Saucy Centrepiece

“We want you to grab any inspiration you like from these wonderfully exotic photographs...

Go for colours, shapes, textures, objects or style - There is certainly plenty of inspiration to choose from here in this selection of glorious, vivid, colourful photographs.
Join us in the summer holiday mood....!!!”

This is the challenge over at Our Creative Corner this month of August 2015.
Join in on the challenge because there are some nifto prizes to be won from our generous sponsor Tando Creative. Be sure to link over there (click on their logo to go) to see their mind blowing variety and collection of awesome stuff they have got going on.

I did a littl’ ol’ whoopdy whoop at this moodboard because my house loves these colours.  In fact I even have 

walls these colours, for real, “look it Linda, look it” 

So the moodboard made me do a little celebration dance, though that is not what that crazy picture on the right was about, that’s just random picture that got taken of me with my cute coloured walls behind me.  My lounge, dining room, kitchen is one big open plan townhouse meld, so whatever colour scheme happens in any one of those areas has to happen everywhere else too.

I have to tell you that when I see those vibrant colours like those in the moodboard, for some reason it makes me think of the Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, the Yucatan and that sort of thing.  I assume it is because of the association with the glorious, gorgeous woven cloth and patterns, traditional to that area.

So I had already had this little Aztec idea floating around in my head.

But I had a more pressing issue to deal with at hand.  Dinner time for me always requires one of the following hefty doses:  pickles, shaved chilli, Tabasco, Worcestershire Sauce. Powdered Parmesan, Crushed dried Chilli or Chilli-Garlic Salt and a variety of peppery infused olive oil blends.

Lately I have been thinking that I need to have all my condiment and sauce bottles on the dining table instead of hunting around for it in the cluttery collection of everything I have standing on my kitchen counter.  I get a little frustrated when I can’t get to my chilli instantly.

So anyhow, I did rescue them from the certain clutter kitchen counter death,  took them out and placed them in the centre of the table for easy access,  but……. they just didnt fit with the whole theme going on in the space that they were in and to be brutally honest, they just weren’t cute enough in their original packaging.

A plan needed to come together. 

The necessity of cuteness, the hot tamales connection and the coincidence of the August theme at Our Creative Corner culminated in this here my “SAUCY CENTREPIECE”.

Not only do they add a nice design accent to the room, but they do have a practical purpose, functional decor is a score!!!

I pulled out a bunch of different mediums and techniques for this cheery collection.  I have to give props and kudos to my favourite South African brand of craft supplies –  magnificent DALA.  Yes, you have heard me go on and on and on about them before.

The first order of business was to wash out some older sauce, vinegar and oil bottles, and remove the labels.  I siphoned in some denture cleaner, added some warm water and let that sit

for a while.  My idea here was that if it can clean dentures, it ought to sterilise the inside of these bottles as well.  It was well worth the look on the Dischem lady’s face when I asked where I could find denture cleaner.  I literally did see her stare at my teeth, as she tried to reconcile her confusion about my request for fizzy denture cleaner and my not so denture perfect looking teeth.

I then became paranoid about denture cleaner residue being in the bottles.  So I boiled the bottles in a vinegar and water solution – not sure why, I just thought vinegar would remove the residue and that it would work better if it was boiling hot. No scientific basis for this step, just paranoia manifesting in weird ideas. This kinda also got the labels loose off of the bottles – aha, that’s what I am going to say – I boiled them in vinegar to get the labels off.  Important observation coming up – boiled vinegar reeks and gives you a strange craving for S&V Pringles.

Now that I have the bottles all sterilised and vinegar cured – I got to the fun part – altering the bottles. I stained them with Dala Glass Stain, I painted them with Dala Glass Glaze, I drew patterns with Dala Glass Liner, I plastered on some texture paste on some bottles and dyed the design with Dala Suncolour Dye. 
I made wire symbols (with -you guessed it - Dala Coloured Craft wire) that I thought looked somewhat in-theme and wrapped them around some bottles.
I made up some fake Aztec/Mayan symbols (I didnt want to blindly copy some symbol and then find out later that I have called down some kind of curse down from Atahulpa or something).

To add more interest to the stained bottles I wire-wrapped or hempcord wrapped the necks of the bottles and added a few beads and the like.

I dipped some of the tops in a sealing wax that I melted in makeshift double-boiler to which I added wax crayons to dye it the right shade of green.

Now I am pretty sure painting glaze and drawing designs on a bottle is self-explanatory, so I am going to forego a (redundant) tutorial as I usually include for that. 

I am sure that you can work it out and have fun messing around that way. 

What I am going to include though is a little bit of information on the products that I used – if you’re a South African, you probably know them cos they are pretty household I think when you think of paint and crayons and playdough, but I do want to let you in on the fact that they carry some other really cool products like glass glaze and stain and liner that I didn’t know about until recently. They also have a ceramics line of products that I have not messed with yet.


 
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and I got jiggy with my new favourite craft thing GLASS LINER, this stuff holds shape and texture to a decent degree and adds a faux leaded glass effect. I am going to do a whole other post on all the  ways that I have discovered that you can use this awesome product to create some pretty darn awesome effects and texture some time later.

Finally I bust out the ol’ texture paste

and Dala Suncolour Dye Ink. 

Dala Suncolour will stain and dye ceramic tiles – I got some on my porch tiles and have never been able to remove it and it is still as garishy vibrant as it was four years ago when the accident happened. I have blogged about this before as well – here are some links to posts where I have done other things with suncolour apart from dyeing fabric – 
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2015/01/string-lights-alchemy-our-creative.html.
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2012/02/homemade-kraft-core-coredinations-duped.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2013/02/faux-weathered-leather-effects-with-dala.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2014/12/i-made-design-team-on-rad-craft.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2013/03/just-because-i-wanted-to-add-second-tag.html

I’m telling you guys DALA is the freaking best, they have everything and at the fraction of the cost that you would usually pay for similar products in other ranges.

So that's my creation for the August challenge at Our Creative Corner

and if you want to get into a debate with me about it - I am going to stick little Mateo on you!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI9iEgdujjA

Cards, cuts and the amazing things you can do with MAKE THE CUT

On one of my pin-surfing trips this weekend – I found the most adorable French dresser type card that I instantly fell in love with.  http://pinterest.com/pin/78461218478519460

And Mother’s day was coming up and I still hadn’t made a card for my mama by then.  So I decided that this would be really cute to do and that she would love it because she’s a dresser kinda gal.  It was too cute and I had to try my hand at it.

Anyhow, I didn't have any cut patterns for the dresser so I turned to my favourite cutting programme ever – MAKE THE CUT and designed my own super cute French dresser with drawers. 

I think I have  worked out how to  how to host and link a downloadable file on blogger (much love to Lindsay from the http://thefrugalcrafter.wordpress.com/
for showing me how to do this) – I am  making those cut files available to all you cool readers of this blog too so that “if you get the feeling” – you don't have to spend an hour searching for a cut file and then suddenly realise that you could just do it yourself on MTC, then spend another half hour drawing that.  It will hopefully be available right here:

- MTC Project file  Download link -
http://www.4shared.com/file/wSBrBGnr/french_dresser.html

- Plain SVG Download link -http://www.4shared.com/file/wSBrBGnr/french_dresser.html

If you don't have MTC or a digital cutter (which you really should if you don't because it is so stinking brilliant).  I am going to try and save the images in a PPT so that you can print and then cut out by hand – the layers are all so simple it is totally cuttable by hand even with those big, clunky round ended toddler scissors.  You may be able to find those here:
  
 - PPT Download link -

 http://www.4shared.com/office/ywj3h8gm/ppt_dresser_cut_files.html.  

Someone let me know if these links work please.

There are way too many cute ideas I have in my head right now that I could use this basic cut file for.  How about a mirror stand and some chairs?

I used a digital cutter to cut out the layered pieces,I cut it out of Flexoid – which is oil resistant gasket paper sold at a autoparts store.  My dad actually turned me onto this when he saw my grungepaper, and thought it looked really similar to gasket paper.  It doesn't work as well as grungeboard (being that it

wasn’t particularly designed for crafting, or to be be pretty) but it is a pretty decent second and I can buy it by the metre, which for me is like a present – I am a ridiculous bulk-buying freak.

Anyhow, once I assembled all the layer pieces together – I stuck some acetate on the inside of the folded window pieces and then applied a super generous layer of Dala Hard Polyurethane varnish and Glossy accents -   I sort of wanted it to look like thick bubbly hand-blown vintage glass.  It didn't turn out the way I imagined but I wasn’t entirely displeased with the final effect.


Just before I folded the window layer – I painted the inside piece white with a light blue tint.  I then varnished the whole thing with Dala Polyurethane Hard Varnish.  It reminded me of those old cabinets and things my granddad used to have lying around.  My granddad was a carpenter and there were always crazy, cool things about his house, including various bits of furniture and pianos that he used to restore.

To make the background I used one of my favourite new Spellbinders M-bossabilites embossing folders that I got a few months ago.   They are dual textured embossing folders.  You just flip it depending on which texture you want.  This particular one is my favourite – it has a bark/woodgrain texture on one side and brick texture on the other on the other. Their designs are so rad.I distressed inked that in Fired Brick (naturally!) The hue of the Flexoid paper is sort of halfway between Kraft and Manila Tag, so the debossed contrast of the “plaster”is just perfect.    

