IKEA Regolit – fixed!

What do you do when you IKEA regolit lamp has taken some beatings? (kids, cutlery, moving, etc…)

Unfortunately the paper-thing isn’t sold separately. Throw it out? Nah, that would be a waste. The rest of the lamp is ok, it’s just the lamphood (or whatever it’s called in english).

It had a few holes, but nothing too bad. In the past few months it seemed to have gotten worse. I haven’t got a picture of where you can see how the flaps hang down, but here is a picture of it after I took it off, ready to be fixed. You can imagine it’s not really a pretty sight when it’s hanging.

So what did I do?

I put in my craftsheet, took out some tissue paper, decoupage pager and degoupage glue and had fun.

Here it’s lying flat, ready to be fixed.

Tear your tissue paper in pieces. Don’t cut! Try to get all edges torn – it blends better with the rest that way, else you’ll keep seing the cut edges very well. Put a royal amount of decoupate glue (I used Mod Podge) on the lampshade (aah I think that’s the word!) and put the paper on it, smooth it out with a dry brush. Be careful, it might rip. I didn’t put the second layer of mod podge on right away, as it sometimes causes the paper to tear up too easily. If needed, let it dry a bit first. I just went on to the next gap and fixed that, used several small bits and folded it around the ring a bit too. When layering it on another tissue paper, make sure there is glue in between. Be careful of only working on the craftsheet – I didn’t move it once it was in place, only got it out after everything was dry. I didn’t fix the hole on the right yet, as the craftsheet wasn’t under it and I didn’t want to risk sticking the top of the lampshade to the bottom.

It looked quite ok after this fix, but while I was at it, I thought: why not decorate it a bit more?
So I got out some decoupage paper. I didn’t want to decorate the entire bottom as it ofcourse influences the light coming from the lamp, and as it’s used as a light above our dinner table it’s nice if it is actually light. So no total coverage. No torn pieces of paper this time also.

I got my cuttlebug out, chose some dies and cut the decoupage paper. I decorated it rather sparsely, but I’m happy with the results.

Yes, you still see some lines of the tissue paper, but it’s not as apparent as on the pictures. Also, you could add more die cuts to it. I might still do that, if I find the time.

For now, the hanging bits of paper are out of the way, and the lamp looks good again, with a little personal touch. I can’t wait for more holes to appear again, so I can decorate it a bit more ;).

 

Colour Soup

My entrance for the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge #8 this time is not a card, but a tin can. It all started last Friday, when we were too tired to cook so we decided to get fries. In order to add some healthy food to it, we had soup as well. I know, home made soup would be better, but I am not much of a soup person. Not for making nor eating. So we had soup from a can.

In the evening, I saw the can and thought: hmm let’s try out that new big bold background stamp from chocolate baroque on it! So I got my stuff together and started.

In the next few days I decorated some more of the cans that were allready in use as pen holder. Results vary, and I still don’t know if I like them. I think I’d like them better without the gold.

Let’s start with the colours:

Challenge 8

As I planned to use the decoupage technique with mod podge (decoupage glue) and tissue paper, I didn’t not want water soluble inks, so I searched for matchin colours in my Stazon stack. I notice now that my colours are off a bit. The colours I used: Midnight Blue, Vibrant Violet, St. Valentine (which is too red now I see the image) and Pumpkin. Also used/ tried out: Viva Decor Inka Gold: Oldgold.

I took some tissue paper, the stamp, and inked up the stamp with various colours ink. Then I inked up the brayer and rolled it on the uninked parts of the stamp (as I didn’t want the ink on the stamp get on the wrong inkpad). I think I inked it up with Pumpkin, as it all turend a bit more orange. Fun effect of rolling ink on a brayer (and then the brayer on the tissue paper) is that you get a negative print of the stamp. Above, you se al tools used. The tissue paper that is lying there remained unused, the brayer apparantly wasn’t clean enough when I used blue on it, the orange mixed too much with the blue.

 

How to decoupage a can:

First time I glued part of the can, as it might be easier to trim the excess paper off. But I started putting it on with a slight angle so I didn’t end well and had to take the paper off. Ofcourse, that meant glue on the paper – that was just as easy. So put decoupage glue on your tissue paper royally, spread with the foam brush. Work fast. Line up the can with the paper, and put the can down, picking up the first bit of the paper. Lift it all up carefully, and with a dry brush (I used an old toothbrush later on), carefully brush over the paper. Brush most wrinkels out, or leave them in (I should have left more in in hindsight, I like the wrinkles). Be sure to brush over the entire surface that needs to be glued and a bit around it so the paper follows the exact contours of the can. After this layer is on, you can use the foam brush to put some glue over it again, be careful you don’t move the tissue paper or break it. If you are patient (unlike me) you might want to wait till the first layers has dried. When you have covered the surface, the starting point is almost dry again. Get your torn pieces (see below) and put plenty of glue on the spot where you want to glue the pieces – put glue on a larger surface then your piece. Bits where there is not enough glue will not turn “transparant” as much, they’ll stay white and/or there will be air bubbles beneath it.

Stamped on a normal tissue paper, a Kleenex. You can see the layers of the kleenex on the upper red figure, only use the top layer. Tear the images out – torn edges blend into the background very well as the fibers vary in length / get thinner when torn. When you cut, you get a clean even edge, which makes it harder for the tissue to blend into the background.

Here is my table with stome tools on it and a binder with the CB stamps.

added the small violet figures.

Also added midnight blue peacock feather flowers.

And a large red figure with a violet one on top. Also visible is the inka gold which I used – on the bottom and top rim and random on the can.

Next morning. This is what the second tissue paper for the can looked like. A good impression on the paper is also achievable by putting the paper on the stamp and then rolling with  the brayer over it. The dvd was one that was just broken by my son by pulling ito ut wrong.

I used the violet as background now, but it was too light, so the can was quite white still.

With inka gold.

And inka gold on the wrinkels.

I still wasn’t convinced about the cans, so next time I used only 2 colours: 1 for the background, and 1 for the motif. The other colours woule be torn pieces decoupaged on.

Yup, I like these colours more. Hardly visible is the orange piece on the blue can – I noticed I didn’t take pictures of that side.

The back of the red can. I didn’t use kleenex this time, but tissue paper. You can see it blended less well then the kleenex which was used on the can to the left. The right can doesn’t have torn pieces decoupaged on. 

The first can looks very rusty – the metal of the can, the orange and gold – it does look a bit too much like the can that had been outside for too long :P. The top can is too white, and too many colours still. The bottom cans look good, purple background and red motif, with blue and violet figures on it. The big can: blue motif, violet background and red and orange figures. If you think out  the red and use the colour combo: Midnight blue, vibrand violet, pumpkin and inka old gold it would have matched the colour challenge more.

Arcane Dreams

Thinking of a title for this card, I thought it was dreamlike, hypnotized, trance, drugs… What’s with me and drugs lately? I never used it and don’t want to start now. Lack of sleep is good enough to make you feel dizzy :P.

Anyway, trance, hypnotic, that sort of fits. Arcane. Arcane! That’s it, why didn’t I think of that sooner.

So humpadabum, here she is, our Arcane musician, wielding her harp to cast her dreamspell on you.

Fairy is from Designs By Ryn, the word Dreams is from Christina Renee clearstamp set (not sold anymore), the sun is from Stampinback (IIRC), the burst is from Chocolate Baroque. The chipboard things on it are remains of the Albert Heyns promotional goods. Albert Heyn, or AH, is a big supermarket chain which regularly has cardboard/paper things to collect for kids. this time the theme is “a farmers life”. Used in this card is 1 egg and some left overs. 1 egg? yup. Slide the two most eggshaped figures into eachogher and you have a 3d egg out of paper. (top view of the egg is a + ). I hope I didn’t ruin your thoughts about this card now, that you see eggs everytime you look at it. I think I jinxed that now, having said that…

So I glued some bits and pieces onto a card, added distress paint ranomly, a Design by Ryn fish scale stamp (forgot to mention that) and some more paint.

