A Shabby Shadow Box

I've altered another Twiddleybitz shadow box!!

I could not resist doing a bit of shabby chic for this one 

Once the shadowbox was assembled using PVA, I started with Ferro Iron to cover the outsides (that's the brown); then rubbed over the surface with Inka Gold - I LOVE how this brings out all the texture!

Then I used Viva Stone Art on the frame and attached it at certain points only, with hot glue - it's curved as it was slightly bigger than the frame...

Added some gorgeous hand-made items, charms, and flowers (after spraying with gold perfect pearls mists) from my2angels

I then glued some tea-stained muslin inside the box.  All done and ready for a keepsake :-)

Twiddleybits Products Used:
Twiddleybitz - Shadow Box Sm; Card size (SBS001)
Twiddleybitz - Small Vintage Overlay (OV004)

Other Products Used:
Viva Decore - Ferro, Textured Paint (Iron)
Viva Decore' - Inka Gold (Gold)
Viva Decore' - Stone Art
My2angels - Shabby Brown Charming Embellishments
My2angels - Large Antique Bronze Key
My2angels - Antique Bronze Large Flower Filigree
My2angels - Set of keys on ring charm
My2angels - Two-tone Brown Cherry Blossoms (Flowers)
My2angels - Muslin

Thanks for joining me today - I hope you enjoyed my post and will try our gorgeous range of Shadow Boxes.  It really doesn't matter what your scrapping style is - we have one perfect for you!

Altering Chipboard with Trudi Harrison

Hi and Welcome Twiddley Fans!

Our Design Team gal TRUDI HARRISON is with us today. 

This is one way which Trudi really likes to alter Twiddleybitz chipboard. This technique is great for adding texture and interest and the colours can easily be altered to suit any project. 

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Today I thought a little something more on the grungy side would be a nice effect to show you.

You will need the following: 

Ink - I used VersaMagic Oasis Green  and Prima Brick Wall

Distress Stain - I used Peacock Feathers

Distress Paint Tarnished Brass or Aidrondack Metallic Gold Paint Dabber

Twinklets Diamond Dust

Heidi Swapp Color Shine - I used Georgia Peach

Clear Drying Glue

I am showing this technique using Twiddleybitz Chipboard BOR009 Flourish Spray Border.  

Dab Oasis Green Ink over the chipboard piece and allow to dry.

Go over the piece with Peacock Feathers Distress Stain. You may like to give the piece a couple of applications depending on the depth of colour. 

Randomly dab Brick Wall ink over the piece and allow to dry.

Apply some wet clear drying glue over some of the areas. Sprinkle with diamond dust. Tap off the access and allow to dry.

**Improvise with chunky glitter if you don't have diamond dust**

 Spray over the applied diamond dust with color spray and allow to dry. A couple of applications may be needed again depending on the depth you want to achieve.

Dab a little Tarnished Brass Distress Paint around the edges and randomly over the top. Metallic gold paint also looks terrific.

Dab a little more Peacock Feathers Distress Stain over some of the diamond dust.

Your piece is now ready to be incorporated into your crafting project.

 

Part 3-Twiddleybitz Gate Book with Ngaire Gilligan

Hi Twiddley Fans!

Welcome back to Ngaire's next installment in recreating her altered Gate Book.

Let’s continue with the mini album.

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I love this patterned paper Olive. Such a lovely gold colour and the background pattern is very pretty. It really rocks against the black (inked) edges on the chipboard page too.

I accidentally deleted a couple of the photo steps here – but they are pretty simple - so I can pop them all together here and you can still clearly see what I did. Down the left side of the page I randomly attached 3 of the word strips from the Sticker Sheet.

Below this, I placed a circular die cut element from the Collectibles pack over a decorative circular piece I cut using a Die-namics die. Because it was going to overlap the edge of the page, I actually cut out two of them and glued them together so that both sides show the same black patterned paper.

Before attaching the circular die cut – I cut along the black strip that contains the word ‘memory’, as I intend inserting another embellishment under the word strip.

 A die cut strip of grey lace was placed under the circle die cut, but over the fancy die cut. The photo is going to go over part of the lace strip – so I used the photo to help me ‘place’ it in the correct position.

