Lessons

Lesson Info

Christmas Diorama

We're going to start out with our christmas on market street, dia rama so it's that same christmas line, go back to her power point and you can see what you need to create that, so we're going to be using the six by six paper pad again, one of my favorite most common items I probably use from each line, we're going to be using a twelve by twelve piece of paper has presence on it, you can see it right here, it's, a really nice, thick paper double cited again, we are going to be using paper chains on this first one, we used the christmas paper chains on this project, we're actually going to be using the gold fancy chains, so well, we'll be using those on the outside of the box to kind of wrap it like a present. The box itself is not from us, it's from michael's, I think, don't quote me on it that it was around two, ninety nine or three, ninety nine so pretty and expensive in the wood section of michael's, and then the feet that we will be adding are from hobby lobby, and I'll show you ho...

w to add those and create those right now we'll go to our steps, okay? The first thing that I do when I'm looking to create a diagram is to just think about what shape is goingto work best s o I like paper machete boxes I like wooden boxes but I also have created them in lantern if you wanted it to be two sided like to go in the centerpiece of your table we've done some really cool halloween one using our halloween shipboard from something wicked on dso you can create like a lot of really cool different shapes if you're just kind of looking keep it in your mind to like look for containers while you're out at craft and hobby shops the feet come from the wooden section they're just like little I don't even know what people use them for I think like your friend things like that but they're always in the wooden section and they come would you concede e right here that they are actual like little plane would painted and we have two different shapes here we have a little skinnier finney o type foot and then a little fatter depending on what project you're using and how big of a basing me that's how you would decide that I have pre painted these again because it's using that same brass leaf paint because it gives it I mean if you were just looking at it from far away, it looks like a gold put her medal foot s o I pre painted all of those for us, but that would be your very first step is to paint for feet and then also if any a lso in this project we're using this right here and it's just a really simple little woodfin eel we're not going to be doing it today, but I just drilled a little hole in the top of the box so it sat right in it it s so that this part didn't show so after that we have our box and we need to start to create the interior scene. Andi, I have based that here on some of the pattern paper that we have from market street that I just really love with the little hand painted present I feel like it just gives it that sort of hand crafted nineteen fifties sort of christmas feel that I left, so the first thing you do is just measure the interior of your box and I just simply don't that by sticking the ruler right? And so we're at like three inches where at about three inches both ways. So we're going to cut our paper and have already started doing that to line the box and we wanted to just fit in nicely, so see so that it just goes right and you're not sort of like pushing in on the edges to make that happen, so we're going to cut the length first to stand up I always have to stand up and get serious about my working um if you're just going to cut it to fit the length of our box you just might do that and I want to be honest I usually end up leg cutting and measuring gutting and measuring on stuff like this but we want pretty street edges since it's going in a box and you will see if you're cutting cricket so let's just make sure that fits and this is what I mean by not wanting it even to be a little bit too small that will start to bubble so I need to cut off just a tiny bit more length and these are the kind of projects that I really love that really make you sort of think about creativity and think a little bit out of the box even though we're in a box and come up with just like some fun ideas okay so you can see it just fits right in there and then we're going to cut to pieces you know that's the right length to run raya crossed and make sure that fat fits and it does almost perfectly and for this one I used two different interior papers I think I'm going to go with the green on this so we'll have just a simple dot because it can get a little bit busy feeling if we had a huge pattern inside a little box so we're going to do two of those for each side and two would hear them. I like to use a much patch and I, um I think we have the luster here a lot of times, all use and sort of the leicester all use the matte finish, it doesn't have that showing, but you can see in this project we did so that it had a little bit of shine. So depending on what finish you want, you can go with one or the other just gonna and I've always felt funny about crafting in front of an audience start crafting with you because there's so many things that are just like a little I don't know about you where I go back and forth and my decision making, so it is nice again have some decisions made for you, ok, so