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Sunday 26 May 2013

Summer DIY - Plastic Pot Tutorial - How To Decorate A Planter With Hay, Leaves Or Straw

Hello,

In my new project I decided to use literally what I have within my arm's reach. I imagined an interesting result that I think I can achieve.  

An inspiration for this project were white embossing wall papers and Japanese plaster, that I haven't heard of until recently. But as Stanislaw Lec once said "Be self-learners, do not wait until the life teaches you a lesson".

Getting back to the subject. Embossing wall papers are characterised by specific elegance, interesting three -dimensional effect, or convexity. And the method of performance of Japanese plasters gave me the main idea for creation of my flower pot.  At the very end of my tutorial, I made also two different pots, in slightly different colours, in which the main components were the straw and cut leaves.






For this project you will need:


- plastic garden pot

- stand paper (60-80 grit)

- PVA glue

- scissors

- brush and  clearing foam sponge (cut for small pieces)

- white acrylic paint

- rabbit hay or straw (you can also use some dry leaves or straw)





1. Preparing the base of a flower pot. You need to rub the medium grit sandpaper and flick the dust in order to improve the adhesiveness of our material. 




2. We paint it on white using the previously cut sponge.
    Gently tap it and then leave for drying for half an hour.





3. Now we put the material. We can do it in two different ways. 
A)  Cover the flowerpot with glue. Cut the straw into small pieces. The smaller the pieces the easier it is to glue them to the surface. We sprinkle it to a wet glue. 






B)  Mix the glue with water, add the straw to a bowl. Apply  all with a brush, slightly pressing it. We leave it for drying. 









 4. Once it’s dry, we apply the glue again, pressing the pieces of straw that are not glued. We finish it   with white paint, leaving some spaces unpainted in order to make the colour of the bottom visible.   
You can finish your flowerpot with lacquer.  








You can repet the steps using cut straw.




And another way is to decorate it with cut leaves.







You can find more posts on DIY in the 'Tutorial' tab.
Have fun.

       See you next.....

Saturday 11 May 2013

Paper And Its Use In The World Of Creativeness


A few years ago I would never think that paper will play such an important role in my life. It sound trivial, or even comic, but that's the truth. 

The initial idea to create consisted in compacting and boiling the fibres of various plants, and once they dried, it was ready to use.  The biggest difference between the current paper and the papirus of that time lies in the production process. Currently, paper is created in result of chemical and mechanical wood processing, and the quality of paper depends on raw materials chosen for its creation.
I think that the history of paper creation and the process of its improvement is very fascinating. 

Nowadays, we can find surprising paper creations that I would like to present in this post. 

DECOUPAGE PAPER
DECORATIVE PAPER  is my basic work tool and during a few years of creative work I have come across paper with various hardness, transparency, and even a  fibrous paper, so called RICE. Currently we can find on the market the paper of the biggest producers such as 'To Do', 'Stamperia', 'Decomania' or 'Finmark'. In my works, besides a ready-made paper, I also print my own patterns or motives and each of them is specially protected.  

Browsing through Pinterest, my favourite source of information from the world of creativeness, I came across the wonderful paper creations and decided to create a new board called ' Dry Flowers And Paper Arrangements' devoted to such beauties.

Here is some very unique paper creations. 
                                   

     Pretty Bird By Cheong-ah Hwang




 Paper Anemone By @LiaGriffith 


 Paper Shoe By @Kwandera



Paper Mache Styled 'Singer' Sewing Machine By @Jennifer Collier