TECHNIQUE TUESDAY- thinking outside the box

You may have seen this atc I created a while ago , I thought I'd share the brainwave that I think made it! I created the hourglass with chipboard and overhead transparency but how to fill it with something that would act like sand and make it work? I thought about sand - didnt have any, thought about salt any moisture would ruin it. Then I thought outside the square a volia.... I have this glass bead gel medium I got from Allcraftz and I washed the gel off.

To do that I put about three tablespoons in a chinese food container and ran warm water onto it swished it around and placed a fine guaze over the top securing it with a ruber band and then strained the disolved gel off. I did it a couple times then took the beady mush and spead it out on a piece of perspex and left it overnight to dry out. It worked a treat. ( oh except for the bead I got in my eye!) They are so tiny all care need to be taken! The beads have a lovely lumenicent quality. You could use this idea to make any type of shaker box...if you have too much time on your hands! LOL

This is the medium I washed.

These were the hourglass clipart pic's I cut the hourglass out and ran them through the zyron sticker maker which made the job easier. I went over the outline with black zip marker and added some highlights with watercolour pencils ( aquellas or Inktense).



The top picture was just resized clipart off the net I stuck it to black chipboard and cut it out. Then copied it to another piece of chipboard painted it black, and stuck a backing piece on. When all were dry I put the glass beads onto the bottom chipboard then glued a piece of transparency onto the top ensuring I left no gaps the "sand " could sneak out! Then glued the top chipboard picture onto the top. I inked the embossed bronze cardstock, used another image of hands of the net and cut a poem up into strips. One word of advice dimentional magic doesnt seem to aggree with twinkling h2o's that I used to accent the background embossd card stock hence I got a bit of a greenish look to the text...I think it adds to the character ( LOL) but it would depend on what you were creating.!
:)