Advent calendar with MOPPE shelf/drawers by IKEA

As you might have seen on Instagram, I colored all those little drawers while the last Daily Marker 30 days coloring challenge. If you don't know that challenge yet, check it out! Kathy is one of the kindest persons among this amazing crafting community and she is hosting this very unique challenge. HERE  and HERE you can find everything about it.

So here is a closer look to the advent calendar. First, I painted all fronts of those drawers with white acrylic paint. Then I stamped all images with black archival ink. Those super cute stamps are all from Lawn Fawn, about 6 different sets (into the woods, joy to the woods, lets toboggan together, ready set snow, baah humbug and frosty fairy friends). The numbers are from the clark's abc stamp set. That ink is very good for watercoloring. So first, I made some previous tests if it works with acrylic paint too and it did!! As acrylic paint is water soluble, it behaves very similar to watercolors while working with it. Once it is dried, it is permanent and lightfast. That is why I decided to color all those images with acrylic paint - it should last for a couple of years now! :-D

I painted all images with very thin brushes - actually with three different sizes. They are from Marabu (a german brand) and I used the round brushes 3/0 and 5/0 and a flat brush size 6 (for the bottom/snow/shadow/sky parts). They have a good consistency to draw thin lines, such as hair, fur or details on trees. Sometimes I sponged the sky with some dye ink, too (it depended on the surface of the wood; sometimes it was smooth and sometimes it was quite rough and porous) and used white acrylic paint for the stars on top.

An other fun thing is Liquid Appliqué. It comes in a pen and you apply it directly onto your surface. You can let it dry overnight and then heat set it, or you can heat set it directly after applying - you will get different results. Mr. Sheep is heat set directly, Mrs. Sheep is heat set after drying overnight. I like both textures :-D

I hope you got inspired and maybe you give it a try too - probably next year :-)) You have to consider that this takes a while to create - I needed about 25 - 30 hours.

Hugs,