I stamped the fairy, coloured her, then stamped her again onto tissue paper, coloured her again and decoupaged her onto the first image.

 

edit: inserted the next mage.

I changed the colours of her dress on the second stamp, but kept the colours of her wings largely the same so it would be more intense. Above photo: no sparkles on her wings.

Next I stamped the Dreams text in cherry pink stazon. I thought it would match. I have no pictures of that for a reason. The pink just screamed out at me, like a Paris Hilton pink barbie something.

So I stamped over it twice, I inked up the stamp mostly with gothic purple (left some uninked at the top) and next again in black, inking mostly only the bottom part. I added some sparkles on the wings, and drops, made a frame to mat it on and assembled it all.

Another tip: I never use a whole sheet of paper to mat my card on, as postage is 1 stamp for 0-20g, above it’s 2 stamps. And 20g is easily to get to with self made cards and envelopes. Also, I save the cut out bits to use for other cards.

Next up is Alien Art, a card made similar to this one.

Arcane Dreams is my third entry to Designs by Ryn October Customer Creation Challenge. (always anything goes, but must use Design by Ryn’s stamps).

Gift of nature

In my previous post I mentioned that I made a second “print” with the household foil used for the Fairyland card. The print reminded me of bark or the bare branches of a tree. A while ago I was playing with the peacock stamp set and had stamped several images and embossed it in coppertones and then cut them out. This little peacock (Chocolate Baroque stamp) was perfect for this dead wood! See how it sits on the branch? It also matches the inspirational image from Our Creative Corner, where there is an image of a snail in twigs and dead leaves. Not that this peacock is a snail ofcourse.

The daylight picture. I think I like the evening picture better.

Note: Pictures are made last night with artificial light, I’ll see if I can get a good picture in today but as the Chocolate Baroque challenge is closing today I want to get this blogpost out first!

I’d like to imagine you don’t see him from afar, hidden on the branches which look like dead wood. But those that take a second look see the beauty of it, as there is beauty all around us.

Embossing on tissue paper. I first tried without embossing and Stazon Jet Black, seen in the lower right corner. The text was too light imo. Next to it is the first embossed part, but it didn’t have enough coverage. The embossing powder is applied to the upper text but not heated yet. See the embellishments? Made with the Mod podge mod melts and then painted with acryllic paint.

The text (from a Crafter’s Companion sentiment set) is first stamped onto tissue paper & heat embossed with black fine embossing powder, then decoupaged to the card.

The gloss of the paint disappeared a bit behind the tissue paper ofcourse, and the edges of the tissue paper were still quite visible so I added a bit of paint to the edges to smoothen it a bit.

The leaves are made myself with Mod Podge Mod Molds. The 2 greenish leaves are made with Martha Stewart clay, as is one of the bigger leaves. The other leaf is made with Mod Melts or hot glue from the gluegun. I don’t think there is a difference between the two (mod melts or hot glue) actually. The clay (or rather, the chemical kneadable siliconefoam kind of something) gets soft again when it gets wet so painting it is not advised, you can alter it with e.g. pan pastels or perfect pearls. In the picture below you can see the three molds I have, now filled with the clay. That needs to dry for almost a day. The hot glue is ready in just 10 minutes after putting it in, but it is more difficult getting all the details and getting a flat back.

All leaves for this card are dusted with perfect pearls copper. (The only pan pastel colour I have is sparkling black, which doesn’t really match this card). I brushed the text area also slightly with the copper.

Horizontal / left one is Martha Stewart white clay (although it feels and smells more like silicone foam kind of stuff then clay), the vertical/right one is hot glue.

Blinded by the low autumn sun.

A picture to show the shine/glimmer:

Can you see that it is the second print? It’s best visible if you look at the upper right corners in the picture below.

