Thursday 3 February 2022

Shabby Chic Happiness :)

Hello lovelies and hope you are OK today.

There's a lot going on with this card today but I'll try and keep it as simple as I can.

I will do a video for this because it's much easier to do than I can explain in words.

So ...

... this is the finished card.

I've concentrated on making the faux wood here but I'll do the video this week to show you in detail how the card fits together.

I've left a shopping list for you at the end for the stuff I used but if you haven't got all the bits and bobs, just have a mooch in your stash because you can always swap what I've used for something you have.

It's shabby chic so it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect.

Doesn't this faux wood look fab?

So to make it, take a sheet of watercolour card and using a palette knife or whatever you have to hand and spread the texture paste over the card. (watercolour card works best because of the water content in the products used). You're aiming for uneven layers so vary how thick you apply it.

Once you've done that, take your palette knife or something with a straight edge - thick cardstock would do - and make lines in the paste with the side of the knife. Also dab the paste to create little peaks - you want this to look as textured as you can get it. Once you're happy, leave it to dry - I left mine overnight.

Once it's dry, depending on the texture paste you used, you might want to make it look a little less shiny so just give it a coat of white gesso if you need to and again leave to dry.

Once dry, cut into strips then use Walnut Stain and Peeled Paint inks or the colours of your choice to colour the surface. I used a blending brush for this but a smoothie would work.

Stick the strips down onto a bit of waster card smaller than the overall size of the strips to make it easier to add to the front of the card when we come to do that.

If you want to make the ends lie a bit uneven feel free - it looks nice like this I think.

More French Marigold flowers - I am addicted to this die set at the mo. This time I added some stamens I found in my stash but you don't have to add them. They look gorgeous with or without.

I used silicone glue to stick the flowers, twine and leaves down and once I'd completely finished, I sprinkled some of those little polystyrene balls over it - this sticks to any bits of the silicone glue that's bare. This is a great tip I got from Anna Marie - it's a fabulous cover up.