Mushroom Teacup Garden

 So the mushroom obsession continues with my Mushroom Teacup garden. I do believe I’ve doomed myself to creating mushroom projects forever, I’m just having way to much fun!

So I love teacups and I love mushrooms so why not put them together right! Teacups are so fun to do projects with. I started off by using foam to fill the teacup and building on it to get the shape I wanted above the lip of the teacup. I then used moss to cover the foam, spill over the edge and cover some of the saucer so it gave the idea of it kind of being taken over by nature. I love my copics and I love a challenge so I decided to cut all the pieces using Tim Holtz dies out of strathmore smooth bristol paper. This gave me a nice think base for all the pieces. I then started coloring everything in with my copics, long process but worth it. If you didn’t want to do the coloring portion you could just use colored paper. I then started assembling the pieces in sections and mounted them on crafting wire with hot glue so that I could put them in, in sections. 

This was such a fun project to make!

I used a ton of thinlits dies. 660955, 663087, 662702, 665215, 661206, 664581, 664361. I hope I remembered them all. I love mixing and matching dies so I often get going and it’s one from here and one from there and before I know it I don’t know what I’ve used or where it goes lol

The Mushroom Forest Clock

 So I kinda have a mushroom obsession, ok well maybe that’s an understatement lol. Perhaps I need a twelve step program! So I kept looking at this Tim Holtz clock that I have and kept thinking it was meant for something fabulous, but what? So I decided to go with mushrooms and hence the mushroom forest clock was born!

I started off by priming and then using modeling paste to create texture. I then painted it all in acrylics and gave it a patina effect! The back panel on the inside is painted to look like a forest in the background to give the project depth and a sense of a small forest being trapped in the clock!

I dug through some old supplies because let’s face it we all have a stash that we are saving for a rainy day right! So I used an old prima vine that I had. I created the leaves using a Tim Holtz leaf’s dies and inked them with Tim Holtz inks to look like fall leaves. Inside is real moss and foam mushrooms. 

And voila the mushroom forest clock!

Stabilo Woody....

So let’s talk about this product for a moment. Apparently they are a kids crayon! Obviously I’m a child lol because I love these things!!! They are quite fun to use, they are like a cross between a pencil crayon and a crayon AND they are water soluble!

In the past I have used them on several projects but never just on there own, so this was sort of an experiment to see how they would work. I was quite impressed and I completely fell in love with how they laid down on the paper and the end result. I love the look of my finished projects.

Here’s a peek at what I created with them!

My first attempt 

My second attempt 

So with all three comparisons done, here is a photo with all three side by side. On the left is the Faber Castell gelatos, in the middle is the Tim Holtz distress crayons and on the right is the Jane Davenport colorstick. All are similar but also different!

PART THREE:

Ok, so last but not least I used Jane Davenport colorsticks. Once again I tried to use colors as close as I could get. Honestly they were quite nice to use. They seemed to be much higher in pigment compared to the other two! They laid down quite nicely. Very easy to blend and because they seemed to be higher in pigment they didn’t seem to pill the paper, which I loved. Also they didn’t dry too quickly, they seemed to stay wetter a little longer so I didn’t have to rush. They were also easy to move and add the next color to for layering. I would have liked a darker brown, I found one too light, one too orange and the other almost reddish. I would love to see more colors in this line! I’m lazy and hate mixing colors to achieve what I’m looking for! I think of all three these were my favourite to use!

Jane Davenport colorstick - start to finish photos

PART TWO:

So part two of the comparison. So this time I used Tim Holtz distress crayons! I color matched the products the best I could. They have similar colors but definitely different results. I honestly found these a pain in the butt to use on there own, although this could be due to using them on a large area as opposed to a tag or a card. They were quite fast drying. They definitely didn’t blend as well as the gelatos! I found them almost gritty. They are more vibrant in color compared to the gelatos though, even the lightest colors are more vibrant. I did like the fact that they were faster drying when it came to the hair though! At this point I’m thinking gelatos for the skin and distress crayons for the hair! They aren’t too bad but if you are going to use them on there own I recommend working quickly and wetting your paper first to get better blending on your first layer!

Tim Holtz distress crayons - photos start to finish

So I have decided to do a three part post of a product comparison. I’ve had people ask me about these three products. Although I have all three products, I have never just used them on a project! So the three products are: #1 Faber Castell gelatos. #2 Tim Holtz distress crayons. #3 Jane Davenport colorstick. All work well when I’m doing mixed media but let’s see how they hold up on there own!

PART ONE:

I sketched out one of my girls, then used my light board to replicate her two more times so I had three exact copies to paint with all three products. I used Canson XL watercolor paper cold press 140. Since they are water soluble I wanted to use them like watercolor to see what the result would be!

These weren’t too bad to work with on there own. If you are looking for a nice soft look then these will do that, they are quite translucent so it took a lot of layers to build up color. This leads to one of the problems. After so many layers the paper pills. I had to do tons of waiting and drying to achieve this look and the paper still pilled. I did not like that. I found that they were easily moved but wanted to gob up in areas. I found it was a lot of work to try and make them blend effortlessly. I could see where a beginner could become extremely frustrated with them! I did like the result though, very soft and pretty. If you are going to use them this way be VERY patient!


Faber Castell gelatos - start to finish in pictures