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Lesson Info

Floral Diorama

Our next diarra mma is that you give me butterflies, dia rama and I just think it's a really cute fun of little diary. Mama, I would probably make this for, like, a friend if they were having a bad day. Or I think this would look beautiful in the little girl's room on their dresser or things like that and really pretty could be a really pretty centerpiece or topper for a party if you were going with like, a butterfly theme or something like that. Um, so let's just get started on it. I wanted to show you first of all the box and what it originally looks like, which is a paper mache, eh? Line bottle box. So you get it in the paper mache a section of hobby lobby it's extra tall that you can see, andi looks just like this, and so we're going to cut it and alter it to be more of the correct size. So the way that I do that now, these air really tough, they may not seem like it, but they're super strong on dso the way I'm going to do that, I always look for where the scene wass and make sure ...

that's the back, so we've actually already cut out. The front the way I do that is just by creating an oval template out of card stock and then tracing it, the one key our tip I will give you is you need a much smaller oval than you might think, because it ends up being super wide on the smaller container. So we want a very narrow oval so it's not like completely open and exposed, and you have to look in and it's going to be really a rough edge and that's ok, because we're covering it, so we're going tio, go ahead. We cut out that already, and now we're going to cut the top, to be lower and to also get rid of the handle. So all I usually do is just make and degenerate cut with some really strong scissors, and I think the scissors and had earlier were a little bit stronger. This may not do it. Um, and then also you can use an exacto blade, so I will put this disclaimer out there by exacto blade techniques are probably not even link safety practices again. Way engineer dad would probably be like you're going to cut off your fingers. Uh, it doesn't need I think if you had a saw to be honest, if I I use sometimes like a little saw and just run through it again, it doesn't have to be a perfect edge because you're putting the lid over it so it's not even going to be seen the edge of it so we're just going to go all the way around and get rid of several inches because we don't need that height that's just too tall and so it makes it feel disproportionate when you put it on the feet so that's really away I'm gonna cut this and what I would normally dio if I was being careful and precise is like measure it three inches every once in a while just so I have a basic line to follow as I'm cutting, so I don't do it super crooked you have to be perfect, but you know you don't want it to be completely lopsided just last an exacto blade so like a little hacksaw is perfect for this if you have one um and the strong pair of scissors works for this part as well oh, you know exactly in this out so at hobby lobby we will actually talks more about this tomorrow, but they have a lot of different paper machine shop options so you could do like a white hat box sort of shape or you could do a regular traditional bak I like to tall skinny because they do use them a lot and displays, and so it just adds a height that I really want. We're almost through this we'll see if we can get the scissors to go the last little bit, ariel okay, so we've gotten rid of that again, the top doesn't matter, because we're going to put the top rate back on so it will be covered up and were a little I would probably cut off a little bit more, but for our purposes today we are fine. Now, the other thing that I would do before I cut the circle, we wanted to cut the circle ahead of time so it wouldn't take so long, but I would actually put on the paper, the pattern paper first, so then you don't have to figure out how to cut the circle again and measure that, so that is something that I would do ahead of time, and we are using my story again, not really pretty pink with the butterflies, and I really loved the birch pattern for the outside because it's, just simple and clean and really easy to create, so I'm just going to trim it right to size wait, just place this sir it on again, the nice thing about this is that we don't actually have to be super precise because it's the top isn't going to show, so if it's a little bit in perfect that's ok, come on, top of something I got hot glue on a lot of with my really ok three inches, so I would cut that look at that that was super close on dh, then I would just wrap it around, I would make the seam in the back and you can see here that the scene picking up was right in the back, but no one's really looking at that so that's why I would put it back there? Um, so if you're like me and you pre cut your oval, I would just trace inside to give yourself a basic guide to start with. But again, the edge isn't going to show, so it doesn't really matter. It's perfect cut because it won't be there. So the other thing I would do before I apply anything else is to paint the inside so this I didn't need to paint because I filled it with paper. This the base of it, I painted pink and then the top of it, I painted pink and the back we're using pattern paper as well. Because I want the interior to be this pattern but I felt like it was really really saturated on dh when you were looking in there it sort of took away from what was happening so I just whitewashed the paper so you could still see the pattern coming through but it has a lighter feel to it and the nice thing about that you just cut it too high and then you just cut off a little bit of the land and you just roll it right and stick to the sides so we will cut it to the right height don't go and then I just wrapped around just to see you wearing to cut ok we're going to whitewash this really quick so it can dry while we're doing the outside so I generally just really watered down the paint