Coaster wall hanging

Hello ! It's Sue here and I'm very excited about being guest designer for the month of June ! Thank you so much Kim for inviting me ! I've been playing with the very versatile coasters and Distress Paints for my first project.

I decorated three coasters and for the one above I've used the Reverse Chicken Wire stencil with some Wendy Vecchi embossing paste. I then gave it a coat of Gesso before I started to apply the Distress Paints.

I painted some Grunge Paper with Broken China Distress Paint and cut the letters using the Tim Holtz WordPlay die.

I've used Broken China, Spiced Marmalade and Salty Ocean Distress Paints applying them with a baby wipe so that they blended easily. Once dry I used the brushes from the Tim Holtz Artful Tools set with black Archival ink.  The flower is a Wendy Vecchi Blossom Bucket embellishment and I've painted it with Spiced Marmalade Distress Paint and just tipped the edges with some coloured wax.

 For this coaster I used the Thistle stencil and Gesso, then applied the same colours of Distress Paints, again with a baby wipe. The Gesso resists the Distress Paint and lets the stencilling show through.

I painted some more Grunge Paper with Spiced Marmalade Distress Paint and die cut two butterflies using the Tim Holtz Mini Butterflies die.

I dabbed some more Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste onto the above coaster and when dry brushed some Broken China Distress Paint over it. I've used the Unity Stamp set called 'She Sprouted Wings' and stamped the text onto some Grunge Paper that has been painted with Broken China Distress Paint. The butterfly has also been stamped using the 'Be Brave' stamp from this set and I've added a spinner to the centre. The bottom piece is made using the Tim Holtz Mini Clipboard and Bottom die.

For the third coaster I've used the Thistle stencil again and this time used some more Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste. I've used the same colours of Distress Paints and I've also mixed some Broken China into some Distress Crackle Paint Clear Rock Candy and painted it over some areas. I've added the other butterfly and the text is again from the Unity Stamp set 'She Sprouted Wings'. I've attached the clipboad top with some split rings.

This is the completed project all linked together with split rings. I hope you've enjoyed my first project as much as I enjoyed making it !

Sue
x

Coasting along...

Hello everyone, Alison here.  I'm sharing a simple tutorial with you today, just to take you through how I built up the look of my coaster mini-book.  We know them as beermats here in the UK, but I'm working in translation, so "coasters" it is!

Really, this little book was intended to showcase the amazing Donna Downey stamps from Unity - both the hedgerow flowers and the fabulous sentiment sets.

I love these stamps and find them so inspiring, as well as very versatile.

So I started with my bare coasters, and gave them a rough coat of pale blue acrylic paint.  I deliberately left bare spaces at the edges for a rustic look.  It also means there's variation in the textures of my "canvas".

The next step was to use a piece of card to add some rough strokes and lines in another colour.  I used a dark brown, and the idea was to create the look of meadow grasses, shifting in the wind.

The strokes are pretty random, and I made several "cuts" in a row so that there were different amounts of paint being applied for each blade of grass.

Now some stamping - yay!  The first of the hedgerow stamps - these are the Wayward Blooms - done in Memento Teal Zeal.  As you can see, the stamp is huge (so cool!), so these are all partial stampings.

 I added some extra interest using some Tim Holtz tissue tape from the Hobgoblin set.  If you tear it lengthwise, then stick it down with the two straight edges against one another, you get a nice interesting rough edge to it.

Now the next stamp - Delicate Flowers - this time done in Coffee Archival.  If you take a look at the finished album pages, you'll see that on opposite sides I alternated which colour each of the two flower stamps was done in.  A little variation within an overall design which was intended to be as simple and serene as possible.

Final step in the background layers was to use the white Inkssentials gel pen to highlight the blossoms of the Delicate Flowers.

Such a calming activity - you enter a kind of trance state just dotting them on.  And I think it really lifts the look of the whole page.

So then it was just a matter of layering the Donna Downey quotes - stamped in Coffee Archival, and edged with Vintage Photo DI - onto some dark brown cardstock, and working out where they looked best on each page.

I used sentiments from both the Empowered Words and the Art and Possibility sets, as I wanted each of them to include a "handwritten" word.

And however you define "Art", I have to say making this little book really did make me happy!  I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the process.  Here's where to go if you'd like to see some more close-ups or any more making-of details.

Don't forget to check out the current challenge here at eP - we're looking for projects including Folded Paper of some kind.  All the details are here, and we'd love to have you play along.  Thanks so much for stopping by today, and see you again soon.

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