Tando Creative: "Soak It Up!" with Lisa

Hey folks! Today's blog post is for Tando Creative and the theme this week is "Soak It Up!"

This is an amazing theme to focus towards Tando products as the majority of them are made from greyboard. Greyboard is a fabulous product to work with, and when it gets wet it is highly malleable. Which means you can bend and twist the greyboard to manipulate it in to different shapes. It also behaves like Gremlins, meaning it multiplies to a number of layers - so you can have a number of the same shape only thinner. It is great to experiment with this technique as loads of different outcomes can be created.

This week, I decided to make a card and play with Tando Bottles and Jars.

Here is what I created...

First I cut a piece of card 7" x 7" and blended a selection of Distress Inks on to it. I then stamped the stars on to the background.

I collected a selection of the Tando Jars and Bottles and sat them in a tray of water for a couple of minutes. At this point they start to expand and begin to separate. After a couple of minutes, I took them out the tray and squeezed the excess water out of them. Then you can start to manipulate them in to the shape you want. In this case, I moulded the jars and bottles around a paintbrush handle to curve the shapes in to a more 3D shape.

I then painted them all with DecoArt black gesso. I added DecoArt texture sand paste to some of them and DecoArt white crackle paint to the others.
When they were dry, I used DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Gold Metallic paint over the top which I applied with my finger.

I them covered some of the jars with clear embossing ink and heat embossed clear UTEE over the top.

I stamped the wood texture stamp on to white card and cut in to 1.5cm strips. I then painted them with DecoArt Titan Buff and adhered underneath to create shelves to sit the bottles on.

To finish, I created the words - "get busy creating" and then painted a border around them with the Titan Buff paint.