Shabby Vintage Shadow Box Tutorial

Brenda here with another project for you during our 6th Birthday celebrations using more of the shabby hearts I made sometime ago for my daughter's wedding.

Process Steps

I started with the background and used a 23x23cm piece of watercolour paper and my trusty DecoArt paints and mediums.

1. Take the piece of watercolour paper, raw umber and titan buff media acrylics with a brayer to create the first layers. 

2. Dip, drip and dry with burnt sienna.

3. Use the Tim Holtz ledger script stamp and coffee archival ink to add some text stamping.

4. Take the brayer again and titanium white and roll over to lighten the background a bit.

5. Next use a stencil brush, more titanium white and a harlequin stencil to randomly add another layer. (Note the  bottom left is the part to notice as I nearly forgot to photograph this step and had started the dirty glaze in the top right corner).

6. Paint a wash or glaze of colour all over using soft touch varnish, paynes grey, burnt umber and titanium white mixed with a little water. Then stamp more text using white chalky finish paint.

7. Take the inner frame that comes with the shadow box and cut it down to 19cm square. Brayer over the brown and white paints again and stamp some text using a beige chalky finish paint to echo the background. Distress the edges with brown distress ink.

8.  I found a rusty key and tied it to one of the hearts with rusty wire.

9. Find some words or a quote.

10. Start to place everything where you want it and make any additions and or changes to the original design. So I decided to add some stars that I painted gold, then to add to the gold I found a little crown to sit on the base of the shadowbox. I also experimented with some gold foil on a heart.

11. Assemble together ....

.... and put the crown and wire in the bottom of the frame.

I hope this gives you some shabby vintage inspiration and mounting and keeping your work in a shadow box adds another dimension, especially if you sell your work.

We'd love to see your celebration projects over on the challenge post,  just show us what you are celebrating in your art and craft work at the moment. The doors are wide open for this challenge so please come and join the party.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com

We have a new guest Creative Guide -

Welcome everyone, it's our special invited guest week and we have the amazing Mark Gould with us today. Mark tours the country and venues teaching his amazing projects and loves the grungy style. So let's take a look at what he has made especially for our Create Within A Frame challenge.

**************

Morning all, Mark here and I am so happy and honoured to have been asked to be the guest designer for the Create Within a Frame challenge set by Julia this month. There is still about two weeks for you to take part.

I still class myself as a newbie to the craft industry and it's been an amazing and whirlwind experience and I'm loving every minute! I live in London and am a landscape gardener by day, but after a quick change into my cape I love nothing more than getting creative in my man cave - (with the help of my 2 cats of course).

My style has been influenced by many things including music, art and sculpture. I love mixed media and seeing how I can be as innovate as possible with colour and texture.

( I got my gf to write this as I'm no good at writing about me ;) )

*****

For this challenge I decided to go down the Shabby Chic route and up cycle one of the iconic Ikea Mirrors using Decoart's Chalky Finish paints and waxes along with their Media fluids and Media modeling paste.

I used a heat gun to gently melt the glue holding the mirror in and popped it out, Next the frame was given a coat of Decoart Media Gesso.

Using various stencils from Tando-Creative and some modeling paste I added some detail in random places around the frame.

Once the paste is dry the whole frame was painted with Decoart chalky finish Everlasting, I gave it two coats for a nice solid colour.

I also added some Chalky finish crackle medium  in a few spots, You can just make it out as the shiny spots on the frame.

Once the crackle medium is dry I applied a coat of chalky finish Vintage, the colour doesn't quite show up in this light but its a subtle duck egg green colour. You can see where the crackle medium is working as the white paint is showing through.

At this stage I added some very subtle stenciling using a baroque pattern and the light grey chalky finish Yesteryear.

Using a fine grade sanding block/paper gently start sanding across the textured areas and edges of the frame to create a distressed look.

To finish the frame off and to give it more of an aged look I applied a coat of the chalky finish clear cream wax, left to dry and then applied a coat of the dark wax. Once the dark wax is applied take some kitchen roll and start to wipe back to achieve a look you are happy with. At this stage it's best to work light and build up layers of the dark wax instead of going heavy straight away. 

I also added some stamping using a vintage script stamp from Stampendous and some dark brown Stazon ink.

For the inside of the frame I used a 4 inch canvas board and stamped it with a vintage cockerel stamp and some black stazon. 

I added colour by adding colour washes of Decoart Media Fluids,A watered down base of Transparent Yellow Oxide was left to dry to give an aged base and washes of  Pyrrole Red and Green Gold were added allowing each stage to dry first so as not to muddy the colours.

The canvas board was then sealed with some Matte Medium and then given a coat of Decoart One Step Crackle.

The aged effect was finished off with some Raw umber Antiquing cream to age the cracks.

Same frame, this time I added an old Bisque tile I painted as a coaster a few years ago.

Thank you so much to Brenda and the amazing team here at A Vintage Journey for having me play along. The projects I have seen so far have been beautiful and I look forward to seeing more of you playing along in this months challenge.

And thank you for stopping by and having a look at what I have created xx.

***********

Wow, don't you just love Marks's grungy shabby style and the effects he has created and I love the contrasting coasters in the middle. Mark resides at Spesh Ink blog and there can be found many wonderful samples of his fabulous projects and his class list. I have to say I am really proud to be teaching alongside him and Andy Skinner in Coventry this November, so if you are booked on you'll get to take a class with him and be wowed with what he makes. In the meantime it would be lovely if you could pop over to visit his blog.

Thanks for being such a great guest Mark, see you soon.

*****

As Mark said you still have a couple of weeks to enter the challenge and it would be wonderful to see you there if you are not already. We have had lots of amazing projects entered and don't forget a frame can be as simple as a doodled line, a mount or a proper bought frame, there are lots of ways to interpret it.

It is also a five week month for us so you get an extra Destination Inspiration post and next Friday is Tag Friday when we get to have fun creating a tag in any theme or way we want, so I hope you will come back again every Monday and Friday to see what awaits you.

Have a wonderful weekend.

hugs Brenda, Mark and the Team xxxx