Now for the photo – one of my favourites from 2011.

 The main decorative element on this page is the gorgeous Eiffel Tower (EIF001) fromTwiddleybitz. Again – the finish is multi-layered. Start with a sparkly gold ink …

 then add a little black ink here and there to ‘age’ the chipboard a little…

 and finish up with some Crystalina Kindyglitz – which is heated with a heat-gun untilsome of the ‘sparkle’ transmutes into a duller, golden glimmer. You get a random pattern of sparkle and glimmer – which looks very interesting – and less overwhelming than the full sparkle alone does.

I’ve slipped the tower up under the ‘memory’ word strip in the die cut circle so that it also ‘ende’ off the photo..

 Next comes a large metal flower – and in the centre of this I added some moreCrystalina Kindyglitz – leaving it to dry naturally and thus retain the full sparkle.

 On the other side of the page I added a small rosebud bouquet I made from seven medium-sized, pink rosebuds and a small left-over pink crinkle ribbon.

 And then to finish it all off – I added a small bronze butterfly charm which had been liberally coated with yet more Crystalina Kindyglitz.

 The journalling for this page is going on a tag that I intend hiding behind the photo. Keeping it simple – I took a journalling panel from Pistachio and inked the edges of it – before adding several die cut elements (the cotton reel is from the Collectibles Pack and the clockface is from one of the papers); one of these cute little Mini Keys(MINI004) from Twiddleybitz; and a bit of black crinkled ribbon. The key got the same treatment as the Eiffel Tower and looks way better in real life than in this photo.

Here the tag has been popped into its hiding place behind the photo.

 Finally – the page – as it looks in the finished album.

The next page comes as part of a ‘set’ – so I’ll put all those together in my next post.

I hope you are enjoying working through the mini – if you have any questions about it – please feel free to ask me.

Part 2-Twiddleybitz Gate Book with Ngaire Gilligan

Hi Twiddley Fans,

Ngaire Gilligan is back with us today sharing the next step in recreating her altered Gate Book.

So here we go:

The inner side of the front cover pages have been designed to match the first full page of the album. The base paper for all 3 pages, is the pretty, blue reverse side ofQuince. The main page included part of the floral design on this paper, but the inner cover pages use the plain blue section of the paper.

The main embellishment on the left inner cover is this gorgeous Twiddleybitz  Flying Butterfly Clock – Steam (SPK002).  The final finish comes from a layered approach to the mediums applied to it. I started with an application of cream paint (Antique White from Kaiser). When you want a pale or light coloured finish to chipboard it is often best to apply a white/cream paint to start with, so that the chipboard colour itself does not alter/overshadow the final colour.

The next step is to apply Iridescent Gold Glimmermist so that you get a shimmery gold look to the chipboard. Although you are going to add in further medium layers, applying a shimmer now will allow it to show through in the background.

 The next step was to coat the butterfly in Rock Candy Crackle Paint and allow to dry. It’s best not to use  your heat gun on this, as the crackle does not work well with a heat gun – but once the crackle process is well underway, you can use a light application of heat to ‘extend’ the crackle. How cool does this look?

 Although this stage in the process is lovely – it is too pale for the colours used in the mini – so I need to darken it a little. I’ve done this by applying a darker colour to the crackle finish (in this case Galaxy Gold Brilliance Ink) and rubbing it into the cracks in the crackle paint so that it emphasises the cracks and darkens the finish.  To further grunge it up a little I also rubbed a small amount of black ink into the edges of the chipboard. So here is the final piece – full of interest and texture and an underlying glimmer.

When starting with the embellishing of the left inner page I popped a section of hand cut flowers (from the floral pattern on Quince) on the right hand edge of the page. Like most cut out pieces I do, I’ve applied some matching ink to the edges of the cut out elements to help hide the sharp white edge you get from cutting them out of the paper. 

 One of the ticket die cuts (with complimentary colours to the paper) from theCollectibles pack was next.

 Next comes my gorgeous butterfly.

 And then some of the word pennants from the Collectibles pack.

 And the finishing touch – a small cream (no brand) flower – which has been sprayed with a light misting of Iridescent Gold Glimmermist.

Here is the page in the album.