we have our three pieces and we're going to go ahead and use the module podge to apply that and a lot of times when I am using, um, anything like this, I'll get out that tim boyle again, just because I don't want to get on my other project areas because I would be totally I would totally a stick it in the gloom I know I would, ok, so I'm going to run it along the entire back and sides. But I prefer doing the sides first and the reason is that people aren't going to notice that as much as the back so I don't want glue overspill on the back so I'm going to put in my sides and then paint the back jack and I was just running that along and then I also like to just run to make sure I'm doing the right piece a little bit on the actual card stock too and I'm just gonna put that right and slide it in line it up and then press it right into the corners we're gonna add just a little bit more conceal what I especially want it to be thick in the front so that you know you don't get that gap and generally ok I also would have a paper towel tio usually and I did not tell them that that was my fault because we're going to make a big mess so there's one side we'll just do the other side quickly and this box actually comes together really quickly um this line is going to take a little bit more time but this one is pretty fun and simple this would be another really fun project to do with your kids it's kind of like almost like building a snow globe like you can just um you know, throw lots of cute little things in there and it's going to look good building our own little town okay, does it have to be portrait styler can you also make this horizontally? You could totally make out horizontally like with little rain there or something would be really cute all right keep getting which side is which? Well I'm not right in there and so have people town also this is how I would normally do this just to keep it from getting everywhere I just take the paper towel and really pushed into it and so it's like cleaning up the edges at the same time is like that hearing at all and if you want a really tight seal if you know it's going to be something that gets a lot of wear and tear like the out outside of this inside probably no one's going to be reaching in there and getting you can do a layer on march podge on the outside as well to kind of seal it and it would give it back lossy finish ok so can you see why I did the sides first cause the back got like much podge on it just from over painting. So if I get a little bit of much pressure on the side it's not going to be as noticeable as if I had gotten it all over the main paper in the back I'm super messy crafter um drives I grew up with parents that were super precise my dad's an engineer but also, like really loves artwork, my parents own a letter press company on dso very precise work, and I've always driven them a little bit crazy with my meth e process, like much garage drives clear, it does dry, clear, so it especially if you get the mat, then it really isn't going to show up the glass will show a little bit because it's a different finish, so then I'm just gonna push that into the edges. Um, I didn't, because we're gluing on little banners, but you could if you wanted an additional pattern, you could even put like a sky in were lighter blue. Okay, so here we go. We're all ready for our little scene, so that was super quick, right? And this part is even faster. We're gonna plug in our hot glue gun so my favorite place to get items for, like little die aromas like this is the dollhouse section of michaels and of hobby lobby, because they sell tiny little items that air so perfect for a die aroma. Um, like tiny little presence and tiny little sled and trees. And I like again, I couldn't talk about this over and over again, creating different hype levels and different textures and things like that, so the first thing I would do is I use iridescent glitter all the time you'll see these again tomorrow for snow, for the feeling of snow, and so I'm going to just add in a little bit wait can get it open um, a little bit of it, so I'm just going to use the same much podge and my corners are already coming up, so I'm gonna put a little bit more here. I would normally at this point actually leave it alone a little bit, just so that it can set before I'm like moving it all around and doing stuff to it. Um, and for me, that's usually like, ok, it's, time for dinner or, you know, and let it sit there for a minute and then afterwards come back to it. Um, okay, so I'm just going to add some heavier monge podge to the corners to the edges, it's where I want the snow, and a lot of times I will paint out the bottom, but I liked the wood in this, it gave it kind of a cozier, christmassy sort of feel, so I'm leaving the center plane so no glitter is going to attach to that, and I was gonna dump in glitter shaken all around, just put it right back in and so nice to see we have snow on def I really wanted to go like even an extra touch what should I didn't do before whatever tree I was going to use I'd add in just a little bit so that just so that it looks like it was in the snow to just a tiny bit okay um so we'll do that with both of those extra little touch my love I think I'm gonna be spending two days talking about my love for glitter ok so then I would just like start building the scene and sort of placing things it's where I know that I want them on gun I just play some hot glue since we already know that matchup okay we're doing it a little bit differently here but that's okay that's what's good about the creative process now here's the reason why you don't want glitter in the middle it will just get here too a letter and not to the project okay so that it both of our trees and and this time and so just a package I thought it'd be really cute tio ad in the sled with the little box on top of it so and that way and then we would just add this right on top if I was being like really creative I would wrap this in the same pattern paper but for today we're not going to do that ok so now we have our little scene which I really like but I felt like it was really empty and the top all the way it was on the bottom, especially when we put the feet on it so that is why we added little garlands to the top little banners like we made today and I just did that using the sixty six paper pad so let's go ahead and put away the glitter while we're done with that because I don't know about you but after I'm crafting I'm like covered in glitter I had to tell like everywhere I go I got like a glitter mohler glitter in my hair so again, this is why from oil is lovely because we just wrap it up and toss it all right so clear our work space just a little bit and so for the banners there just basic little triangles s o a lot of times I try to just use extra scrap paper I have around for items like that but you are getting the six by six paper pad in the kit so you can use it for this and you couldn't make envelopes and do an advent. Okay, kenneth, I know you mentioned it a little bit earlier but pope iris online she wanted to know how you use the dia rama's in your dick or like different ideas that you could do with them she's not sure how she was, how she would use that so I actually use them and displays all the time in mantle escapes like it's one of those things where it looks pretty from far away maybe just don't know recognize what it is has like the same shape is like adding a base or adding a candle holder to the mantle and they are pretty tall, so they add hype is well on dso use them a lot in holiday displays like around the house whether it's like a little tabletop display or whether it's my mantle or like I said, I love tease them in lantern so they're double sided so then you can use them as a centerpiece for your table and it's just something to like look at that's a little bit different that people really like we'll walk up teo and look in it and and see what's there and it's a good kind of conversation piece for holiday the core I think um or it could just be another quirky thing that I just I really love and that's okay s o I would just pick a couple different patterns that I like um and cut triangles from those and the easiest way to do it is just to cut one strip so they're all pretty equal and then layer a couple different patterns so that you can cut them all at once um and then I just definitely not perfect triangles because again I I like for things to look a little hand made homemade I would cut those and I think we had some cuts and then just, um I use hot glue and just attach them right teo the string we're not gonna hang those today, so we can go keep going because we have so much to do, but that is what I would do with this one as well. Just if tio give it a little bit of fill, the other thing I thought about doing but didn't do is adding some trim to the front. I just liked the wood here, but if you were using a different container, you might want to cover the seems a little bit more so any kind of like beautiful trim or pattern paper could be really cool there as well. So because we had a present on the inside and then the package is on the inside I wanted to kind of wrap the outside so it looked like a gift as well on the easiest way to do that hey, just to use some of our paper chains so these air actually really fun to do with your kids as well you can do it was a countdown or just make them to hang but they come with adhesive so you can make them into long paper chains really easily today we're going to use it as the outside of your present, so we're just going to take it, and I like to just make a little fold line, so I know exactly where I want to it hear it, and it doesn't matter that it's going to end on the top, because we're gonna add a coffee filter to it a little bit of hot glue, and we're basically just wrapping it like you would a present bow on a president, so just smooth it out as best you can and stick it right down. You look like that will do the other side as well, and just make sure that it's lined up in the same spot market. Candace, someone online was also wondering, mel was wondering when she wants to know when you should use hot the hot gang glue, as opposed to other types of glue. So I do that for, like, harder projects or projects that maybe donates here at here as well. So this is like a thicker, heavier paper than just like your average paper and again, it's on the outside, so I know people will touch it a lot more, so I wanted to really adhere well, so something like ma joepa just wouldn't be strong enough in this case, and also I don't want much podge over the glitter so for me hot glue in this case and then things like would you could use wood glue if you wanted to the reason