Tando Creative: February Kit of the Month - Tando Twirly Whirly Art Stand No 1 by Art Angel

When I first saw the Tando Twirly Whirly in its naked form I thought Wow! Just wow!! What a brilliant idea!! Think of it as a shadow box or a printers tray except you have four spacious cubby holes to fill to your hearts content, five if you include decorating the top. your options for using this are only as limited as your imagination. As an added bonus the whole thing is rotating, so all sides are very easily visubly, put it on a motorised lazy susan and you dont even have to turn it for a magnifucant display!

Putting the piece together is easy and Di has put together a detailed video for you to show how simple is it which i’ll include here I have made a slight adaptation in order to accommodate lights so check out the following steps, its all very straight forward i have just swapped the order of spacers so i have more clearance at the bottom so that the lights don't cause an obstruction when spinning

First of all go through your pieces , make sure everything is present and correct and lay your pieces out so you know which order you are going to put them together in

I chose to give mine a coat of Deco Art carbon black chalk paint, you do not need to gesso first

Assemble your “H” pieces paying attention to where you position you tabs and notches as per Di’s video, tabs sit towards the centre, with notches towards the outside edge so that your cross piece fits securely

I used a big bite hole punch from we r memory keepers to punch a total of twenty holes to house my led rice lights, but you could poke through with an awl into some blue tack

I inserted the rice lights into the holes and secured the wiring on the back with red liner tape, you need to use a good strong tape that will stay stuck as you don’t want the wire to obstruct spinning

This is what the under side looked like

To begin assembly, i glued the three rings together and clamped them until dry, i then mounted these onto the large full circle. I inserted the bolt through the circle that has the larger hole in the centre and then glued this to the ring base

This is the bit where my construction differs slightly as i used the two smaller circles, that Di used on the top of her piece, here to provide the extra clearance to accommodate my lights wiring

I then attached the base circle with the lights in followed by all four H pieces, making sure the notches and tabs were aligned correctly with notches at the top and nearest the outer edge. I found it much easier to build up by placing the base over the bolt, the adding H pieces and then the cross piece rather than building this middle section as one unit and trying to align the bolt with the hole. If you do build the middle section as one piece then try to put the whole section over the bolt i would suggest using your pokey took through the hole in the cross piece to hold your bolt still then sliding it on

Use pva on cross piece to glue top circle in place, avoiding the centre square

I used Dark Arts Backing papers from Magik Graphics to cover my top two circles. I placed the grey board onto the back of the papers and drew round in pencil, cut them out and adhered with Deco Art Matte Medium, then gently sanded the edges for a more professional finish

I also cut 8 panels from the same papers to adhere to the inside walls, again i used matte medium to adhere to each side of the H pieces

I had previously used Hearty Soft clay in some of the Stamperia Alchemy moulds to create various pieces that could be used to decorate my piece, this piece i cut into four as i wanted one piece in each section

These were painted black, and decoart metallic lustre was used to bring out all that texture, i adhered these to my art stand using a hot blue gun

I used a mixture of Tim Holtz pieces, Stamperia Alchemy papers and clay casts, Dr Hoggarts Medicinal Madness Papers from Magik Graphics on brown glass potion bottles and bits from my stash to decorate insides and top, a glue gun was used to create lots of dribbles spilling from the potion bottles which was then painted with gold paint