Peek Week {Chippie Niche}

Hi Leandra here for Sneak week!

At the beginning of the year we developed some niches with Claire Charvill from Greyboard.

There are 2 styles, a niche with a drawer (as shown in this blog post) and a Niche with Shelves. Both have a curved back board (shown above) that can be positioned on the front or back of the niche as an accent frame.

Both styles are available in 2 sizes, A5 (shown) and smaller A6. They are dead cute, and a lot of fun to decorate, you can easily spend a whole day enjoying the process.

The assembly instructions come with the niche, and you will need some high tack PVA glue or similar. It all goes together fairly easily if you place out your pieces first, and work methodically.

Step 1: Lay out your pieces

They fall into 3 groups:

Left: 

(a) arch feet/ plinths (small square sits on large), 

(b) shelf for above the drawer 

(c) drawer front

Centre:

back wall, side and top walls

Right:

(a) drawer; base, ends, back

(b) facing front panel

Step 2: Paint/ Decorate

You need to paint all your pieces, front and back. The paint does not need to be thick, so water it down to loosen a little, and apply a coat of opaque to cover the greyboard. Only one coat is required.

TIP: By painting both sides, the pieces will stay flat, if you only paint one side they will curve, of course you will be glad you painted both sides when it comes to assembly stage!

In the sample below, and ombre effects was created on the more visible front and outer side walls.

You might at this point add texture (GP) or stencils designs, in this sample, rusting paste was dropped into the GP.

NOTE: Rusting paste requires multiple spritzes of water to keep the rusting powder damp in order to activate the rust, so the ombre-painted base coat was a good protector of the grey-board. Lay pieces on paper towel while spritzing.

Pieces rusted: sides, top, facing panel, drawer front

Step 3: Assembly

A. Drawer/ Plinths

To glue, run a tiny bead of glue along one edge, hold in position for a few seconds, then take a damp paintbrush to wipe away the excess. Do one end and the long side, then fit the other end. If you have done it right, all edges should be flush.

The drawer front will go on at the very end (that piece will still be rusting)

The plinths simply sit on top of each other, and will be secured later, so set aside for now.

B. Niche

If your niche is dry, this can be assembled now too. 

• All pieces sit on top of the back boar, and all edges should be flush.
• The shelf needs to be positioned (check the front facing panel, you have 1 cm to manoeuvre the shelf up and down, it can be flush, or set down below the facing 'bar'

C. Finishing Elements

These can be done now or after you ahve decorated

• Apply the plinth feel to the base
• determine where the drawer front needs to sit (you may choose to rest it on the feet) and once you have decided, fix the drawer front to the rest of the drawer.
• Arch. This can be glued to the front or the back of the niche.

Step 4: Decorating the Niche

Obviously there are many ways you could do this. I'll briefly explain how this sample was made

A. Backdrop

Rather than having a square niche, I stamped a piece of smoothy and bent it to fit nicely in the niche. You will need to measure your card after the shelf has been fixed to make this a snug fit. (first photo a bit washed out sorry)

The card was then brayered with paint in neutral tones, Lake Wanaka, Stone, and a splash of Haystack, then over-stamped with archival inks and Lin Brown foliage stamps from:

ELB25

ELB26

Plus some script and number stamps in archival inks. Stamping the images several times at differing heights created depth. Gold, Copper and White Fire metallic fresco paint was added with a pokey tool to the foliage, which had been stamped in black archival.

B. Focal Images

The same 'shrek girl' from:

HP1604

can be made to look like 2 different girls as shown below. Crown, floral headdress, off with her legs...etc

For this it was logical to stamp 2 girls onto infusions sprinkled or glazed papers, glue together to make a triangle body. 

You can make a base from spare card of the 'behind' dress. 

I actually stamped the face again onto nougat painted card, and painted colour onto the face for a better contrast with the dress.

C. Foliage

Stamp onto green/yellow brayered Smoothy Card lots of foliage elements, the 'bushes' are from the spikey flower stamp on:

ELB25

and the flower up the side of the niche is from 

ELB27

A nice finishing touch is a knob for your drawer front!

Lots of fussy cutting may require scissors like these !!

...but the effort is certainly worth it as you build up the layers of foliage. Once you have cut the bushes etc out, you may need to add depth and shading to your bushes with coloured pencils or more transluscent paints like Yellow Submarine, Hey Pesto.

Or you could add infusions to your background and even infusions flowers would go in the background of the niche too!

From Vintage ink and the Dog Collection come this stamp set: VID10EZ

And finally this fitted perfectly on the arch at the top, painted with transluscent Fresos. 

On the sample below the foliage was only half way through being added...

So there you have it, I hereby give you the Large Chippie Niche! Lots of fun and all kinds of options!

The large Chippie Niche is available now from :
The Artistic Stamper 
Simply Craft

See you on Wednesday for more new sneaks! And a periscope!

~Leandra