 

 

The two cards together:

For the Craftstamper design team: The card with the white palace also has stamping on tissue paper, the white bit (palace and pillars) is done with that technique, only I didn’t know about your challenge yet unfortunately.

I’d like to enter the peacock card in the following challenges:

• Chocolate Baroque – Challenge #2 colour challenge;
• Our Creative Corner – Autumnal image (The snail in the dead leaves, the wood/barks);
• Simply Create too – Challenge #70 Fall/Autumn;
• Kraftyhands Challenges – Autumn Colours; (Following the blog via the RSS feed  – I’ve added it to my RSS feed reader)
• Fantasy Stampers Challenge – Autumn Colours;
• Dutch Card Lovers – Autumn and leaves;
• Craftstamper  – Take it Make it inspiration September Challenge: Stamping on tissue paper;

 

A T on both sides.

Indeed, just a “T”. That’s what I made a few years ago when I started decoupage.

I was curious how wrapping paper would look, but didn’t have anything at hand to decoupate, so I made a letter (T, the first letter of the name of my son) with some scrap cardbox, and then glued normal copy paper around it. I forgot why I did that. Maybe so I would have white as background colour? Or maybe the ribs of the cardbox were too visible? No idea. As I really thought it was just going to end up on the trashpile, I didn’t make it completely straight.

Obviously, it didn’t end up on the trashpile, it’s been hanging on the wall.

One side is decoupaged with pieces of ikea christmas wrapping paper (or was it Hema or V&D? I do remember I didn’t think it was very Christmas- like, but didn’t see anything else in the shop).

The other side also has that paper, but it also has IKEA napkins (the bird napkins) worked into them.

The pieces of paper do wrinkle a bit, but I didn’t mind for this project, and I don’t think I tried getting them on without wrinkles.

Anyway, here are pictures:

Copper Kisses

My chosen background and layout for now.

About a year ago (or was it more?) I had received several original vintage postcards with French Kisses on them, from Trishia of FrenchKissed Postcards. I had them in a drawer so they wouldn’t be damaged. Then I had them in a simple white frame (Nytta from Ikea) so I could see them.  I had bought several of these frames, with the intention of personalizing them. Well, I finally did.

Almost done! After this picture I might have added another layer (or 2 or 3) and I took some cards out and rearranged the remainder. (Yes, pard of a wall is pained copper metallic!)

As often is the case with projects like this, I forget to take pictures at the start, so I only started taking pictures halfway through.

The starting frame is A3 size, white.

Nothing special.

I started with a layer of copper crackling paint from Viva Decor. It didn’t crackle very much though, I think the surface was too smooth/straight and the coat I applied was probably not thick enough.

Then I decoupaged the corners. And al ittle in the middle. I used roses napkins, flowers&birds napkins, and some decoupage paper.

After that coat I lightly put turquoise paint on it here and there, and swiped it off with a cloth so it would go in the cracks.

I thought the decoupage paper with the white background would be a nice touch, but I didn’t like it so I painted over it with copper metallic acryllic paint, and I might have applied even more decoupage pieces on it. Also, I thought the turqoise was too visible, so went over it also a bit with the metallic copper paint.

After I was done decoupaging, I added another layer of decoupage glue, and after that dried, I stamped some text on it. Sprayed with a bit of perfect pearls spray copper (from ranger) and finished it off with another layer of decoupage glue.

I might have added another layer in between (of glue, or copper paint), and I don’t think the copper spray had much effect.

I do like the end result! I put some of the cards in the frame allready and put it up, with the grey of the paper that came with the frame as backgroound . I still need to change that, because it doesn’t fit at all. I was thinking of making my own background, but just now while writing this, I’ve got a lightbulb moment: Use some of the wallpaper from the sample books I have! Easy peasy. I’ll go do that now, back in 15 minutes! (Have to take a picture too ofcourse). Meanwhile, take a look at my gallery of the frame-project. Lots of pictures to keep you busy.

I hope I put them in chronological order.

On and off

This corner looks better.

Nope, don’t like the white/blue background in the corner. Time for another layer of something.

