Woodgrain Tutorial by Rupa

Altered Shoe Box

            Dear friends this is a super exciting post ....most of you know my love for recycling ---not only do I enjoy to do recycling crafts,I get super excited when I see other crafters do it! I have featured 2 other talented Recycling Crafters in the past [see Guest Posts on this blog by Khadija and Katy] and today I am thrilled to have the super talented Rupa [of Tofa- Together for Arts]as my Guest. Rupa is an artist + crafter [a deadly combination!!] and she is here to share with you how she made the gorgeous  Faux wood texture on the shoe-box she recycled!

Over to Rupa....

Rupa

Hello Crafters,
I am Rupa from Bangalore(India).I feel so honored and excited to be a guest today in Sonia’s blog. We live in the same city and share the same passion for “ Re cycling”! Most of my projects have an up cycled item and they are all altered projects.
I was so overwhelmed by the great response to  my “Creaking Door” and the icing was when Sonia asked me to do a tutorial on how to create the wood grain texture or the “faux wooden log”. It gives me great pleasure to share the technique with you all. Thank you Sonia, for this opportunity to connect with your bloggy pals.
It’s quite simple and the materials required are just a handful!
So, here we go…
Materials required:

• A piece of corrugated cardboard
• Acrylic spray paint-black
• Acrylic tube paints- in brown, black and white
• Big flat brush and a couple of thin round brushes
• A cup of water
• Rag cloth

Woodgrain Tutorial

Procedure:
Step 1- Spray black acrylic paint on the cardboard randomly leaving a few brown patches. It can be just one layer of paint and need not be too dark.

Woodgrain Tutorial

Step 2- The grains are created using the dry brush technique, so keep them dry! Squeeze some black, brown and white paint on to your palette. Using the big flat brush, dip the bristles onto white paint and tap excess. Load the paint only at the tip and now give a couple of strokes on the surface till the paint fades.

Woodgrain Tutorial

You will notice a natural rough texture because of the dry technique.

Woodgrain Tutorial

Step 3- Clean the brush and dry completely. Load black paint at the tips and do the same as step2, overlapping on the white strokes.

Woodgrain Tutorial

Step 4- Now load brown paint and do just few strokes here and there. Wait for the surface to dry. See the layers build up!

Woodgrain Tutorial

Step 5- To create the knot holes on the log- load white paint in one corner of the flat brush and rotate clock wise at one spot. 

Woodgrain Tutorial

 Follow with a touch of black too.

Woodgrain Tutorial

Step 6-Now take the thin round brush and load black paint and draw lines on the card board at regular intervals of say 1.5 inches. Once that dries, dry brush white paint on both sides of the black line so that the black “pops up”! This will create the illusion of space between the logs!

Woodgrain Tutorial

At any point you can go back to step 2 and continue if you are not happy with the look. It is quite forgiving that way.
Your wooden plank is ready for the project.
Look at what I did to it!I painted the lid of a shoe box to create a door and embellished it too.

Woodgrain

Have a look at this project " The Creaky Door" and do let me know if this tutorial was helpful.

Altered Shoe Box

Hope to see a lot of “Loggy” creations from you all. Do drop a comment on my blog if you have any other queries.
Until then,
Happy Crafting and Recycling.
Hugs,
Rupa

Wasn't that just AMAZING...!!!!....And that was just a teaser about Rupa's talent.
Please do drop by her blog  Tofa- Together for Arts  to see more of her work and I assure you , you wont be disappointed!
And if you are in Bangalore-- you can actually learn lots of tips and tricks from Rupa in person as she regularly conducts some amazing craft workshops.