Friday, July 31, 2015

Vintage Caravan Tutorial

Hi and welcome! I can't believe July is almost over, it went so fast. I have a Sizzix tutorial to share with you today. It's an embossed vintage caravan made with Eileen Hull's 3-D Travel Trailer die.

Growing up, we used to call this type of caravan for an 'egg-caravan' and I had fun using different techniques to try to recreate that look. I wanted something reminiscent of the 'bumpy' texture of caravans and heat embossing with a white powder worked well for that. The lower part of the caravan is covered with Ranger's foil

First, you need to die cut the shapes from mat board or chipboard. You need two of the center pieces and two wheels. As you can see, the Scoreboards dies cuts and scores the material, which makes it easy to assemble the caravan. Use this sandwich: Extended Cutting Pad, die facing up, mat board, second Extended Cutting Pad. It is an XL die, which is why you need the Extended Pads to run it through your Big Shot or Vagabond.

Also die cut two lower pieces of the sides of the caravan, from Ranger's Adhesive Sheets. I later cut them a little narrower.

Use an Emboss It Dabber to apply embossing ink everywhere, except for on the flaps. You can also leave out the lower parts of the sides. Emboss with white embossing powder. Avoid getting powder on the flaps, since that makes them harder to adhere later.

Remove the protective sheet on one side of the Adhesive Sheet and place on the caravan. Remove the top protective sheet and place foil on top, with the matte side down. Press down on the foil, remove and continue until all the adhesive is covered.

Ink the embossed areas with Gathered Twigs. The ink will stick to any small area where there was no embossing powder and give a great distressed look to the caravan.

Paint the wheels black and the hook part silver. I also die cut two smaller circles from white paper, with the Travel Trailer Thinlits set, and painted silver. Sand the edges of the mat board shapes.

Sand with Gathered Twigs. The ink will stick to the sanded areas.

Glue the wheels to the inside as shown. Apply adhesive to the flaps, I used Ranger's Wonder Tape.

Start at the top on one side and adhere to the sides. Continue with the second piece and then fold the caravan over to assemble everything. I left a millimetre too much space at the top.

To embellish my caravan I used the Travel Trailer Thinlits set which comes with a whole bunch of different fun dies. These are Thinlits dies and work great together with the Sizzix Magnetic Platform. You can also place them inside each other to cut windows, like here on the door. Make sure that Thinlits dies never overlap each other, since that might damage the dies. Use this sandwich: Magnetic Platform, Cutting Pad, paper, die facing down, second Cutting Pad.

I die cut windows, a door, a liscence plate and the circles used above for the wheels.

Emboss the windows with Platinum powder and the door with White powder. Ink with Gathered Twigs.

Use a piece of tissue tape as a border between the foil and embossed area and to tidy up any unevenness. I used Small Talk stickers for sentiments. 

Windows need curtains and I used a thin strip of Tim Holtz Eclectic Elements fabric. The windows were backed with black Prima paper.

The foil gives a great vintage metallic look to the caravan. 

The door is a little too small maybe, if you want a large one, you can just cut it by hand. 

There is a small window on the front too.

I wished that I had applied the embossing fluid a little more randomly because I really like the imperfections and the brown ink.

Here you can see the textured effect of the bumpy embossing powder even better. The platinum powder worked really well for the windows.

The other side of the caravan looks like this. I am a little ambivalent towards caravans, because we had an accident with our caravan when I was a child, and never got a new one after that. But this vintage one is really cute and it is a gift for someone who loves caravans.

Thank you so much for looking!

Happy crafting!
Anna-Karin

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