LINDA KITTMER'S FIBRE ART, PHOTOGRAPHY & JOURNALLING: Walnut Hollow

Monday, February 24, 2014

StencilGirl Blog Hop Featuring Walnut Hollow...

Today I'm playing along in another StencilGirl blog hop, this time featuring a wonderful cornice box from Walnut Hollow.

Before I show you what I made, let me share a quick story...

A few years ago I made a really cool sign (in my opinion) for our cottage. I used a wood-burning tool to trace over our name and some of the details and then I used some acrylic paint and some fabric to enhance the design. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures...I know, what was I thinking!...and even though I used marine varnish on it, it only stood up for a couple of years before the fabric started to fade. The black border you see here was originally done in 1" squares of colourful batiks and the letters in our last name were also done in batiks, with a narrow white border left around them. I've redone it, this time using only acrylic paint so hopefully it holds up better in the elements.

Well, a while back Mary Beth Shaw sent me her latest book, StencilGirl Mixed Media Techniques for Making and Using Stencils and inside it was a project she did using a wood-burning tool. That got me thinking that I haven't played with mine for a while, so I thought, what better project than a wooden box from Walnut Hollow to get that wood-burning tool back out for some fun!

As I mentioned, I'm using this beautiful cornice box from Walnut Hollow (Dimensions: 3.36" x 11.96" x 9.19"). It's a wonderful size and when finished and lined with some fabric, will make a beautiful keepsake or jewellery box!

I chose to use Jamie Fingal's stencils Zen Landscape and Houses stencils for my design on the top of the box.

I first drew a pencil frame around the top of the box, and then I used the Zen Landscape stencil to create an interesting hilly setting. Because the box is wider than the stencil, I had to move the stencil around to create the initial wavy path, sometimes drawing in bits to make it work. In the area under the path I used random parts of the stencil to fill in the area, again drawing some similar shapes myself to fill in all the areas.

I chose one of the houses from the Houses stencil and added it, along with it's funky tree in the little valley created by the path. Again I took a bit of liberty to draw bits to make it work for me. I also drew in the little walkway up to the front door.

Now the fun begins...I plugged in the wood-burning tool and started to trace all of my pencil lines. This was a great activity to do while watching the Olympics! You don't have to worry about your pencil lines because they all disappear as you go. However, if you are a little off with your wood burning, you can always go back and erase the pencil lines later.

Although I was very happy with how it was looking, I thought it needed some of the wood burned design on the sides too, so I drew in the random little rectangular shapes all the way around the box on the lid portion of the sides. I varied the height to better echo the elements from Jamie's stencil.

Here's what it looked like after all of the wood burning was finished.

I used Silks acrylic glaze and some Byzantia metalic paint. The Silks allow some of the wood grain to show through, and both give a lovely lustre to the piece. When watered down slightly, it acts like a beautiful stain for the background areas.