stash and went about adhering this to the top of the lid using modge podge.

It is a wonderful sight to see the tissue adhere to the distressed edges and I love how the pattern shows thru the distressing! Now as that was drying, I started to work on the base.

After the black gesso had dried, I missed 2 shades of the multi surface paint along with Folk art blending gel and applied as top coat. This blending tool delays the drying time and helps you to create textures without having to be in a hurry!

Step3- I took this other tool, the texture comb from Plaid and ran it on the top coat.

You can see how wonderfully it creates a striped pattern and also distresses the base at the same time. Here is a closer look.

I went about creating this pattern on all the sides. All of this in just 5mins…can you believe it! As the comb removes the paint, it creates dimension and you can feel the stripes when you run your fingers on it!

At the same time, it distresses the area where the paint has been stripped off…all this in just one swipe! I think this is just an amazing tool to create backgrounds. I will show you more uses soon.

Step4- Once the stripes were dry, I took a border pattern stencil from my stash and used white paint to stencil this. I liked the look of this on a striped back ground.

This was repeated on all the sides. The lid along with this base looked a “made for each other couple”, but I dint want to stop there.

I cut out a scalloped oval using the black chip board and repeated the wax method and the scrapping tool to create a distressed look.

It took me about a minutes to achieve this and then I stamped the sentiment using Archival black. It is the only embellishment on top of the lid and here is the final look.

And now, as I open the lid….

You can see some colorful goodies inside, all of which were made using these tools!

The first is a set of tags that I made on the left over chipboards that I had.

I have gessoed the base white and applied different color paints as top coat and have used the comb in different directions to get varied patterns.

Have a look at the dimension the comb creates…

After this I had some sentiments and also colored some stamped image on old book paper and my tags are ready! These are ready to hit any project now.

If you can see closely, I have also distressed the edges in some using the scrapping tool.

I now don’t have to think much about how to create textures. This comb gives me lot of freedom to explore and I can make projects in minutes now.

Here is one more I have created with the same comb! A WELCOME panel on a scrap piece of wood.

The central portion has the weave pattern created with the tool and I have also decoupaged the top and bottom edges on book paper. This was one quick project, ready in 10 mins.

So now I have a box full of stuff for which I really dint stress much.

With the year drawing to an end, These make awesome gifts to your loved ones and maybe you can gift yourself these tools from Plaid and see how fast you can now distress and create textures. I am sure you will agree that Decoupage along with distressing and texture is a "

drop dead" combination! Try it...

Do let me know how you enjoyed working with them. Wishing you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR and I will see you there soon!