It doesn’t really fit with the copper on the wall though, the copper is not the same tint.

Almost done! After this picture I might have added another layer and I took some cards out and rearranged the remainder.

Spraying with Perfect Pearls Mist Copper

detail on the left side

A new layer of decoupage glue

Ok, it was a bit more then 15 minutes. 30? 45? I forgot something important when guessing the amount of time it would take. And that is that I would have to choose a wallpaper….

Help me out here! Which background do you prefer?

orange?

offwhite?

purple?

dark and pattern?

blueish?

dark and big pattern?

silver dark stripes

brownish stripes

My choice and layout for now.

Behangen en gedecoupeerd Ikea ladekastje / Wallpaper Mod Podged Ikea Mini Chest of Drawers (Moppe)

Ik had dit: / I had this: Jaren geleden heb ik het blauw gebeitst. Het was lelijk, en stond altijd ergens uit het zicht. Nu heb ik het veranderd met behulp van behangproefstukken, mod podge en spuitverf op de zijkanten: / I stained it blue years ago. I didn’t like that, it was ugly and always stood out of sight. But now I turned it into this, with the help of wallpaper samples, mod podge and spray paint (on the sides, not visible):

De knoppen zien er nogal fluorescerent uit, maar in werkelijkheid niet hoor. Ze zijn helder en intens in kleur maar niet zoals ze eruit zien met flitslicht! Voor het geval je je afvraagt wat ik met de uitsparingen in de lades heb gedaan: Ik heb de lades omgedraaid. Ik heb nog steeds het idee om een keer een ander (passend) behang op die kant van de lades te plakken, dan kan ik de patronen afwisselen. Hieronder wat tussenstappen. / I know the knobs look very fluorescent but in reality they don’t seem that way. They are intense in colour but not as they appear on the photo’s with flashlight! In case you are wondering what I did with the holes in the drawers: I simply turned the drawers around. I am still thinking of putting another type of wallpaper (matching) wallpaper on that side so I can alternate the patterns ;).

Here some in between steps

Toen de boven en zijkanten aan de beurt waren om gedecoupeerd te worden heb ik me bedacht. Het leek met toch wat te druk. Ik heb de lades eruit gehaald, de voor en achterkant afgetaped en de zijdes wit geverfd met een spuitbus. Jammer genoeg zien de knoppen er niet uit op de foto, maar echt, zo zien ze er niet uit!  Ze zijn trouwens ook van de IKEA, ik had ze, in originele verpakking, al een jaar of 7 rondliggen. Nu eindelijk iets gevonden waar ik het bij kon gebruiken. / When it came to putting the wallpaper on the top and sides, I decided against it. I took out the drawers and taped off the front and back and spraypainted the top and sides glossy white. Unfortunately, on the pictures the knobs look horrible. But really that’s not their colour as I see them here! They are also from IKEA, I’ve had them in the original packaging for about 7 years? Finally found something to use them on.

Finished product. Horrible picture.

Mod Podged lampen – mod podged lightbulbs

Net als het tijdperk van de vaker stukgaande lampen zijn einde nadert ontdek ik iets leuks om met stukke lampen te doen…

Decoupage lijm + servetten + kwast + oude lampjes (2 gewone, 4 koelkastlampjes en ergens ook nog een nog kleiner lampje) heeft het volgende resultaat:

Need more broken lightbulbs to decoupage!

Here are some pictures from the making of:

Mijn eerste decoupage project – My first pon..eh, decoupage project

Foto’s zeggen meer dan woorden! Dus hier een plaatje. Houten doosje met plastic schermpje. Bovenkant is ook eerst gedecoupeerd en daarna is er overheen geverfd met koperkleurige craquelé verf. Daar moet ik nog wat meer mee experimenteren.

Mijn doosje – My box

Pictures speak louder then words! So here it is, a foto. A little wooden box with plasic screen. The top is decoupaged first too and then I painted over it with coppercoloured craquele paint. I need to experiment with that a little bit more.