Treasured birthday at AVJ

AVJ is celebrating it's 4th birthday with a fabulous theme simply called 'Treasure'. I am hosting this milestone and have set the brief.

Treasure can be described as wealth or riches we store or accumulate, a collection of valuable, interesting or useful things, bits and pieces we highly value, articles that we hang onto that we’ve bought or found and might never be able to purchase again. What is in your crafty or artsy treasure trove - those items we squirrel away to keep for something special? Maybe some elegant embellishments, that hoard of ephemera or memorabilia found in a junk shop, a tin of old buttons, rusty keys or diamanté jewels, a paper pad you get out and stroke then put away again, some beautiful fabric or lace you can’t bear to part with. We invite you in this challenge to share a project that includes a part of your treasure trove, just let us know what it is so we can see it and comment on it and remember our focus styles and genres to work in (which can be seen under out blog banner) if you would like to be considered for being chosen as one of our top 3 Pinworthy mentions.

I have lots of crafty treasures, some of which get used occasionally but I have a slowly growing collection of old photographs (not of my family) that I pick up when I see them at car boot sales, antique fairs etc. I have scanned some of them onto the PC and printed out the images to use at times but I have never been brave enough to take one of the cabinet cards and actually mount it on a project so here goes.

I wanted to make a new visual journal using an old book and bought three of them for £1 each. I prepared a couple of them by painting the outside covers with gesso and added some texture.

I altered my chosen cabinet card - you can probably see which one I chose from my treasured collection above.

On the background I created lots of layers with gesso, texture paste, painty overlays and stamping before varnishing to help make the cover more sturdy before it gets thumbed and used when creating the new pages inside.

My collaged embellishments have all been altered in some way with paint and inks to age and distress them to fit the vintage appeal I was trying to establish.

They also got more distressing when I was adding the final details.

I will have the process steps for this project here on the 16th March so do keep a look out if you are interested in how this all came together.

I hope you will be able to pop over to the AVJ challenge blog to see some more fabulous samples to fit with our theme and maybe you will be able to join us.

I hope the snow hasn't hit you too hard, we've had a covering and I had to postpone a workshop I was supposed to be teaching yesterday, I expect it will all disappear very soon.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx