DIY Craft: Paper Mache Trinket Box

DIY craft time! A free tutorial for you on how to make this paper mache trinket box.

This tutorial featured recently on alisaburke.com. Here it is on my lil old blog, but in a different colour way.

Paper mache is wonderful as it’s super cheap to make any sort of shape, limited only by your imagination! I wanted to make a small trinket box.

You will need:

-foam core board
-thick card (that can still bend easily)

-newspaper
-blank newsprint or butchers paper
-masking tape
-PVA glue
-craft glue
-air dry clay
-gesso
-acrylic paints
-gold acrylic paint (optional)
-gloss varnish

I started by finding a small bowl to use as a template for the lid and base of the box. Trace around and cut 2 from foam core board. 

I then cut from thick card a length 2” wide, and a small strip 3/8” wide. Make sure these are long enough to fit 1/4” inside the circumference of your base and lid. Tape the wider one into a circle, then tape this circle to the base using masking tape. Do the same with the 3/8” piece, keeping in mind that it needs to sit in a smaller circumference than the base walls, also taking into account a bit of padding from the paper mache layers. My inner rim sits about 1/2” in from the lid.

Using newspaper strips and a mix of PVA glue watered down slightly with water (approx 1:1) cover all over the base and lid, making sure you overlap the paper strips as you go. I then do another layer in plain newsprint so I can see where I’ve already covered. Let dry.

Using air dry clay, roll out a small slab to a little under 1/4” thick. Cut a leaf shape out with a blade, and smooth the edges using a bit of water and your finger or a clay tool. Roll three small balls of equal size for the feet and gently press down with something flat to make the balls slightly flat on the top and bottom. Let dry.

Once the clay pieces are dry, use clear craft glue to glue the feet onto the base, and the leaf shape to the lid. Allow to dry.

Gesso the whole box and lid, inside and out, including the feet and handle.

Now it’s time to paint! I chose to draw some simple leaf shapes, then painted around them and added wiggles, stripes and dots. You can copy my designs or come up with your own! Adding gold paint around the rim is a fun touch too. 

After decorating, I used water based gloss varnish everywhere except inside the box, and the inner rim of the lid, as my varnish can get a bit tacky when varnished pieces touch, as I discovered in my sketch book!

Now you have a gorgeous box to stash some special treasures!

Jules :)

Studio Wall Mural

I have a new wall mural in my new studio!

We recently did some room shuffling in our house, and I moved studios. The room is slightly bigger with more storage than my last studio, but with all my stuff in there it looks small again! Oh well. I have plans that when my kids are all grown up and moved out I will take over so many rooms. 

Imagine that! A designated room for each area of my work.. a sewing room, a clay room, a computer room, a painting room. One can dream, ha!

I'll share some finished photos of the whole studio soon, but for now I'm showing this one corner. (I really need to clean the rest of the studio and I'd like to buy an outdoor rug to save the floor from a bit of paint.)

Here are some of the progress shots of the wall mural in progress:

I used a mix of student grade acrylics and house paint sample pots from the local hardware store. 

And some more photos of the finished wall mural:

The pre exisiting-shelves are handy to keep artworks-in-progress on, little creations and collectables.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this part of my new studio! I had a lot of fun painting this new mural.

Jules :)

Creative Life Round Up

Hello Creatives,

Time for a creative life round up I think!

All of these photos have appeared over on Insta, where I am most active. So come join in the fun over there :)

Recently I've been trying to finish a lot of paintings that are lying around my studio, to make way for the brain-space that is needed to undergo some BIG canvas paintings! They are big for me anyway. You can see my stretcher bars in my (new) studio that are awaiting canvas.

Below is a section of one of my paintings I've recently finished.

I'm working on 6 new large scale paintings. If you'd like to be notified when they're realised, sign up to my newsletter which you can find in the sidebar of this blog.

I have also completely moved my studio into a new room. You can see my new painting desk (table) that I bought second hand. It was an ex-display table in a shop, so it's a bit dinged up, which is fine because it will get no special treatment in my hands! I'm also painting a bit of a mural in the studio which you can see I started already in the corner. Proper studio photos in the near future.

Sometimes being a creative takes you in all sorts of directions. I painted a backdrop for a photographer friend of mine. I learnt a lot of things whilst painting this backdrop! I learned they are not as easy as they look, and that I do not want to start up a business painting photography backdrops in a hurry! Lol. Hands up if you'd like to see my process and hear about that project.

I finished my short ceramics course, and these are a few things I made from out of that class. I'm now working on a collection... when I don't get sidetracked by other little items that I can make out of clay.

I have been gifted a kiln by a very generous person who I'm sure mega good karma is coming her way. How nice is that!? Some people are so nice. Let's hope I don't melt everything in the new kiln.

Let's pop this photo in below just for fun. I'm stitching this Anna Maria Horner embroidery. Sometimes I like to work on projects that aren't my own designs so I can switch off and just create for the joy of it and not have to feel like I'm working. This project is 99% finished now and it has plans to be in the master bedroom when I finally get around to that project. (Do any of you creatives feel like you have an overwhelming amount of projects going on!?)

And here's me being colourful. Hashtag wear your joy. Just so you feel like an actual real-life-person is talking to you. Which I am.

Ooh! Our graffiti wall got a bit of love over the school holidays! Here's a snippet. Check out this post to get more mural/ graffiti wall inspo, or to read the story behind it.

Ok! I feel like I've sufficiently caught up here with creative happenings. 

I love feedback, so please do leave a comment or tell me what you love about the blog, or what you'd like to see here so I can keep posts relevant to YOU and what you'd like to see! 

Cheers!

Jules :)

Painted Easter Eggs

Hello Creatives!

Painted Easter Eggs for you today.

I found some blank craft eggs in a shop, I think they are plastic but they have a surface that felt like paper which made them perfect for painting on. They came with little plastic loops in the top for hanging them up. I popped them out for the purposes of taking photos, but have since put them back in and they are hanging on a little branch on the dining table. (Sorry, no photos of that!)

I went with an animal theme, except for one sneaky egg which wanted only flowers on it :)

I like the back of the octopus egg, I think, more than the front! I can see a whole set of painted Easter eggs for next year just in swirly designs.

They're all painted with acrylic paints and finished with acrylic gloss. 

Thanks for looking and Happy Easter!

Jules :)

DIY Painted Picture Frame

Hello Creatives!

A frame painting craft tutorial for you today. The end result is a textured frame that looks like it has some history... It has the look of having being painted a few times, but that is due to the texture that we will achieve through using paints and an acrylic gloss medium.

First, gather your supplies. Acrylic paints (Jo Sonja's acrylic paints are my pick), an acrylic gloss medium or varnish (Matisse Polymer Gloss Varnish is my fave), some fine sandpaper, and of course a frame and brushes and paint palette. Tissues will also come in handy.

When choosing a frame to paint, you want to grab something that has some different levels and surfaces. Some texture like flourishes or flowers would be even more interesting! I got this one from an op shop. 

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to painting your frame. Choose whatever colours you like. You could find an image with colours you love and try to replicate them into your frame.

After removing the backing and glass and giving my frame a light sand, I chose to coat my frame in two colour to start with. Turquoise, and a deep pink.

I then coated the frame with the acrylic gloss.

Once that was dry I mixed up some lighter pink and brushed a bit off onto some paper to 'dry' off my brush a bit, and then dry-brushed it onto the deep pink colour. I highlighted some of the thinner details of the frame with some bright green.

Then I mixed some pthalo blue with some of the varnish and brushed it over the turquoise. Use a damp (just damp- not wet) tissue to rub parts of this paint mix off before it has dried, leaving some areas darker than others.

I then added some orange paint by painting it onto a scrap piece of paper and rubbing it over the frame. I also did the same with some bright pink which you can see in the end photos.

Next up, I mixed up a lighter turquoise paint with some gloss varnish and scrumbled and painted that in random places all over the frame. I decided I would like to bring out more of the green layer so added some more highlights in using some yellow paint. I also used the pthalo blue mixed with some gloss to go over the pink part of the frame, using my tissue to wipe parts of the paint back, leaving darker areas especially in the recessed areas of the frame.

mixing paint :)

You could go nuts by adding more colour by dry-brushing, or adding more coloured gloss mixes, or scrambling more paint over it using the scrap paper. 

Once you're happy with the look of your frame, give the whole thing one final coat of gloss varnish.

So you can see how layering up the paint and gloss quickly adds texture & and the look of lots of layers. You can really play around with the techniques described to come up with your own unique frame in your choice of colours. Let the frame dictate to you by it's unique shape how it needs to be painted, and most of all, have fun!

Jules :)