when I'm whitewashing but some paint over here or you can put it on and then wipe it off so that's another option as well so we're just going to kind of put it on white and you can keep it streaky if you like the streets or even take the streaks out by just adding the water and just keep going a few more well addison okay so it's going kind of give it that like country sort of soft feel I would keep going till I covered the entire thing on then I would just add that right in just a tiny bit more all right, so just pop this guy in there and it naturally sort of wants to go that way and holds itself right in place he could add some glue dots if you wanted to but you don't really need to s so that would be our interior we paint the bottom a color and then we're going to just start working on the exterior so I've traced to the oval here I am going tio think the fastest way to do it would just be two it is an exacto knife all right? So I just cut that that was actually super fast and pretty easy um and it lined up really well and so then I am going tio mod podge both the paper because we have a curve here we really really want to steal this so I'm in a much part both the paper aaron the container because the paper machine will soak up a lot more than this finished wood box will so I am just really like getting it on there and again I would do this on a piece of tin foil so that I wouldn't make a mess on my craft matt quilting not um especially get the edge is really, really well all right much patch it reminds me of like elementary school too, so we're doing a whole lot of elementary school throw back here, okay? You know what my hands off for the time being I'm just going to go ahead and get the edges of this since we don't have a whole lot of time but I really would paint out the whole thing because I think it's safer to really seal it okay and don't want the paper to dry so I'm going to go ahead and apply this and we're just going to match up the opening a cz well as we can white my hands off so I don't get it all over and I'm just going to smooth it out as I go so I can get a nice seal on it and you really do on a kind of rub it and so that you don't get any air pocket there bubbles that it gives it a nice smooth finish um sometimes I'll even go over it with a bone folder which is like what you saw me is on the envelopes so it already kind of started to dry on the edges sorting out a little bit more in here and wrap that around from where it kind of starts to come out that's when I really use the paper towels to make sure it's not getting to see how I'm doing that like pushing and it's moving at the same time I would keep doing that until I made sure I got a nice deal on both besides um but for time purposes we're going to go a little bit faster, so I would obviously add in a panel to the back, and another thing that I like to do a lot of times is to paint where I know there's going to be an edge two color match. I probably paint it white so that you wouldn't even really notice that there's a scene there if a little piece of the back shows ok, so we've got our outside and are inside. Now we're going to create the base and I create the base using a really heavy chip board and where you can get this ship words is talk to michael for hobby lobby. They use these when they ship twelve by twelve paper, so it's like just the packaging that you'll see like the base on, but just a little bit heavier than can keep it so paper doesn't get ruined. What I like to do is take the lid and trace of basic shape. I wanted to meet a little bit larger than the base, so instead of tracing right at the base of it, I'm going to put it out like a quarter of an inch and it's not going to be perfect, but it will be close sometimes I'll also just look for like a couple of bowl that's just slightly bigger so that I can really get a good trace on it. And I've cut this sometimes with pinking shears if I want like a zigzag edge which could be really cute and nice today we're just going to do a straight edge so I could just add the feet directly to the base of the paper machine uh box and it would look good, but it doesn't look as good as adding more glitter, so we're going to glitter this ship board and use it as the base okay, so you see it's just and that a little bit too big that will start to look funny so we're gonna make it just a little bit smaller and I would try and get this circle relatively um perfect because you want it sticking up too much all right let's, try that, ok that's much better so then again, I would just ma jj podge the edge and I wouldn't glitter the whole thing because we would need it to adhere to the base so we're just going to do the edge that's going to show and that's really easy to do just swipe it right around the edge and then I also want to get let the front that's going to show and just slightly under and then we're just going to sprinkle glitter and I like a chunkier glitter for this but if you want you can get a fine glitter too and it would work a swell and then I was kind of around the outside and make sure that I'm getting it everywhere I need to now the nice thing about much podge is you can go back over the glitter it's going to take a little bit of it off but this will really seal it in so that when people are touching it you know how you touch a glittered project and you get glitter all over this will really keep it sealed and it'll dry clear so we'll take a little bit of time for that to happen and we can even add in spots we missed um but it'll really seal it and so I recommend doing that on a project that's going to get touched okay so this would take a while to dry or gonna let it dry for a little bit as we move on in the project glitter base ok so the next thing we're going to do is cover the lid and I did that using a really beautiful floral um from the my story line right here and we just measure the exact size and cut the strip for it so much glitter um a true story my husband taught an entire class with glitter on his nose one time and the students didn't say anything