watercolour tag with oxides

It's Friday #5 for March and when that happens over at AVJ we have a Tag Friday post (there are usually about 5 of them a year so are something that's just a little bit special).

Of course we get to create whatever we like so I had to have a vintage playtime. 

Don't you think the background looks a bit like an old very distressed wall paper?

I cut my own tag from a piece of heavy watercolour paper and stamped it using picket fence distress paint.

I dipped it several times in iced spruce and walnut stain oxides, drying inbetween dips, until I was happy with the background and then just blended a little of each colour around the edges. I also wiped over with a damp baby wipe which helped bring the pattern back to life.

To create the collage I gathered some ephemera from the new Tim Holtz collector layers set and from previous collections of his as well as some small paper offcuts and also I took one of Tim's paper dolls (kindly sent by a lovely friend I caught up with in Birmingham last month). I bought some of the gorgeous quote chips with the ephemera and chose one of them too.

Here you can see more of that background poking through around the girls' feet and the fabulous dimensional word chip.

I wanted that shabby vintage feel to this project so I added a  dyed seam binding bow and just glued it to the top.

I have to say I was really quite please with the effects.

I had dyed a piece of lace and gathered a couple of other bits to use but in the end I opted to keep it less cluttered as I really wanted that background to show through.

I'm so happy to have had this vintage playtime and use the oxides again, they really do have a wonderful chalky finish to them. For more amazing inspiration do pop over to the AVJ challenge blog to see what all the other amazing Creative Guides have made - you are sure to find something you like.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim Holtz inspired background card #2

This is my second card using a Distress Oxide background made a little while ago for the challenge over at CVC. I made my first quite a feminine card that can be seen here and this one is definitely for a man and in my vintage collage style that I love to use. I just love the rusty patina colours.

If you have a moment please pop over to the CVC project blog to see more photos and to see how it came together.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Canvas Board - teaching simple mixed media layers

Happy Mother's Day
........... to all you Mums, grandmothers, friends and aunties out there. I hope you have a wonderful day and hopefully receive some extra love from your precious ones. I have a Mother's Day project right at the end of this post, but first here's one I did for a workshop.

I often get asked to do a session for one of the local church groups and this time they wanted me to do something 'different' (ie not card making or gift bags, paper folding etc) so I suggested using paint and making a mixed media shabby canvas board - you know how I like these - so this is what I came up with. Bearing in mind we only had two hours there was a lot to do but I die-cut and prepped a bag for each of them so everything was at hand.

Using 5 x 7 canvas board

1. Paint canvas with gesso.

2. With palette knife randomly drag thin layer of acrylic paint and spritz with water, move the colour around a little bit - dry.

3. Repeat step 2 with another colour.

4. Repeat step 2 again with a third colour.

5. Lightly blend/daub over gesso with a distress tool and sponge.

6. Stencil over some coloured gesso and gently heat dry.

7. Add a little stamping for interest.

8. Dry brush a little of two of the other colours (not used with the gesso for stenciling) over the raised textures (I used white and yellow).

9. Adhere a small piece of scrunched cheesecloth.

10. Collect together papers, images, die-cuts, flowers etc......

11. ........ and assemble them onto the board. Note the vintage picture of the hare and chicks - I downloaded this from the internet as a free image and sized it to fit inside Tim's clock.

And do you like the butterfly? I loved stamping these, I used Tim's new Oxides - worn lipstick, peeked paint and iced spruce - and a little ordinary vintage photo distress.

So there we have it a pretty mixed media board for Easter.

And here's the one I made for Mother's day too.

Creating the same background (and keeping exactly the same colours) I then gathered different embellishments (mostly Tim Holtz products) -

For a complete change I edged everything with pumice stone rather than ground espresso or another of the brown DIs. - it's more subtle.

You can see where I slotted in the butterfly ..........

On this photo you can see I used a white pen to highlight the flowers a little. They had been stamped and cut from card dipped in worn lipstick  and spiced marmalade oxides with some fossilized amber DI added to it.

I lifted them using foam pads to create height and dimension .......

... and added some wildflowers 2 die-cuts as well as some shop bought mini blooms.

I added an easel and put it in the Packhouse.

It's lovely to have you stop by, thanks so much for the interest you show in my work, I really appreciate it.

Enjoy your day.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim Holtz inspired background card #1

If you follow the Country View Crafts challenge blog you will know that the theme this month is 'Inspired by Tim Holtz'. I played with the new distress oxides a little while ago and had fun making some backgrounds (you can see them here if you missed them) and I said I would use two of them to make a project, so I have made cards that could be used for Mother's day and Father's day. 

Although the background looked quite masculine I have made it into a shabby, more feminine card.

