Paper Tole

A clever friend of mine taught me a few tricks for making beautiful paper tole pictures, so I thought I'd give it a go using the double birdhouse from the Precious Memories set. I started by printing three of the full colour images with the intention of building them up to form a three dimensional scene.

I cut the base layer with a scalloped circle die. As you can see from the photo, the die doesn't quite fit the image, cropping out some of the leaves and the top of one of the birdhouses. I chose the small die so that some of the image will extend beyond the border of the base layer.

It was at this point that I realised I would need a couple more images to get a really detailed result. Thankfully I remembered the size and settings at which I printed the image and was able to produce two extras. (Hooray for digital stamps!)

For the second layer I trimmed away all the openings in the bird houses, then fussy cut the entire image, right up against the printed lines.

One of the tricks of the trade that I learned from my friend is to use a marker to reduce the amount of white paper that shows from your cuts. I used a light green shade to colour the edges of all the cuts. Make sure you work from the back though, as it's fairly common for the marker to slip and leave a trail of ink!

I adhered the second image directly over the first with a layer of silicone. You can buy specific silicone based glue for paper tole projects, but I was able to purchase a tube from my local hardware store that does the same thing at a better price.

I harvested a variety of different pieces from each of the other printed images. I ended up with a lot more than what you see in the photo below. Each of the pieces (except the birdhouses) were shaped with ball tools for a little more realism.

I'd originally intended to use the finished piece on the front of a card, but after all the work it took I felt I should do something more... which I haven't quite figured out yet. Hopefully inspiration will come to me in the next day or two!

Stamps: