Sunflower Project Tray (by Anne)

Today I am sharing a decorated recycled Balsa wood cheese tray (19 X 25cm) left over from Christmas. I needed a small project tray to collect together all my embroidery and sewing thread spools when working on one of my textile stitched paintings. I kept the 3D texture to a minimum as I didn’t want my fine threads catching and pulling on anything.

I chose one of the lovely Floral Rice Papers and the fab Duo Arty Quotes Mini Stencil from Powertex to decorate. I wanted to create something that would give me some ‘arty’ inspiration. I had a few grey board embellishments in my stash so added these too for a bit of interest.

I first used a water pen to dampen around the images enabling them to be torn and separated to form soft edged pieces that will blend into the background once decoupaged.

I coated the whole tray with Ivory Powertex and dried using a hair dryer. This provided a light background for the decoupage elements. Coating the tray with Powertex hardened up the soft Balsa wood and sealed it making it easier to keep clean too. I also coated the grey board elements with Ivory Powertex.

Decorative papers were then applied using Easy Coat Mat. Easy Structure Paste was then applied through the stencil using a recycled bank card. I also added a little more texture using a grid stencil from my stash.

The embellishments were stuck down with more Powertex and a little Easy Structure Paste where needed (i.e. onto textured areas).

In the background you can see a sneak peek of my next project in progress. I like to work on several things at once so that I don’t waste time waiting for layers to dry.

Next I used a white opaque pen (acrylic paint pen) to draw extra highlights onto the main sunflower image. Then I used the new transparent acrylic inks to brush over and add a bit of colour. These are fabulous as being transparent they don’t obliterate the layers beneath. I chose the Golden Metallic and Aqua Metallic Inks to blend in with the main colour theme of the decoupaged images and to add a little sheen. I emphasized the lettering using a brown fine tipped pen (suitable for going onto acrylic).

Where needed I also rubbed over a little more Ivory Powertex using my finger to blend in the colouring where I thought it was a bit heavy.

I also rubbed on a little gold gilding wax from my stash (Pebeo).

Finally I added a little clear PVA based glitter glue to bring a little sparkle. I just couldn’t help myself. Once dry I brushed over the whole tray with Easy Varnish.

Now I have a lovely inspirational project tray. Hope that you like it too.

Hugs all and happy creating, Anne xxx