Fractured Dolls Panels - a DecoArt Tutorial

Servus to all my true and new readers out there!
I finally managed to finish two panels that had been lying on my table for almost two months as I simply got stuck in the middle of the process...not knowing with what I would like to finish them.

But I have learned to be patient with things like these and today - when searching for something in my embellishments box the right things just lay there....waiting for me to put them on the prepared paint board panels! :)

And this is how they look like:

The two casts of fractured dolls were given to me by lovely Brigitte from "La maison de coutureuse" (as were the two bottlecaps with the wonderful French text on them). Thank you so much, Brigitte! Bisous!

Of course you can finish your fleur de lis boards with any objects you have in your stash, but I included the treatment with which I finshed the dolls off too.

To create the panels you will need:

- DecoArt Americana "Fleur de Lis" stencils
- DecoArt Americana acrylic colours "True Red" and "Bahama Blue"
- DecoArt "Dimensional Effects" paintable texture paste
- two paint boards
- Vaseline and a piece of cloth
- a soft brush

For giving the dolls and metal parts their colour and crackle finish you will need:

- DecoArt Traditions acrylic colours "Medium White", "Opaque White", "Burnt Umber", "Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide" and "Quinacridone Gold"
- DecoArt Traditions Glazing Medium
- DecoArt Decou Page matte
- DecoArt One Step Crackle
- water, brushes, a soft towel or piece of cloth
- two hinge clips and some metal corners
- casts of fractured dolls and bottle caps

The panels:

Step 1 

Using a palette knife apply DecoArt Dimensional Effects through two of the Americana "Fleur de lis" stencils and try to create a lot of texture by lifting off the palette knife several times when applying the paste. Let dry.

Step 2

Paint them with DecoArt Americana "True Red" and let dry. 

Step 3

Apply Vaseline in various places using your fingertip. This will act as a resist for the next coat of colour we will put on.

Step 4

Quickly paint over it with DecoArt Americana "Bahama Blue". Try to apply the colour generously and lightly, not going over a spot more than one time. 

Step 5

Once the colour is dry take a soft cloth and gently wipe off the colour with the areas you had covered with Vaseline. This will reveal the red underneath and give the panels the timeworn look of peeled paint.

(Sorry for the change of colour with the images...seems the light changed during the process). 

Your panels are finished. Next I will show you how I altered the fractured dolls casts. 

***

Step 1 

Seal the surface of the casts with a coat of DecoArt Traditions "Medium White". Let dry.

Step 2

Give them a wash of heavily diluted DecoArt Traditions "Burnt Umber".

Step 3

While you set the dolls aside to dry stipple some DecoArt Traditions "Burnt Umber" onto your metal embellishments and the clips using a bristle brush. 

Step 4

While these have to dry too seal your paper collaged bottle caps with a coat of DecoArt Decou Page.

Step 5

Make a mix of DecoArt Glazing Medium and Traditions "Opaque White" and water it down to achieve a medium wash. Apply it to your dolls after you have tried it on some piece of paper first to see if it is as translucent as you want it to be. 

Step 6 

Stipple some "Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide" and "Quinacridone Gold" onto your dry metal embellishments to create a rusty look. 

Step 7

Apply a thin coat of DecoArt One Step Crackle to your dry dolls and the bottle caps. Let dry. 

Step 8

Once these are dry rub in some DecoArt Traditions "Burnt Umber" and wipe back the excess with a damp cloth. 

Step 9

Arrange all the pieces on your boards until you are content and then glue themto your panels using DecoArt Decou Page matte. 

Yay! You're done!

***

Hope you liked the tutorial and the panels! Hugs and happy crafting, 

Claudia xx

As usual I have some close-ups for you:

***

Craft Stamper's April Take It - Make It Challenge

Servus and welcome back to the new Take It - Make It challenge over at Craft Stamper!

This month we want to see

 "Bottles" 

 at the center of your makes. 

This was the perfect excuse for me to buy the lovely Crafty Individuals stamp set with the poison bottles to use it on this tag:

To achieve more depth I layered and stacked the stamped and cut out bottles with sticky foam pads.

The "Danger" sign was stamped with DI "barn door" and given two coats of clear UTEE. Then I mounted it to my tag together with a cut to size piece of burlap paper.

The background was done from a colour copy of some old chemists notes I found at the flea market. I blended it with some DI pumice stone and sprinkled some water droplets on it. I also sprinkled it with some drops of watered down Distress ink "gathered twigs" (using a fine detail brush) and stamped some faux mug prints in several spots.