Please hop on over to the CVC Project Blog if you have a moment to see it in it's full glory.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Inspired by Tim Holtz and Distress Oxides

As soon as my Oxides arrived I wanted to play - I only ordered three to start with but having seen some of the videos and demos from Tim when he was at Creativation I just had to see what they were like before ordering more.

So I began with broken china, peeled paint and walnut stain oxides and ......

....  just by dipping and drying from the spritzed colours on my craft mat I produced these three.

 I really like the first and third ones but the second one needed something else, so with a clean craft mat I added the same three colours again and more layers to it. You can see the chalky pigment finish but also the strength of the dye inks

I carried on with what was left of the oxides on my craft mat, but this time  I added vintage photo and tea dye distress inks to the mix....

..... and used the rest of what was left on these small bits but adding more tea dye and also some weathered wood distress ink ....

.... and watching the colours get lighter and lighter as I spritzed with more water without adding any more inks.

So there we have my experiments for a whole morning - now what to do with them? Keep a close eye to see how they get used, I shall be using a couple of them for projects going live on the CVC Project Blog next week and the week after. I shall definitely be ordering more Oxides as I just adore the chalky finish you get from using them and the colours they produce - which are completely different to the colour in the distress range because of the added pigment to them.

If you haven't yet see the challenge inspiration posts on the Country View Challenges blog from the 1st March you might want to pop over to take a look and maybe you have already taken part in the challenge? Have fun, there is so much inspiration from Tim on his blog, his FaceBook page and You Tube and I'm sure you'll have some of his products somewhere in your supplies.

hugs Brenda xxx

Inspired by Kate Crane

It was an amazing couple of days at Stitches in Birmingham a few weeks ago and this year I was able to spend a bit of time with the lovely Kate Crane, she was demoing on the Country Love Crafts stand for DecoArt and also did a workshop on the Tuesday that I helped out with - intending to do some of the tag she was teaching too. Unfortunately I didn't get much finished but Kate is like me and produces teaching notes so I was able to have a play when I got home.

This is where I got to and what happened next -

Yes I know the colours Kate chose are beautiful but I wanted to be inspired by her and not coy her completely. So I adapted mine in terms of colour and mark making. I changed to pyrrole red and added burnt umber to it to make my own deeper, grungier tone.
Text that had been glued to the original tag was disappearing fast so I added some stamping and all the layers Kate had written down. to get this -

I used one stencil the same and one that was different. and also added small talk stickers.

I used different stamps and doodled in my own way.

But eventually I ended up with something very similar but not an exact copy.

Mine's on the left and Kates is on the right. You can see how the colours are more muted but still very bright for me.

Have a lovely weekend whatever you've got planned or even with what you've not got planned, I have to say I'm looking forward to mine.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Shabby Mother's Day cards - Seed House

I have some old papers in my 12 x 12 supplies that are kept beautifully in a proper scrapbook paper box and I decided to dig some out to make Mother's Day cards for my shop space. It seems to have taken over at the moment but I need to get established with selling slightly more commercial things before I think my mixed - media might stand a chance. Yes it's still early days but I want to do anything and everything I can to get it off the ground - any helpful comments are greatly welcomed.

I took some of the papers and cut to size scraping some white chalk paint round the edges.

The flower cards were cut from one of the 12 x 12 pages and I also gathered some shabby seam binding ribbon to use. One lot I left plain pink another lot I dyed using distress inks.

The little Mum brad is one of Tim's and I downloaded one of my own backgrounds into photoshop elements and added the word Mum to it then when it was printed out I punched it with a circle punch to fit the brad size. I had painted the brad with the white chalk paint to make it more shabby.

Here it is in situ.

I am using up a horde of flowers that I have bought over the past few years and hardly dipped into ....

.... and again I painted them with the chalk paint to achieve more of the shabby look.

 These are two of the four I made.

Whilst I am sitting writing this post I am wondering if they are selling lol. I'll pop back and let you know at some point.

I hope your week is going well.

Thanks as always for stopping by - I so love having your company.

hugs Brenda xxx

Distress Oxides stamping butterflies

HI everyone - just a quick post today. I had some great fun stamping some butterflies for a workshop recently (the project will be published here on Mother's day) and I absolutely love the results - it's such a shame that however I photographed these the light did not do them justice.

You can see how wonderfully 'chalky' they look.

Tim showed at CHA that if you cross contaminate your ink pads all you have to do is rub them clean again - I tried it and it certainly worked for me.

To get the gorgeous blended look after I had inked the stamp I just spritzed it lightly with water before stamping it. The mixes of the colours are amazing and of course each butterfly is truly unique.

Here's a sneak peek of the one I used on the workshop project.

Let me know if you try this out and what results you get.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx