A new year challenge at CVC

This is my second post for today so if you missed my new year's greeting and project for the new challenge at A Vintage Journey please take a look Here.

Our new theme at Country View Challenges was chosen by me and is -

Be inspired by Bottles.

I created a table decoration for my New Year's Eve party.

 

Life began as an old glass Starbucks caramel syrup bottle and I gave it a coat of matte medium glue and when dry a coat of rustic DecoArt chalky finish paint.

I added die-cuts and Tim Holtz industrious sticker borders ......

.... and then a coat of DecoArt black gesso.

Over this I dabbed DecoArt media gold acrylic paint and because it was too bright I dripped over prussian blue, but I couldn't achieve the effects I wanted so I ended up dabbing over a coat of black.

To give me the metallic effects back over the top of the black paint I brushed over treasure gold and treasure pewter and the patterns and raised areas came back to life.

To add just a little more zest I used a fine paintbrush with the gold acrylic and dry brushed the stars and the 2016 die-cuts.

Knowing that I wanted to use this as my New Years Eve party table decoration I used Tim's snowflake rosette die with silver, gold and glitter card making double snowflakes to go back to back over BBQ sticks.

After I had added some gold Christmas twigs with baubles on and set it on the table ......

 ..... it reminded me of fireworks and looked lovely once the party arrived and we had the Christmas lights on and candles lit.

Thanks for joining me for a second time today and over 2015, I have really appreciated you visits, comments and continuing support. If you are wondering if I have a new years resolution? I have just one  --------  and that is to try and get over to your blogs more often than I have this year. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon. And to those of you who follow me by email - thank you for taking the time to pop in and see what I have been creating and making. I regularly look on Blogger stats to see my page views and am staggered that I get between 300 and 700 page-views a day. That just blows my mind.

Wishing you peace, joy and happiness for 2016.

hugs Brenda xxxx

A New Year Vintage Journey theme

Welcome to the start of 2016, I would like to begin by wishing you all a 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

and I hope it is filled with everything you would wish for yourself.

We have a new challenge theme at A Vintage Journey which is 

'Vintage Travel and Luggage' and all the details can be found over at the challenge blog.

For me one of the essential items that this lovely lady would pack for her journey would be a diary in which to note down where she visits and to collect small items and photos to stick in as a memento of her trip. I used the folded note book technique using one 12 x 12 sheet of Tim's paper to make the mini book and added some stamped items and small tags in pockets so there is plenty of room on which to write and stick. So let's have a quick look at what is inside as well.

Here is the book made up ......

... and the narrow tags to fit in the pockets. Simply dipped in distress inks and left blank for the writing part of the diary keeping experience.

I collected together a number of Tim's stamped images ...

... cut them out .....

... and arranged them in small collages .....

 .... so that photos and collected ephemera can be added to the pages.

I also used chit chat stickers and .....

... small talk stickers ....

.... to provide a feel of the excitement and atmosphere ......

.... that might be felt on the journey.

I added crinkled and dyed ribbon to tie it together and keep the insides safe.

All I need now is to decide when I will use this little diary as I think it will be perfect for one of our holidays, especially as I have a mini phone printer and can have instant photos when we are on our travels.

I hope you get to have a number of wonderful journeys this new year both those when you travel away from home but also those that are personal and part of your own growth as a human being particularly when you set out to achieve something new and succeed to the best of your ability.

I'll leave you with this quote that I wish for everyone -

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 

― Neil Gaiman

huge hugs Brenda xxxx