Celebratory Keepsake stand Tutorial by DT Khushboo

Hie guys! Good morning, and welcome to this beautiful celebration of lights! I'm Khushboo and I'm here with an inspiring (I hope so :D) tutorial post, keeping our current challenge theme: 'Celebration and Lights' in mind. 

Light could mean anything - be it the colours of light (yellow, orange, ochre) or sun rays, bulbs, brightness, etc. I've tried to interpret this challenge in a slightly off-beat colour i.e. Golden. Often times we forget, just how beautiful sun rays look in a far off stretch of water - the golden hue on water. If the angle's right, light has a brilliant golden touch and I wanted to capture that in my project. 

So let's get on with our tutorial of a 'Celebratory Keepsake Stand', which you can use as a pen stand, a cutlery stand - or basically, any stand that you need it to be. But that's not all, I will also teach you a slightly unconventional technique - that you can whip up any time - and the effect it leaves you with is super stunning! 

Step 1: 

Take your chipboard and cut these sizes: four pieces of 5x3 inches (for the walls of the stand) + one piece of 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (for the base) + four strips of 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches. 

Step 2: 

Take a strong adhesive and glue all the four walls together as shown in the pics below. Strong glue will ensure that your stand won't fall haphazardly if you put something as heavy as your cutlery in it.

Step 3: 

Once dry, glue the edges and attach the structure to your base. Now start adding the thin strips of chipboard at the edges of the base. This is to create a meek space that will hold your paper pins and rubber bands (in case you opt for it to be a pen stand). I goofed up a bit with my measurements, and hence I was left with space for only two of my four strips to be attached. 

Step 4: 

Now comes the fun part! I'll show you this technique with a glue gun that gives a nice bubbly effect to your stand. Get your pretty glue guns and let the fun begin! Heat the gun nicely, and start making whatever designs you want - swirlies, borders, flowers, aztec patterns, anything! Hold the gun steady while you're doing this coz the more the heat gun wavers, the more your design will show wobbly on the stand. I suggest you first try a few designs on a scrap. That will give you an idea of your range of pressure on the gun and improve your designs with every practice!

Step 5: 

This is how one of the sides of my stand looks. I know, it looks a little disruptive. But it gets better, I promise :P!

This side turned out to be pretty! I just started playing around with the patterns!

Step 7: 

Now here's the thing - notice all the glue webs in the below pic? That happens coz your glue's melted and when you're making the designs, the glue's continuously dripping from the nozzle in it's semi-liquid state. But don't worry - just try to remove them with your hands or a brush or even a heat gun! They'll blow right off!

Step 7: 

Once you're done with your glue gun designs, let the stand dry nicely for a minute or two. Then spray the entire stand with a golden spray - let it dry, and then spray it again. Let it dry completely.

Don't forget to spray the inside and the base on the outside, too! I've sprayed these in a beautiful silver colour to give a stark contrast.

Step 8: 

Now spray an orange colour spray randomly on your design, and wipe it off with a tissue. Such subtle colour hues enhances your overall look in a project.

Step 9: 

Once you're done, get your acrylic paints out and get on with dry-brushing with them. Dry-brushing means taking your acrylic paints in a dry paint brush (no water absolutely!) and with a light hand, stroking over your designs. If you look at the pic below, I've taken an orange colour acrylic paint and dry brushed the length of the feather. It's that easy!

Step 10: 

The technique part ends here. From here on, you will see the finished stand with a few details shared here and there.

Notice how I added a crackle glaze at the top and let it drip. It added such a beautiful depth and texture to my stand!

I added a flower and I covered the entire stand with free hand flowers and dots using a golden colour glitter glue

I also added the glitter glue on the top rims to tie the whole theme together! 

Step 11: 

Once you're done with your embellishments, spray clear varnish all over to seal the glitter and the paints inside and increase the shelf life of your product!

Materials used:

1. Chipboard 900 gsm
2. Glue
3. Glue gun
4. Golden spray paint can
5. Silver spray paint can
6. Orange spray
7. Acrylic paints
8. Flowers
9. Glitter glue
10. Crackle glaze
11. Tim Holtz yellow stain
12. Paint brushes
13. Varnish
14. Tissues

Hope you guys enjoyed my creations and the tutorial. Can't wait to see how you add your own twist to this!
Above mentioned products are available at Rainbow Craftykari Store OR you can pre-order the products by sending email at rainbowcraftykari@gmail.com
That's it from me, folks!

Signing out,
Khushboo R. Gandhi