Beauty of the Far East - Gecko Galz August 2024 Design Team Projects

Hi there, friends!

Thanks for stopping by Paper Play.  Today is my day to share my August design team projects for Gecko Galz.  Our theme this month was Beauty of the Far East.  Gecko Galz has so many beautiful products that may be used for this theme.  My goal was to use colors and styles inspired by the Far East to bring these projects to life.  Please be sure to let me know how I did!

 

 

 

 

My first project is my favorite for this month.  When I think of the Far East, I think of the beautiful design elements that we in the West have adopted from them.  In particular, I have always loved the Japanese paper screen doors and I wanted to create a frame that incorporates them.  I took a small rectangular wooden box from Michaels and used brown ink to stain it.  I then printed the photo to size, added some grunge to it with Distress Ink, and glued it to the inside of the frame.  Two strips of foam were colored with Distress Inks to look like stone and glued at the top and bottom of the frame.  Their purpose is to support the doors with pin hinges, and those pins stick into the foam to allow them to open and close.  I made the doors by cutting four rectangular pieces of cardboard to size, using an exacto knife to cut out the centers, and then coloring them with black and grey ink.  I printed the images for the doors to size on vellum and let them dry.  Once dry, I cut them to fit between two pieces of the cardboard and glued them into place.  Stick pins were glued to the top left and bottom left corners of one door and then repeated on the right corners for the other door.  I attached small nobs to the front center of each door to allow for easier opening, and then put the doors in place by inserting the pins into the foam and aligning into place.  This is actually a very easy project to create, and I think it adds a beautiful vintage style to any decor.

My second project is a vintage fan, which is really quite easy to create.  I took an 8.5"x11" inch piece of kraft cardstock and glued an 8.5"x11" piece of paper printed from the Asian Botanical Paper Pack to it.  I used Distress Ink and Ink Spray to add some grunge to the front and back of the paper.  I then used my scoring board to score a line at each 1" and then used a bone folder to burnish each line of the fold.  Once folded, I glued twine to the handle, starting at the bottom and working my way up to the point where I wanted it to end.  Some pearl gems were glued and the fan was complete.  I think it would look pretty either hanging or resting on a shelf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My final three projects are greeting cards that I made.  The shadow box card and fun fold frame card were made using dies that I have for each.  I used a variety of Gecko Galz images, Distress Inks, alcohol markers, lace, and paper flowers to create them.

I hope that you enjoyed learning more about my August projects and that I may have inspired you to try one!

Thanks for spending some time with me here on Paper Play today.  Until next time . . . be well!