I find myself using hockley the most because it's fast it drives fast so I don't have just sit and wait for each step to dry in between but wood glue would probably be the proper thing to you it's just a lot slower than actually haven't add are the feet so I'm just going to turn my box to the side and I'm gonna add them to each corner and again I use hock lou probably not the best but works quickly and these air nice they have a nice little edge I don't paint the inside so that I know that the glue will it here really well and I feel like this little feet are really key and giving a finished look um it kind of makes it like elevates it from a box tio something a little bit higher end so by each of those yeah earlier you mentioned that use low temperature uh for your hot glue does it matter for using low or high temperature? No, um I just burned myself a lot e o protection against myself yeah, so now we have our feed the ends that we're really close to finishing up on this um so again, I did not drill the hole ahead of time I should have to put our finney a ll in but you could also just cut this off or you can buy them without I bought it for this because I just felt like it was be stronger hold if it was tucked in um so one of my very, very favorite crafting products to use besides my mind's eye our coffee filters I don't even drink coffee, but I really love the texture that they give and the look that they give to product projects so a lot of times degree of this sort of look I will pull them in half and cut out the center well like that so now I just have the ruffle and then I like to give myself a little kind of circle base to work with with a heavier cart stock so I'm just going to take some of this scrap stock and cut a circle and it doesn't need to be a perfect circle because it's not going to show but this is just giving me something to glue the ruffle onto aside from just straight on the project in case I'm making them sick so I start to just sort of plead with the police that the coffee filtered gives me I do one at a time and then layer them and sort of doing them together so they have different layers so just start by sort of gathering it up and I'm actually going to cut it and gather everything that makes it a little bit easier and as you do that you'll then just apply a little bit of the glue to the struggle a little bit at a time and you just place your gathers right on to it I can already tell that I have made this a little bit too big for the project I'm going to turn this down all right so you can see I've finished the first layer there's just like a little space in the front so I'm just gathering and gluing and then I'm starting the second layer so it just has more volume and we just can a pleat and gather pleat and gather does he go around and you don't want to apply a lot of glute ones come little dry before you complete and get it on all right so we've stuck that all on and you can see it just creates a really it nice little ruffle we're gonna take off and me and our finney allwood go right into the center and so I had punched a hole through the paper so it could go through that as well as the base so the video is actually holding it on to the box but in this case we will just glue this right on and actually I'm gonna go one step further with this because I can um and add some glitter to the edge because I feel like it makes it look a lot prettier because we used gold on this I want to go with the gold way I do the edges it is just by dabbing a tiny bit on um usually right onto the paper and then just going around because I don't want too much glitter or you can just really lightly go around the edge and then we would just go there but it's not open and we're just going to get like a tiny pretty little almost like a two to affect right? We'll just do a little bit more glue I don't know I kind of think anything miniature feels like a little bit magical, right? I love really big and lots of things and really tiny little thing but I feel like it just creates like this little magical scene and especially my little list it's like a just think they're so fun to like look inside and see what's there and just kind of all right so this is actually the prettier side so I would definitely look at that and put that in right there and then we would add are you neil right to the inside of there and it's actually pretty covered up as it is I could just go down if I wanted to I'm not going to know because it has to go home on a plane with me, but that is it that's how I would create that in this case, I've added just a little bow out of the studio karcher ribbon on, and I would probably do that here as well, just to kind of hide and he seems, and that is our market street die aroma so really fun and you can see, I mean, I made that whole thing live. There weren't really any step outs or anything it's just this pretty really fast, sort of little craft to create with your kids and it's really an expensive. So I like that, too, but I don't feel like it looks an expensive if you bought it from a boutique, you'd probably pay a lot of money for that, so all right, and that is always the name of the game for me. How can I make my two dollars looks like twenty dollars or two hundred? Andi, I feel like you can really do that with my mind's eye. Our products are so reasonable that you can really elevate them easily.