 

 And another close-up of that gorgeous pattern on the butterfly…

The middle page has this gorgeous floral pattern down one side and I love that so much, that I didn’t want to hide it very much. The photo takes up most of the rest of the blank space on the page, so the trick is to try and embellish around the photo – leaving as much of that pretty pattern as possible.

  

 To make the most of the space, I’ve chosen to use some corners from the Swirls Pack 8 pieces (SPK002) which I am going to tuck under the photo corners and have protruding over the edge of the page. For this page I want to emphasise the white/gold combination on the page (since the photo has some white on it too) so I’ve chosen gold ink and a white/gold embossing enamel finish for the chippy.

I’ve started off with my go-to Galaxy Gold Brilliance Ink for the base layer …

and finished it off with this lovely Stampendous Aged Ivory Embossing Enamel.  It’s a mixture of off-white with this stunning gold fleck mixed in here and there. Love it.

And here the corners are, tucked in under opposing corners of the photo.

 I found this lovely little journalling spot in the 6.5″ Paper Pad - it was perfect popped into a space in the floral pattern. I also added in a small bit of hand cut flowers that were left over from the left (inside) cover page.

 The final touches were a hand cut butterfly for the top right corner – which was looking a bit bare – and a journalling tag from the Collectibles pack. I added a length of black ribbon to the tag and popped it in behind the photo. Most of the photos in this album have been adhered with dimensional tape for the purpose of allowing me to hide the journalling tags behind the photo.

And here is the page in the finished album.

The inside, right cover has been kept pretty simple – partially because the left side is so complex and dimensional and partially because I really wanted to feature the die cut quote panel. After cutting out and trimming the panel, I lightly inked the edges so that it would stand out from the background paper a little better. Underneath it I put a bit of muslin fabric, which I had pulled apart at the edges a little to make it look fragile and delicate.

The only addition to the page is a trio of the small flowers I’ve used throughout the album. It’s nice to repeat elements so as to make sure that the various pages are linked throughout the whole mini.

 

 Here is the same page in the finished album.

And there you go – the first set of pages are done.

Part 1- Twiddleybitz Gate Book with Ngaire Gilligan

Hi Twiddley Fans,

We are in for a real treat this week as our Design Team Member NGAIRE GILLIGAN takes us through her creative process for altering our BK016 GATE BOOK.

Hasn't Ngaire done a fabulous job!

 So let’s make a start with the gates and cover pages.

[Apologies on the quality of some of my photos during the putting together of the album. Most of it was done late at night and the lighting reflects that.]

To create the cover pages that will be seen through the wrought iron gates, I first inked the edges of the chipboard with Black Soot Distress Stain. This gave me a ‘finished’ edge to them – making it easier to add patterned paper without needing to cut it exactly.

Before beginning the mini album I picked out the photos I wanted to use. Most of them have our old, faded grey paling fence in the background behind my daughter. I wanted to reproduce this fence as part of the mini album and the paling fence pattern of theWillow paper in the Pickled Pear range allowed me to do this easily.

I trimmed down two pieces of Willow to match the size of the gate covers and another to match the back cover. This is easiest to do by tracing around the chipboard pieces, using them as templates. Then I trimmed them down a further 0.5 cm along all edges. I’m going to use the piece meant for the back cover for all the images that go with my explanation of the process.

Once you have it trimmed down to size, you need to use a distressing tool (a properHeidi Swapp or Tim Holtz one works best – though a pair of scissors will do fine too) along all the edges to rip and distress them. Add in some additional bigger rips here and there and tear some ‘holes’ in the fence in a couple of places. I’ve popped it back onto the chipboard cover here, so you can see how well the holes will contrast against the patterned paper.

The next step is to use a black ink (try to use an old pad if you can, so that the ink is not heavy and black, but is faded) along all the edges. It is important to ink down along the rips and tears to age them as well. A little bit of ‘overspray’ to the inking is fine too – see the 2 rip holes below for what I mean.

The final touch is to lightly wipe the ink pad across the paper here and there, so that you leave a light smattering of ink. A sort of smudgy look. This will ‘age’ the fence panels in the un-ripped sections to match the edges/rips. Have a good look at the following image and compare it to the one before it – you should be able to see that the second image is grungier than the first.

