November 13, 2016

Winter Village - Building One

Hello everyone!

If you read yesterday's post, you saw the new project I designed called the "Blank Canvas Village". It starts off as a collection of plain chipboard buildings which can be decorated with any paper and mixed media and embellishments you choose.

Well, my theme is Winter with a little Christmas thrown in because I am using the Blank Canvas Village to play along with the Fifth Annual 12 Tags of Christmas - Funkie Junkie Style challenge.


The challenge in a nutshell:  each week, starting in September, Linda Coughlin (aka the Funkie Junkie) presents a new tag on her blog, TheFunkieJunkie.blogspot.com.  The challenge is to make something (anything!) inspired by each one of the 12 tags.

Well, I love construction projects, so I wanted to make my "tags" three-dimensional and so I am going to have the "12 Buildings of Christmas".

I won't go into the details of the building construction here since I covered that in yesterday's post - I'll just show the process and materials I used to decorate Building One.  If you want to know more about the building/village construction, just see the post on November 12, 2016 which describes the process and has links to an overview and construction video series on my YouTube channel.

Now on to Building 1...

Inspirations from Linda's Week 1 Tag:  Trees and Stars
Blank Canvas Building:  Building E

I started out by cutting four pieces of heavy weight white cardstock to the size of each of the building walls.

I used Distress Ink to color each panel (Tumbled Glass, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire and Black Soot).  I saw this color combo on one of Vicky Papaioannou's videos and just love it.
 


I spattered watered-down white paint on these backgrounds... is it snow...distant stars...who knows, but I like it.









I used Tim Holtz' die, "Tree Line" to cut out trees in 2 colors.

Then I cut some snowbanks out of very light blue cardstock and inked them to add dimension.



 

I'm only using these trees where they will show when the building in placed in the village - that's why you don't see them on all the panels.

On the two panels that won't abut other buildings, I popped the layers up a little, but I kept them flat on the third panel (the one on the far right) in order to keep the thickness down so the buildings can nestle closer together.



Once the panels were complete I was ready to attach them to the building.

I first finished off the edge of the building with cardstock finishing strips.

Then I added Scor Tape to the backs of the panels and attached them to the building.





Finally I added some of Tim Holtz' Mirrored Stars.
















And here's where this building fits into the village.

The roofs you see in these photos are just temporary.

The final roofs for all the buildings in the village won't be added until all of the buildings have been decorated and the village is glued together, but I wanted you to have an idea of what it looks like with the roofs.




So that's building #1 done and I'll post a link on the challenge page.

And speaking of the challenge, please visit Linda's blog post to see the inspiration for my building - 12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #1. That post also has all of the challenge details.

If you are a mixed media artist or paper crafter you may already be familiar with the Funkie Junkie blog and shop.  The boutique has great stuff and prices and Linda's customer service is outstanding.


Stay tuned as I continue to finish the remaining buildings in the village over the next weeks.
Thanks for visiting!
April

3 comments:

PaulaB quilts said...

April, this is going to be a beautiful village. The way you softened the colors and blended the trees gives it a dreamy look. The sickle stars are a perfect touch. Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see the finish.

Linda Coughlin, the funkie junkie said...

Welcome April. I'm delighted to have you back playing agin in the 12 Tags of Christmas Funkie Junkie Style! And wow, what a start. Your village is really really amazing. The design is brilliant and the village is so rich in details. Love your approach and your first building! The blue palette is a beautiful background. The white spatters are perfect and the trees are lovely. Thanks so much for your fabulous entry into this challenge!

Hugs,
Linda

Words and Pictures said...

What a fantastic idea to create 3D versions of Linda's tags - I'm looking forward to seeing the final scene! I've just posted my first tag, so now it's 12 tags in 12 days!
Alison x