All during my teaching career I loved designing and building displays of children’s work and general classroom displays to support teaching and learning and show children their hard work was valued. This love of exhibiting special treasures has been carried through to my home where shelves, sideboards, dressers etc. around my home have continually changing displays on them. I love making projects to add to them to give that personal touch. I have a couple of small collections of children’s vintage play blocks and have bought some new wooden ones to alter as well. What I like about this type of project is that it is so easy to get some lovely distressed and aged effects in a short time and with just a few basic colours of paint.

Items Needed:

• DecoArt Media Mediums and Specialty Products - Gesso - Black (DMM19-71)
• DecoArt Media Mediums and Specialty Products - Clear Matte Medium (DMM20-71)
• 2x4cm And 1x6cm Wooden Blocks
• Collage Elements
• Metal Clock And Spinner

Instructions:

Step 1: Take all three wooden blocks, seal them with a coat of DecoArt Media Black Gesso and because I wanted a shinier look I also gave them a coat of Carbon Black DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic.

Step 2: Gather the collage elements for the large block to build the theme for the display. I have gone with transport/travel.

Step 3: Please be very careful with these layers as repeated drying with the heat gun causes the blocks to get very hot and could burn to the touch.

Layer 1. Again take all three blocks and apply a wash of Raw Umber and dry. This creates a subtle distressed look.

Step 4: Layer 2. Very lightly brayer some white paint randomly over all the surfaces, leave a lot of the dark background exposed. Dry.

Step 5: Layer 3. Dip and dry the surfaces with Titan Buff and Burnt Umber washes. Dry.

Step 6: Put the two smaller blocks to one side. When the larger block is cool, build the collages on all four sides with the gathered collage pieces. Keep the collages simple so as not to lose the lovely distressed look you have already achieved.

Step 7: Take the metal embellishments (a clock and a spinner) and alter with gold paint. Then secure it to the top.

Step 8: Layer 4. Go back to the smaller blocks. Take a small text stamp and Titan Buff acrylic paint to add a small amount of words/numbers to all the sides.

I am building small collections of different colours and just love this combination.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs Brenda xxx