Make Your Own Faux Tiles!

Hi everyone! And happy Wednesday!!

In todays post I wanted to show you how you can make faux tiles! I'm so in love with these and there are so many different types you could make and so many different uses for them!

I think they actually look like your tiles you'll find in your kitchen or bathroom.

I wanted to use a stamp on mine which I could colour in using a range of different colours and look 'realistic.' By realistic I mean the same colour it may be in real life as oppose to it actually looking real. I decided to use a stamp from a set I get free in a magazine as it had these beautiful flowers. I used the same set in last Sundays post which you can find here.

There are so many different uses for these, you could make a card with them, make a picture, use them on a gift bag! Keep reading until they end and I will show you how you can do one of these. You could also experiment with different pictures. Prehaps use a variety of stamps to create a scene or do something simple like a big heart and colour it in different colours.

I do have to say I'm still a beginner when it comes to watercolouring and I find this pretty easy to do so don't be scared of it! If you chose something simple to colour it will definitely make it a lot easier for you to do! I've included a few tips along the way to help you out.

Hope you enjoy this post and keep reading to find out how you can make these faux tiles!

What you will need:

- Card stock cut to 4" x 4"

- Piece of white paper

- Black waterproof ink

- Inks of your colour choice - I used a range of different ones from Stampin Up!, Paper mania and Tim Holtz

- Aqua pen - I purchased mine from The Range

- Glossy accents

Steps:

1) The first thing you will need to do is cut your card stock to 4" x 4". I would recommend just using white for this as you could sponge on a background if you wanted to. Then you will need to stamp your chosen pattern or patterns onto your card stock. You can stamp them away from each other so they don't overlap or you can use a method of overlapping them by fussy cutting the stamp to mask it off. I will be showing this method in a upcoming post.

2) Once you are happy with how your pattern looks then you will want to put some ink onto clear stamping blocks. I personally found it easier to focus on one colour at a time but you could put all your colours onto one big block. I would also recommend to start with lighter colours then gradually work your way up to your darkest. Make sure your brush isn't too wet when painting your colours on and have a tissue handy as you can blot your paper or brush when needed. Try to do sections that aren't close together to help prevent them bleeding into each other as well.

I only coloured in part of mine so I could show you the effect but I already had one done previously. This can take some time to do depending on your pattern size and how much detail you add but once you have finish the results look amazing. And you could this with so many different stamps. You could also create a scenic picture!

3) Once you have painted your pattern and you are happy leave it one side to dry. Once dried then cut up your card into 1" squares. You could do bigger or even smaller squares if you wanted to depending on your pattern. Make sure you know where each pieces goes. If you can them mixed up it can be so much more difficult than putting together a puzzle! 

4) You should now have sixteen pieces. You will need to stick them to a piece of white paper. Stick them down in the correct order but leave a gap between each piece. You can decide the gap between each piece but I would suggest about 1/8"

5) Finally you will need to apply some glossy accents over the entire picture then set aside to dry. I left mine to dry overnight!

How cool do they look! I love how they almost look like I drew them on then painted them. You could also do some 'no-line' water colouring by stamping your pattern onto a scrap piece of paper before stamping onto the card stock. You will get a very faint line so you will look as though you have just painted the pattern on.

One thing I always find helpful when working on projects like this, as I'm not as experience in these kinds of projects, is that I do a test run first. I just use scrap paper and try out different methods. That way when I come to doing it I feel a lot more confident and I have a rough idea how I'm going to do it. There is nothing worse then working on something and getting it wrong because I didn't plan it out. Sometimes you may even find your test run is actually what you want to use because it's come out so good!

As I said there are so many different ways you could use these so I thought I would show you one of theses ways! If you want to find out how to make a card with them then keep reading!!

Here how you do it:

1) Cut out your tiles so they have a 1/8" border around. This should measure to be a 4 3/8" square

2) Cut out some black card stock or paper to a 4 1/2" square

3) Cut some glossy paper to 4 3/4" x 9 1/2" and score 4 3/4"

4) Then stick your tiles onto your block card stock then stick this onto the glossy paper

There you have it! So simple yet I think these look beautiful. You could even cut up your tiles so you have four cards - with four tiles in each - and you would have cards for four people!

As this card in particular has no sentiment on it you could use it for so many different occasions. Anything from a birthday card to a wedding card or even a thank you card. 

I'm definitely going to be making more of these with different patterns and pictures and see what I can come up with. They were so fun to make and the more you practice the more you will be able to do. I think it would be so fun to use brush pens as well to do these. 

If you are slightly more advanced in water colouring you could even paint a pattern and cut that up. I would love to see how they turn out if you any of you try this out!

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Happy crafting!

Susan x