I repeated the red colour with the ribbon and one of the bottles' labels to make all my elements "bond" with the design and added a simple card enforcement ring to place emphasis on the worn and aged paper look of my tag.

Hope to see you join in Craft Stamper's Take It - Make It challenge soon! There's a prize to be won too! ;)

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia xx

Your Favourite Technique Goes Steampunk - April Challenge at SASPC

Servus and welcome back to my monthly challenge double feature day ;)
As you all know by now the challenges at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges AND over at Our Creative Corner go online on the 1st of the month - so, please, scroll down to the previous post if you want to see my make and learn about the challenge theme for Our Creative Corner's challenge. I would really love you to take a look at my make for OCC after reading this post as it is a variation of the same "tray theme", but done with different colour scheme and images - and a lot of thought alongside my heart and soul went into that make just as much as with this one.

But now to my make for SASPC (= Sandee&Amelie's Steampunk Challenges). The theme is

Your Favourite Technique Goes Steampunk

which means that you can use your very personal favourite crafting/stamping/painting/drawing/embossing/....technique to create a Steampunk make for our challenge.

Actually I combined four of my favourite techniques with this project: paper mache, using found (and rusted) objects, creating shadow boxes or trays and assemblage. 

I found these four lovely "moustache messieurs" at the flea market at Vienna's famous Naschmarkt and built the frame around them using thick corrugated card in two layers, washi tape and a lot of scraps from old book pages. 

The rusted springs and the key with the tag that says "Pumpen Aggregat" (= pump power unit) on one side and "Elektrizitätswerk" (=power house) on the other were given to me by my husband's lovely uncle Helmut. I still have a lot of treasures he gave to me sitting in a large box - waiting to be used and given a new purpose. Thank you so much, Uncle Helmut! You are my star! :)

To create the tray I used the photographs as a measure and cut several strips from the corrugated card using a carpet knife and metal ruler. I glued two strips together to achieve more depth with the frame. 

I used washi tape to cover the tops and especially sides of the corrugated card strips so the book paper scraps would stick to them better. Then I glued torn scraps from an old book randomly all over the frame pieces using DecoArt Decou-page matte. I love this stuff as it dries incredibly fast and still takes on colour afterwards! 

If used heavily it even holds the metal parts in place! 

Once all had dried I gave the frame several swipes with Distress stains to achive a weathered and aged look that works well with the photographs.

The fabulous light bulb that sits on top of my creation was given to me by Brigitte from "la maison de coutureuse"! Thank you so much, Brigitte! Bisous!

I gave it a treatment with various alcohol inks before I glued it to the top using the Decou-page glue and sealant again. 

The piece that sits underneath the light bulb is a watch part from an old alarm clock I took apart. 

I love to use items that tell their very own stories.

The more aged they look the better.

And old handwritings always make me wonder who wrote them and what these persons might have lived up to. 

Using such objects on my makes makes them more "precious" to me. Nostalgia may of course be a factor too, but I especially love the idea that if I use things that once belonged to someone who lived in a bygone aera, I help a little to prevent this person from being forgotten. 

I also like that the names and adresses of the photography studios where the pictures have been taken still can be traced. The monsieur to the right (in the upper picture) seems to have dedicated his portrait to his aunt (as on the back it says "Please, accept this portrait as a proof of your nephiew's  everlasting thankfulness, dear aunt!" - no need to mention that his handwriting was done as properly and beautifully as possible....today we would just hit the buttons on our mobile phones and send a short "thanks, auntie" or something like that I suppose). 

I think the expressions on their faces are just adorable, aren't they? And look at their moustaches! Wow! 

"Nonsense!" ("Unsinn!") it reads just to the left on top of the glued on gear. ;)

I like when randomly torn out text passages catch the eye and make the reader associate spontaneous images or scenes.  

I hope you like my assemblage showing the four MM - moustache messieurs! I had a wonderful time at my work desk glueing, tearing and colouring my frame.

What's your favourite technique and how could you use it to create a steampunk project for our challenge? I'd LOVE to learn about it!

By joining our challenge you become eligible for a prize win, Top3 votes and/or being spotlighted in an extra post on our challenge blog! We are an "anything goes" Steampunk challenge blog as long as the makes you enter are obviously steampunk and/or vintage with at least a little Steampunk twist! I would love to see your projects over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges soon!

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia x

With a Song in Your Heart - April Challenge at OCC

Alison (aka butterfly) is hosting this month's challenge over at Our Creative Corner and of course she chose a word related theme - this time connected with song lyrics you are to use and display with your creations:

With a Song in Your Heart!