and he was really mad at me when he came home that night I'm sorry your glitter habit is ruining my life is how I think that conversation at least it wasn't like an audition, right? That would have been worse. All right, so are lit is about two inches, they're just going to cut two inches, and then we would just wrap that right around and I would normally use much podge again. So the reason I'm doing much podge in this project is because it really seals it in on gives you a nice, smooth finish. So it's just going to look like it's, a part of the living, as opposed to glued on for our purposes because we're in a hurry. At this point, we're going to use a little bit of hot glue. I wouldn't recommend that because it's not going to give you that same smooth finish, you know, it's just a little thicker and doesn't quite give you the look you want, but that's what we're doing and I just put the flowers upside down. So that's bad too, but it's an artistic choice, right? So pay attention to your patterns is the lesson to learn right there. Um, I would normally ripped that off and start over, but we're going to keep going, and I don't have a problem with that. I know a lot of people feel like I don't. An issue with starting over redoing things or maybe not being perfect to me like that's what crafts air about like you're going to make mistakes it's a creative process so you're gonna like things and you're going to hate things and you're going to take things apart and put them back together and to me that's actually part of the fun that sort of freedom, a za photographer and super precise I want everything to be exact I want everything to be right the first time as a creator or an artist I think that's why it's so fun to mito make mistakes because I don't feel that same sense of pressure but I think a lot of times we can put that pressure on ourselves and it's not good so just from the very beginning know that mistakes will be made and it's ok it's not a big deal um that's why you're getting extra paper? Uh oh you couldn't just start over and do it again. My other issue with starting projects is like loving the paper too much to want to use it right? But here's, what I've noticed after a few years you don't love it as much c minds will use it why you love it right? Because you're going to want the next new thing anyway so you might as well use the new thing while you still love it I'm teaching me myself that lesson still still working on that because I am definitely a paper porter if there was like such a thing is like tlc craft order I would be on the show minus like brats and like scary thing you can still walk in my house sort of there's just a lot of glitter all right s so I've just traced the top in the same pattern and cut that just so tiny that smaller I do recommend on the top to make it slightly smaller cause it's going to fit inside the lift people just created with pattern paper this would definitely be a project that none of the boys in my family would care about but me but if it makes me happy looking at it every day then it's worthwhile right? Ok, so we would just much pudge this right on to the top there's a little glitter in my much podge now because I double dipped don't do that same is with eating his now there's going to be a little bump through the glitter and we just add that right on okay, so actually as it is, it looks really pretty right like you don't necessarily need to do that much tio more to it but I like to take things one step further on and I've added another pattern paper and I've pleaded it just like you would with a ribbon and this is one of those cases where it's like pretty and I'm using the backside by two sheep, it'll be okay, and I just wanted to be small because I wanted it to sort of look like a ribbon. And the nice thing about this pattern is it already has a grid marked for me, so I can just follow the line of the pattern, all right? So we've cut our band, and we're gonna leave it on there now, um, and I'm going to look and see sort of where this center is, ok? You can see on here I knew I wanted to put the butterfly in, so the pleat in the front is much larger than the rest of the place it's so I'm going to sort of make a little s shape with the paper, and then I do it again on this side, so I've done that on both sides, as you can see, and then I just start pleading back and forth so a little pleat and then back and then you do it a little bit farther, a pleat. So this paper doesn't go very far, so you're going to make a lot of strips of this, and then we're just going to hot glue that down because it doesn't need to be flat, we're going to do another pleat and then come out in one more pleat and, well, this ad, this part for now, and we can add more and later, but for the next, please, I would just tuck it in and keep going. So what you need to do when you're gluing this is to glue into each pleat first, then glue the other side, the pleats so that they're just barely sort of tapped down. I still want there to be some depth see that like a piece of ribbon, but so just a duct one dot right in the center of each, please, here we go. And then I would add that on right to the front, and I'm starting with the middle just to make sure it's exactly where I want it to be, and I'm not gluing the edge all the way down because I know later when we actually finished this, um, that I want to tuck in some more, but you can see and I could actually just leave it like that it's kind of pretty it looks almost like a bow um, or you can keep going all the way around as we did, and actually I ended it right in here and just kept their oven around in the back, so on top of that, I added a ribbon and you could really add anything, any kind of trimmings that you like? Um here I used pink. And on this one, I think I want to use gold. I really think that looks nice. So I'm just going to measure and cut that and always when I'm doing these, I start in the finish, their start in the middle, in the front so that I know I get it exactly where I want, where counts and then sort of go