Corrugated Paper Sheet Peacock With a Bling !

Peacock, the Indian national bird is truly nature’s masterpiece.

“Elegance fanned out

Glorious portray of art

Nature's masterpiece”

Lines from my Haiku @ POETICbug: http://poeticbug.blogspot.in/2014/04/haiku-peacoc...

Weddings in India has always been a flamboyant event. Lights, colours, music, food, dance, games, chit-chats with friends and relatives, mehendi, decoration, make-up and definitely the “Bling!”. Recently I attended one such wedding of a very close friend. It’s not the wedding details I am going to share with you rather something else.

Now my friend had asked me to create a Trousseau packing tray for her. I had created the decorative tray and covered it with matte finish golden thick sheet. Though it looked beautiful but I was not happy with the finished product. Something was missing. I kept looking at the tray for one day until I realized that this tray is going to be part of an Indian wedding and it is missing the most important thing , “Bling!”. And that’s how I got the idea of crafting nature’s masterpiece in paper and glitter to enhance the beauty of my tray.

I will try to meticulously narrate you the entire process so that if you wish to re-create this craft, you may and easily. You can use it the same way I did or any other creative way like a wall / table decoration. :)

The base material to create this project uses your stash. The rest supporting materials, you crafter's will definitely have in your kit.

Step 1: Materials Used

Corrugated Paper Sheet (Old packaging boxes)

Acrylic Paint (Green, Blue)

Paint Brushes

Gesso (White) - Optional

Old Newspaper

Ball Chain (Golden, Red, Green)

Glitter (Green, Blue, Golden)

Craft mirrors

One side flat Rhinestones (Green , Blue, Orange, Pink)

Scissors

Pencil

Craft knife

Glue

Step 2: Cutting the Frame

First you need to picture the manner in which you want the peacock to appear like sidewise fanned out or from the back. I liked the sidewise fan because it could fix onto the tray easily and cover a major portion. Also the size of the peacock is entirely as per your use of the item and desire. Mine was a 15 X 5 inches size approximately.

Once you decide on the structure of your peacock, draw the same on the corrugated paper sheet. Now there are two ways to cut it down.

1- Cut out the entire figure as one piece.

2- Cut out individual pieces - head, body, each piece of fan, crown on the head

The second method is what I followed. I must say it is tedious but it gives a lift to the entire completed item because of the overlaying of each piece on the other.

Once you have cut out the frame lay it down to check if any changes required and if so, make it at once.

Let's move to next step !

Step 3: Cover the Frame

We can directly apply paint to the corrugated pieces. But as you know corrugated sheets have those lines on them and that does not help us give a beautiful look to this craft item. Hence we need to cover each piece with newspaper and glue, at least twice from both sides. This not only provides a smooth surface but also helps to reinforce each piece strongly.

Now make sure not to use direct glue. You would be wasting a lot of glue that way. When using paper in this manner it is always advisable to mix glue and water in the ratio 2:1.

Allow each piece to dry up thoroughly before jumping onto the next action.

Step 4: Colour It Up & Border

Once all dried up, paint each piece first with GESSO and leave to dry. Using Gesso helps to hold the acrylic paint onto the surface strongly. But this is optional, you may or may not use Gesso in your project.

After the Gesso has dried on the surface apply a base acrylic colour on all pieces, preferably both sides. I made the base colour by mixing blue and green. You also get peacock green/blue acrylic colours available in the market. You could easily use that and save yourself some time here. :)

After the paint is set on the surface glue down each piece together just like the way you had designed your frame in the very first "Cutting the frame" step. Now you would get entire peacock structure ready to be decorated.

After that is done glue the golden coloured ball chain onto the edges of each piece like a border. The gold colour is a must. It accentuates the other colours to be used later. And this was a wedding purpose craft, golden colour was mandatory for me.

Get set for the Bling !

Step 5: Bling

The inside decoration is entirely your creative mind's desire.

I added a centre blue glitter zone to the body and certain fan pieces. While to certain other fan pieces I added a golden glitter centre. Then onto the remaining area I used green glitter. Once that dried and no more glitter was falling off, I glued down the rhinestones and round mirrors. I tried enhancing the presence of the mirrors by giving a rhinestones border. The mirror reflecting the colours will give an added effect. Using green and bright blue round rhinestones I added a second layer to the border , while the third layer was again golden ball chain covering the rhinestones. For the centre blue glitter zone, I guarded it with green and red ball chains. Then finally using orange tear drop rhinestones I created design for the centre.

Decorate the peacock as you wish to make it look beautiful.

Step 6: Finally Done

After all the decoration was done, I placed the entire peacock structure onto a larger corrugated sheet and cut out the shape. Then painted this with the base peacock colour and glued it to the backside of the final peacock structure to hold the pieces strongly.

And there my beautiful peacock was ready to sit on the trousseau tray.

This might look like a lot of work, which is [ :) ] but when your craft comes out so elegantly you feel it's worth all the effort.

Share your thoughts and feedback. If you find an enhancement to this, do share. I would be really happy to try it out.

Keep crafting safely ! :)

Oops ! my friend loved it.