I have always been very much drawn to songs because of their lyrics and there is an album I really never tire of listening to: Nik Kershaw's "15 minutes" from 1998. 

Honestly I really couldn't decide for some days which song to choose for my DT project as they are all together just brilliant observations on daily life issues and "being too human" in many situations, relationship problems or even philosophical reflections on life in general and the journey we are all on. 

I finally decided to go for "What Do You Think of it So Far?" as it matches some of the new Tim Holtz "Found Relatives" images so perfectly.

The song's chorus says 

"What do you think of it so far?

Do you wonder there might be something better?

Do you think about where you are?

Do you wonder where you're going?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD9LTPa_tDs

and these are simply the most essential questions there are to life, aren't they?

You will find that I didn't put the single phrases in their order of appearance in the song but I assigned them to the appropriate stages of life shown in the pictures. Which gives the questions even more meaning as if I would have done one after another.


The words in the metal labels at the bottom of each compartment on my tray are meant to express some outer or more general view on that stage instead of the one person's view who's life stages are shown. I believe that we are never completely free from seeing "us" and "our lives" from society's (or other peoples') point of view too. Which sometimes makes it hard for us to stay true to our very own believes and goals.

 Taking time to rethink our lives can be a good thing! And I am definitely not talking about quarrelling with all the bad things that happened to us in the past. I am sure we all will find things we are proud of or which made us happy and things we'd rather leave behind if we looked back at our journeys so far. Maybe this helps with recognising that mistakes are an essential part of the process and of life in general. We are meant to make them so we can learn from them and find out about ourselves: what we really love to do and where we are only following a call that hasn't been ours from the very start. We don't have to be perfect and we will never be - but we can try to find the perfect balance between our very own duties and dreams, wishes and responsibilities, between loving and letting go.

I know - the question seems rather selfish or even harsh when seeing it combined with the great "quest" of successful marriage ;)
But we have to make a lot of decisions during our lives that we have (or at least think we are meant) to stick with for almost the rest of it. So wondering if there might be something better often prevents us from getting lucky I suppose...waiting for the better thing to come and letting slip a good thing from our hands.
But "love" makes this question vanish, doesn't it?

I remember my son asking me about two years ago why he was born at all and what he is meant to do, fulfil or become "here on earth". The one big question above all the others! And rather difficult to answer....
I told him he was here to make of his life everything he thinks might be good for him and which will make him happy and feel meaningful. And that mankind is here because of some kind of "accidental" evolutionary process (just like all the other creatures and plants on earth) and that it is not our duty to live up to some unreachable higher noble goals or having to follow any of society's actual ideas of living a "successful life".
Well...he surely didn't like my answer as it didn't help him then, but it was the best I could come up with and I believe that I said the right thing. ;)
I really hope for my son that he will be able to live a life that will make him happy!

 Children still are able to trust. And have to have someone and something they can trust in. So the question to "do you wonder where you're going?" might rather be a "no" at that stage ;) When we are children we feel the world is lying at our doorstep and just waiting to be conquered! (Sadly we loose most of this feeling almighty and being great conquerors while growing up).

I made my tray from thick corrugated card (that was a left over from the packaging of our new kitchen's fridge and furniture) and old book pages scraps which I glued over some washi tape using matte DecoArt Decou-page glue and sealant. After all had dried I gave the tray some washes with Ranger Distress stains "vintage photo", tea dye" and "antique linen".

The chorus was printed out on heavy copy paper,  blended with DI "vintage photo" and glued in place. The metal labels were fixed to the images before I glued them into their compartments.

 For a finish I embellished my tray with some goodies I mainly got from Sandra (SanDee1899) and Brigitte (coutureuse)! Thanks again, girls, for all the lovely stuff you sent me! xoxo. I chose of course embellishments that partially are meant to work as symbols with the images and texts they are combined with.

The DecoArt Decou-page holds them  in place perfectly well! I used the gloss version for the fractured doll to add some porcellain effect to it (as it was a plaster done in a mould).

I hope you like my tray and give Nik Kershaw's fabulous song (or even album) a listen! Hope to see you entering the "With a Song in my Heart" - challenge at Our Creative Corner soon! I will love to hear some new songs and see your interpretations! There is a prize to win, the chance to become the challenge winner and therefore get a guest designers spot or the chance to make Alisons's Top3! So get your favourite songs out and start creating! :)

Hugs and happy crafting,
Claudia x