To add a little dimension – I sort of pleated and fanned out a teeny piece of red silk ribbon to make the burlesque-y secret spill out of the drawer.

I stuck a sewing pin through it to hold it in place and give it structure then poured on super glue to seal it. 

I used the wire cutting bit on a set of pliers to snip off the head and the point of the sewing pin.

Then I just super glued that down – I used some Chiswick adhesive foam squares to pop the top drawer out a bit over it.

For the assembly of the card, I folded a piece of kraft card stock, stamped all over it with one of the new line of Chiswick clear stamps in sepia archival ink and then cut a piece of black cardstock to provide the sandwich contrast between the fired red brick and and the neutral background of the kraft base.
  

I used the We-R-Memory Keepers Stub and Deco punch to clean up the corners and stuck those pieces together with snail adhesive from Crafter’s Companion.  I really like Crafter’s Companion adhesives, including the spray adhesive – It’s pretty strong and its reliable – I feel like I never have to worry about the nozzle gunging up or the snail runner slipping and stuff. 

The inside of the card was not too spectacular – I tried to keep it primitive – I’m afraid my obsession with gears and iron and steampunk love never quite left though – even though I tried hard to keep it in check.  Here is the crazy inside – just a few scribbles and I also wanted to test out these new Bic (kokies, if you’re South African – markers if you’re not) that I got at Dischem (???!??!) that have “INK EATER” markers.  I thought it might look kinda cool to have a zebra type print going on with the lettering – it was passable, it turned out looking much more doodle-sketchy than I intended….oh well…wasn’t that bad though.

I cant wait to play around more with this look.  I loved the contrast of the red brick and wood.  I think just a window with a funky blind against that brick background might also be pretty rad. The whole think made me think of those cool  old warehouses remodelled into bohemian apartments, that you would find in like New York, habitated in by hipster-trendy art people.   The  best part was that my mom loved it – I didn’t even put it in an envelope – I just had it hanging out on the front of the gift bag and it looked like it was suspended by the MOM bunting as well.  Super cool all around. 

So anyway that is it for now.  I’ll see what I can do about trying to upload the cut files.

Rusty Patina Effect double the pleasure

Here is how I got the cool rusty effect on the egg - loving this right now and can think of all kinds of things I can do with this effect.

Step 1
Paint your first layer of red, red-brown, or dark orange on the embellishment.  Your paint consistency has to be quite liquidy so that it soaks into the paper or cardstock - I used grungeboard.  For this layer I used a combination of Ink and Paint - I mixed the ink in to give it more liquid pigment, so that it would saturate nicely.  If you dont want to waste your precious Distress Ink - you can use regular office stamp-pad red.  These are like R5-00 a 20ml bottle (about US$ 0.50) and are super saturated.  I used Dala Drawing Inks and Dala Suncolour though because I had that on hand.  Heat with hair dryer or heat gun to speed up dry time.

Step 2
Using a variety of Distress Paint - I used Salty Ocean, Picked Raspberry, Mowed Lawn and Mustard Seed - dot randomly on craft sheet relatively close to each other. First place embellish face down down in the paint, then drag it around a little.  Dry with heat gun.  Repeat the process with the excess paint (this is just to give you more layers of colour.) - If the paint has started to dry out on the craft sheet, spritz with water to reactivate. .

Step 3
While the paint is still a little tacky or wet - sprinkle your pearl powder (or in my case mineral mica) ever so slightly over - it helps if you do this with a soft brush.  I used a combination of copper, bronze and gold.  I think I started with the gold and bronze (which had more brown pigment than red-orange, and then went all over with the red-orange copper.  If it is unevenly spread - that is okay, it adds to the effect.  Dry that with a heat gun.

Step 4
Once you are satisfied that it is dry enough - randomly sand off some bits.  Vary your sanding pressure and sand in random directions.  If you have one of those pencil-type sanding tools - those work great because you can sand pretty much exactly where you want to.  I got mine from the Manicure/Pedicure section at Dischem for about R20-00 (US$ 2-00).

Step 5
You will start to see that the the colour underneath is starting to be exposed.  If your pressure was uneven, in some places you will see a red-brown rim around the "patina" - I like that.

Step 6
You can stop here, or you can do what I did and paint a layer of high gloss Varnish over the top to seal it.  If you want it to have extra glossy dimension you can put a layer of Ranger Glossy accents over that.  That is what I did.

And there you have it - cool huh?

EDITED TO ADD:  28 MARCH 2013 - Tim Holtz has brought out a line of Metallic Distress Paint - which is really going to take the hassle out of the step with the Mineral Mica.