from there. And this will also help keep your pleats in place. So we're just gluing it right down on either side. Hold that for a second so that it will stay. I like that better than the original amount will just tack it on the back for now. Okay, step one more layer. I want to go ahead at this point and do the front so that you can see how we sort of finished this rough at each. So in this case, I've actually pleaded a tiny bit of crepe paper, and I it looks just like this and that's also what's on the top. Now this is a little bit different because I went ahead and you can buy rotary blades that are pinking blades and it makes it really easy to cut crepe so this is just you know, by sheets of crepe paper or you could buy create paper in the rules you could use it in the role to just kind of unroll it and make a little packet and then I just run right over it with a rotary tremor so in this case I need for it to be let's do a few pieces of it I want for it to be nice and thin but on the top I needed to be fixed up so so I'm just going to cut a piece of that and then I'm just going to term it to size and you can see it's probably a little more than a quarter of an inch the rest of this we can use for something else so we have this piece right here and it's kind of the same as we did with this so I mean I line it with just a little bit of hot glue and then I just start pleading really tight please so back and forth back and forth and I just keep doing that just a few centimetres at a time to give it the finish that I want so keep going and gathering and tucking gathered tuck get their attack just like that along the edge and this is where I can kind of fake the edge not being perfect and clean so do you see how it's starting to cover that and I can start to correct the shape if I made the oval not so perfect and remember the hot glue dries while I'm still working aiken just reheat it up by putting the hot glue back over it and it'll melt what's there so well you would keep going on that um and we're going to do that right now for time purposes the next thing I would add is just in this case a little piece of lace I felt like it looked really good with it so I wanted to just trim that out and again I would just line it right with the hot glue and continue going right around the edge all the way around and it just creates a really nice finished look okay the top we made in exactly the same way as we did on our other I just gathered it up pleaded it around a circle and it creates this really nice like puffy I might even add glitter again who knows I can't help myself on dh then I've used a larger venial for this just because of the larger piece for the feet on the base we can add that now because it should be close to dry it's not quite dry yet but we can add it anyway so in this case I would just place my hot glue down. Right to the center well it's like popping out me um and I would use a lot just tow safe and you're just gonna kind of eyeball it and center it from above got it and that's our base and we'll just hold that in for a little while looking pretty good and then we would add our feet a cz well so that is that for the interior of the we would add in I added in a branch and I've added in the butterflies and all the butterflies come from the my story kit as well and so we've used a few different items for this so we've used this mixed bag which has all the butterflies that you're seeing in the interior and I'll pull those out so that we can see it I just went and got a branch out of my backyard right and just hot clued the butterflies right on to it and I bent them into shape just like I did the leaf today just kind of curving them, changing the shape up a little bit so it looks more realistic this is just shred you confined in the party I'll that I've added to the base I also think they look really cute with some live moss and reindeer moss would be really nice if you wanted it to have a more natural feel and then for the plaque on the front we've used our wood veneer stickers and we have one that says you give me butterflies so I just added that right across the top, they are adhesive. But I want to head an added one little dot hot glue on both sides to make sure that it stays there permanently. And that is the butterfly die aroma. And I'm actually surprised at how fast we were able to make that so we could continue on and probably finish it in a few more minutes. And but you're seeing exactly what it looks like, right in front of you there just really fun. Little projects, their own little, many worlds that are fun to have around. And I think, just add that little perfect touch of winds e so I think it's it's a fun project to do great. Thank you. I went question that someone a couple people are interested in. Kathy holding one is now how do you store your beautiful papers? I love learning how people organize how ideo. So I have this higher office full of paper because that's, what I do all day, this is my friend job. Um and so I store them in two different ways. The first is I like to use just plastic paper trees like you would see at a store where you buy him on. Guy just ordered them back in the day when there were a lot of scrapbooking stores around. But you can find them online really easily and that they're horizontal. So they hold it like this. I also have twelve by twelve. They look like magazine holders where I can hold the paper vertically. I don't like those as much because I feel like the paper starts to bend and I can't use a paper a lot of times if the corner is bend her dented so to keep its shape I really just like the flat trays on di keep it by line. Um, I know I used to keep it by color, but for me with work more helpful now keep things by line. But I know that that people want to know about a lot of times too. Having organizing a lot of paper of the truth is if I took a picture of my house before creative live mew at all cry like covered in crap of but at least it's like a really pretty mess right now are competent producer says that your house is very organized.