When you are happy with how they look – attach the fence panels to the chipboard cover with dimensional tape.

Here are the 2 front panels to match the back cover.

And here is the one on the left after I put the mini album title on it. I’ve used the Itty Bitty Alphabet (ALPHA005B) from Twiddleybitz for my title. These particular alphas are black to start with – but I added some black Kindyglitz to them to make them sparkle a little. Although it’s a similar product to Black Soot Distress Stickles – the finish is very different. The Kindyglitz has less texture to it, the ‘black’ is more pronounced and the glitter is more evenly spread compared to the Distress Stickles. Apologies that you cannot see the sparkle on the alphas – Kindyglitz is notoriously hard to capture properly in photos without using a flash and doing that would have flashed out everything else.

And here are the two inner gate pages as they appear in the final album.

I like the back of my mini albums to be fairly flat and not overly embellished – so all I added to it was a simple journalling spot and a couple of word strips – all from theCollectibles pack.

I wanted a wrought iron feel to the actual gates themselves, but at the same time I wanted them to be pretty and feminine. I got the best of both worlds by producing a glittery, rusted look to them by using the following process.

Ink the gates with a shimmery gold ink. It needs to be nice and thick. I’ve used Galaxy Gold Brilliance Ink from Dew Drop.  Then heat gun it to make it set. Check out the shimmer – this is one gorgeous ink.

I wanted a dual-tone look to the gates – so over the gold I randomly applied someWeathered Wood Distress Ink. It matches the dominant blue in the paper range really well.

To get the rusty look I needed 2 stages – the first was to rub over the gate randomly with Black Soot Distress Ink and then heat gun the gate to set all the inks. You can still see bits of the Weathered Wood here and there.

The second half of the process is to add a thick layer of Black Soot Distress Sticklesand dry this with a heat gun. You get this lovely sparkly look that is both grungy and textured at the same time.

Here’s another couple of views of the texture of the gates in better light.

Once my gate – both sides – was done, it was time to add embellishments. That’s a rather organic process – so it is a bit hard to take photos step by step thoughout. I pulled apart two Prima arrangements – one relatively recent vine with plastic leaves and flowers; and a much older bouquet-style arrangement of paper flowers. The yellows, light green and white of the flowers were a perfect match for the Pickled Pear paper range. To the gate on the left I added a small bronze filagree butterfly charm.

To attach the flowers to the gate I first entwined them around the ‘rails’ with whatever bits of stem and vine I could. Then I added a few touches of glue here and there to make sure they all stay put. I prefer using Tombow glue (the white/green container) but sometimes I find it doesn’t hold up to high level use – so I’m not sure how it will cope with heavy duty handling – but for just looking at – it should all stay put.

Here’s the completed left gate over it’s matching cover.

And here is the left gate as it appears in the finished album.

Another shot – this time looking on the ribbons that are tied around the “rings” holding the album together. I used a variety of ribbon styles, widths and colours (even some tulle netting) and tied some of them into bows, leaving others just as tied on strands.

(A note on the rings – they are silver – not my preferred colour, which is bronze. I can’t find any large bronze rings – well, I can’t find bronze rings of any size actually. Sigh – I will settle for black if I can find them – even a cream or green to match the paper colours. Anything is better than the silver. I live in hope of finding some.)

The other side of the gate has a matching floral cluster.

To finish off this side of the gate – since the other side got the title – I popped a couple of the die cut butterflies from the Collectibles Pack together and then put them over one of the journalling spots from the same pack. This is slightly smaller in size than the hole in the gate – so to keep it in place, I punched out an acetate circle and glued that to the underside of the gate and then glued the journalling spot to the front of that.

And here is the right gate as it appears on the finished album.

And now both gates together. The final touch to the gates was to add a little bronze chain wrapped around the gate. This was then emvellished with a bronze key and lock charm set, a bronze butterfly dangle charm and some pearls. The chain has been wrapped around both gates indpendently and then the final length is used to tie them together. You open up the chain by undoing the lobster clasp holding the two ends together. As you can see, without this, the album has a tendency to gape open.

A close up of that gorgeous chain/charm album closure.

With the gate covers done it’s time to move onto the inner pages.  Check them out in up-coming posts.