Hello, Friends ... Today I'm joining up with Inchie Arts and Ellen Hutson for a fun week-long product feature! Inchie Arts has developed some new kits for making city and neighborhood scenes called Little Villages (so far, there are two kits!). The kits were designed for unlimited scenic possibilities! Here, I've created a snowy night-time Christmas village scene:
(Click on any photo for a larger view. Bold products are linked below in the supply section).
The kits are die cut matboard pieces made out of the same sturdy archival white matboard used for Inchie Arts' signature Art Squares. Today I used the Little Village 2 kit (there is also a Little Village 1 kit). Below are all of the Little Village 2 pieces punched out of the 3-1/2" x 5" matboard piece from which they are die cut (the pieces come still attached in the matboard rectangle, but punch out cleanly and easily):
Both kits come with an ATC (2.5"x 3.5") Art Square base, but I decided to use a little larger white 4" Art Square to create this holiday home decor piece. Since this is a holiday piece, I wanted a lot of shimmer, so I dug out some supplies I haven't used in a quite a while, Perfect Pearls pigment powders! After covering the Art Square with Perfect Medium (it is in a stamp pad form), I dabbed on Jubilee Blue and Turquoise Perfect Pearl powder (left photo below), then I pounced/worked the two powders into the medium on the Art Square using the large Perfect Pearl brush (right photo below):
I used Taylored Expressions Eventful-Night Before Christmas border die to layer cardstock pieces (Neenah Solar White 110 Lb.) behind and in front of the Village pieces, as well as using the die to emboss windows and doors into the Village pieces. To emboss Art Squares with any low-profile die, simply use your normal die cut sandwich:
It may take a little extra effort to get the sandwich to run through your die cut machine because the Art Square matboard is so thick. The die will not totally cut the Art Square, but leave very good embossed impressions:
Tiny windows were colored with Copic Y35. Then because I wanted the pieces to have a metallic look, I covered the Village pieces with Perfect Medium and different colors of Perfect Pearls: Bronze, Copper, Gold, Pewter and Perfect Pearl on the buildings, snow, moon; and Festival Green on the trees:
After the Perfect Medium dries, simply brush off any excess Perfect Pearl powder. Honestly, I couldn't decide how I wanted to color these Village pieces! Because of the sturdiness of the matboard, your options are limitless ... you could color them with markers, colored pencils, paints, apply ink directly from an ink pad, watercolor them, heat emboss, ultra thick embossing powder, cover them with glue and patterned paper, stamp patterns on them, etc., etc., etc.!! The matboard can take just about anything!
Some of the pieces were also covered with glitter tape. To cover the lamp post die cut, I used X-Press It's beautiful new 1-inch wide Gold Glitter Deco Tape to cover cardstock, then die cut. Here, I positioned the tape onto the top of the die to help hold it in place while die cutting. The glitter tape has washi tape tendencies -- it has a good adhesive hold, but you can lift it up and reposition it without fear of damaging the cardstock! It also tears easily by hand, but instead of being semi-transparent and paper texture, it feels and reminds me more of metallic mylar:
The tape die cuts very easily and cleanly:
Even the very thin Merry die from Essentials by Ellen Merry & Bright die set cuts the glitter tape very nicely (I ended up using the Silver Deco Glitter Tape on my project):
Some of the Little Village pieces were layered together with lots of foam tape, to create dimension. The large tree behind the church is from another Taylored Expressions border die, Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?
The Merry word and circle to cover one of the small round matboard pieces were cut from Silver Deco Glitter Tape. Hopefully, here you can see all the dimension this piece has. The blue Little Village building in front was die embossed, then a snowdrift from the cardstock die cut Night Before Christmas border was cut off and attached to the Village matboard building ... think of all the fun possibilities you have for decorating these fun Little Village Art Square Kit pieces!
You'll find more Inchie Arts and Little Village inspiration over on Ellen Hutson's education blog, the CLASSroom, where they have Inchie Arts products featured all this week! You can also visit the Inchie Arts blog all this week as they inspire you with the Little Village kits!
SALE:
As they join Inchie Arts in celebrating all things Inchie Arts, Ellen Hutson has a sale of 20% off all in stock Inchie Arts merchandise, including Little Villages! You can find all the Inchie products HERE at Ellen Hutson LLC.
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