Garden Basket of Flowers Shadowbox

Hello everyone, and welcome to the blog.  I am Barbara Rankin.  This is my first post as a new design team member for Creative Paperclay® and I could not be more excited to be here.  My first project that I want to share with you is a fun little garden basket full of flowers.  I had so much fun making this, and I love how it turned out.

Supplies used:

Creative Paperclay® air dry clay
Silicone Molds (Martha Stewart)
Garden Basket rubber stamp (Impression Obsession)
Secret Garden 8x8 print paper pad (Graphic45)
5-1/2" x 8-1/2" wooden shadow box (Dollar Tree)
Glue n' Seal (Ranger)
Acrylic Paints (Ceramcoat Purple, Tahiti Blue, Spice Tan, Lt Ivory) (Folk Art Spring Rose, Pure Orange, Sunflower, Basil Green, Leaf Green, Glazing Medium)
Peeled Paint Distress ink (Ranger)
Glue gun
Moss embossing powder

I like to first work the clay into a ball and push it into the mold  Allow it to dry a bit, maybe 30 minutes, before removing it from the mold.

In some instances, I prefer to work the Paperclay® into an oval shape, as I did for this leaf mold.  It seems to make it easier to push the clay into the mold and get better coverage.

Next, I inked up the basket stamp with archival black ink.  It is not necessary to ink your stamp first, but if you do, I recommend using a waterproof ink so it will not run.  I rolled out a piece of the Creative Paperclay® to approximately a 1/8" thickness.

I then stamped into the clay.

Using a craft knife, I cut the excess Paperclay® away and returned it to the package.

Here is what it looked like after trimming.  I used my fingers to smooth the edges and my fingernails to make tiny indentations along the bottom.

I wanted my basket to look more realistic, so I allowed it to dry over a piece of sponge.

Paint basket with tan acrylic paint.  Allow to dry.

Make a charcoal acrylic paint wash and cover basket.  Allow to dry.  Dry brush tan acrylic paint over basket, just hitting the high spots.

I continued molding flowers, leaves, birds and butterflies, and here is a picture of my desktop filled with  Creative Paperclay® goodness.  It is so easy and so much fun to play with Paperclay® that I could do this for hours.

I painted each piece of Creative Paperclay® with a mixture of acrylic paints and glazing medium.  This helped blend my colors, as well as making the paint more translucent.  

The reason I wanted my paint more translucent is so that my second layer of paint would not completely cover up the previous color.  It would, instead, go into the crevices and darken the nooks and crannies perfectly. Then, after that dried, I could come back and hit the high spots with a dry brush technique.  

With all of my pieces painted and drying, I found a small wooden shadow box I had purchased from the dollar store.  I sanded it a bit, then painted the sides of box, inside and out, with my acrylic paint mixture of Basil Green, Light Avocado, and Glazing Medium.  When the paint was dry, I sprinkled Moss embossing powder here and there on the sides of the box and heat embossed it.   Then I sponged a bit of Peeled Paint distress ink on top of that to bring out the color variations.

I found just the right paper to use for the background, i.e., the Graphic 45 Secret Garden from the 8"x8" paper pad.  It fit perfectly inside the box with just a bit of trimming off the top and bottom. 
I then adhered printed Secret Garden paper to the inside bottom of box with glue n' seal.

Now that all of my Paperclay® embellishments are ready, I simply arranged them inside the box and glued them using a hot glue gun.  Oh my goodness, this was such a fun project.  Here are a few closeup  photos of the Paperclay® and the dimension I easily achieved with this product.

Thanks so much for joining me for my first project post for the Creative Paperclay® design team.  I hope you have been inspired to try out this fabulous and fun product.  There are so many ways to use it, and you will be amazed at how much fun you will have "playing" with this product.  So, I encourage you to visit the Creative Paperclay® blog often, because the other designers have so many wonderful creations to share with you.

Until my next post, I hope you will find some time to visit my blog to see how I continue to use this product.

Have a wonderful week, and happy crafting!

Barbara