The Kraken Shrine: by guest designer Lori Woods

Hello everyone! I'm Lori and I'm thrilled to be the guest designer for Calico Craft Parts this month. 

As soon as I saw the Nautical Shrine kit I knew it would be perfect for a piece dedicated to my favourite sea creature, the kraken! Once I had assembled the shrine, I used textures pastes and stencils on the outside to create some areas of interest and then I painted it with cream, browns and red to give a weathered and aged look. To finish decorating the outside I added elements from the Mini Nautical motifs set, an Art Deco Ornament shape and a Compass shape, gave these a splash of colour and then dry brushed white gesso over everything to highlight all the different textures and details.

For the inside of the shrine I painted a very rough sea and sky in two different colours of blue, then added a crackle glaze over the top to give it an antiqued look. I coloured the Galleon Boat shape with paints and glued this into the shrine, using some pieces of card to raise it off the background and create a more dimensional look. Then, the tentacles! I rolled some lengths of air dry clay into tentacle shapes and once they'd dried, coloured them with some metallic paints to give that glistening wet look. I mixed a blob of gel medium with some blue paint to create the water effect on the bottom of the shrine and used this to secure the tentacles in place. A little white paint dabbed on top of the gel to simulate the look of waves and voila, my shrine to the kraken was done!

Supplies used:

 Nautical Shrine kit 1

Art Nouveau & Deco ornament 7

Mini Nautical motifs 6

Galleon Boat 6

Compass shape