Small Journal Panel - Shabby Vintage

I have a small panel to share today with my favourite vintage mixed media vibe to it.

Process steps

1. Cut patterned paper slightly smaller than backing card, distress the edges with a distressing tool.

2.Add a strip of tissue tape.

3. Apply white gesso through a small stencil with a paint brush. Dry

4. Seal the substrate with matte medium. Dry

5. Dip into washes of raw umber and quinacridone gold. Dry

6. Roughen the edges more and blend in ground espresso distress ink.

7. Adhere the substrate to a piece of backing card (mine is 8 x 11 cms).

8. Gather and distress your collage elements and your vintage photo and adhere to the background.

9. Cover the face with scrap paper and splatter some watery tinting base or white gesso / paint.

10. Use a chit-chat sticker or your own printed sentient to finish.

I used up some of my scrap bits and as well as o downloaded photo just sitting in a box waiting to put on show.

Add caption

Use patterned paper for Tando Creative

I have a project over on the Tando blog today where the theme is to use patterned paper. Can you see or guess where I used mine?

For all the details please pop over to the Tando blog where I show you the process steps in full colour.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

No Spring colours - tag

I have a tag over at Country View Crafts Project Blog today and there are no bright Spring colours as I had already started and knew I wanted neutrals ...... 

.... but when the words of 'Spring' appeared when I added some old dictionary paper - I couldn't ignore them.

I still think it all fits together. If you go over to CVC you will see the process steps and more photos and make your own mind up.

Enjoy whatever you have planned this week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Follow In My Footsteps - Determined

I loved using the same background for the four small panels I am sharing in this first mini series of 'Follow In My Footsteps'. Rather than make a masterboard and cut it up I cut the panels and did exactly the same steps on each one, hence the similarities in them.

 All the collage elements were pieces on my desk are from small boxes of oddments I keep for such projects. In fact the left panel under the photo is an old book spine of a book called The Antiquary by Sir Walter Scott. The book has been altered and used and I couldn't bear to throw the cover and spine away even though it was very tattered.

If you haven't seen the previous two in the series they are Soulful and Thoughtful.

The steps to follow can be found by visiting a Vintage Collage Tag, created in July 2017.

Supplies

DecoArt Chalky Finish paints in relic, lace, rustic, revive, raw umber, burnt umber and quinacridone gold.

Tinting Base

Text stamp

Collage ephemera

Panel 9 - Preservation

It is always a source of incredible excitement, astonishment and fascination when I get the opportunity to see and hopefully handle fossils and I love it when we go down to Swanage in Dorset where there is a lovely little shop with some incredible rocks with ammonites in and beautiful pieces to buy. This fossil fish looks as though he has taken on the colours of the sands and seabed and is laying in a watery grave just waiting to be found.

Process Steps

1. Adhere some left over painty or patterned pieces of card strips, collage style to the substrate.

2. Stamp over some text using watering can and coffee archival inks.

3. Dip in watery cobalt blue mixed with translucent white several times and dry.

4. Add titan buff to the left over paint, spritz with water and repeat the dip and dry several more times.

5. Scrape a small amount of white gesso randomly with a palette knife.

6. Stamp the fish onto tissue paper, tear and adhere.

7. Give everything a dirty wash of quinacridone gold and cobalt blue.

8. Adhere the word and give everything a coat of satin varnish.

Shabby Industrial - Media Board

It's my turn over on the Andy Skinner blog again today and I am sharing this mixed media board that I made for Stitches in February. It was one of those pieces that was created 'in the moment' and none of the steps got recorded anywhere but I guess I could take a stab at how it came together.

The background is most definitely an example of my weathered wood technique that I love so much and was used  on this faux wood sample I made at the beginning of March. You can check out the tutorial there. It looks as though I probably used DecoArt chalky finish paints and the wax resist certainly worked well on that area where the wood looks as though the paint has peeled back several layers and looks pretty realistic irl.

I'm pretty sure the cogs had been give some coats of paint and not finished off so I used either white paint or white gess daubed over them and dipped them into some watery washes before sealing them with a varnish.

The word band has been given several coats of different browns and rubbed away so that only some of the colour is left and when dry rubbed over again with white paint or white gesso to fill in the alphabet letters and fully rubbed away from the metal. It was mounted over a piece of chipboard given a coat of perhaps raw umber and then a coat of clear crackle glaze which would have been rubbed over and wiped back with white antiquing cream.

The hitch fastener holds a jump ring with little painted arrow.

Again just the star had some daubs of paints and rubbed down to look aged and I had found some very tiny stars which I couldn't resist adding.

Some faux nuts and bolts, a stamped number 8 and a rub on number with metal cog and clocks finished it off.

You will read in my post on Andy's blog about how I have been inspired and taught by him over a number of years and everything I have learned has influenced my style and passion for my art today. What is so lovely is that we are all individuals who bring our own style, experiences and ideas to our work and when he asked me to be on his team Andy said he loved my vintage style - so here we have a touch of vintage inspired by the industrial from Andy.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Follow In My Footsteps - Soulful

This is a completely different way of creating a new project and I'll give you the background to it at the end of the post. But I intend this to become a bit of a series.

So welcome to the first of -

"Follow In My Footsteps"

I love how the little collection of small elements to create the collage came together and the added wash of tinting base and the highlighting and shadowing using the paints brought it all together perfectly.

Supplies

DecoArt Chalky Finish paints in relic, lace, rustic, revive, raw umber, burnt umber and quinacridone gold.

Tinting Base

Text stamp

Collage ephemera

The steps to follow can be found by visiting a Vintage Collage Tag, created in July 2017.

OK so this is the background information I promised you. I love writing up the step by steps to my projects and I always say my blog is primarily for me to keep a record of the work I do. It is wonderful that many of you visit both silently and with comments and I know from the stats that hundreds of you receive my blog posts by email. I love it that you pop in and am so grateful to have so many blogging friends, some of whom I know and have met in real life and many I know just by visiting and seeing your work. 

Having said all that I feel I don't make the most of visits to you or to my own blog posts and yes I love the whole process of creating something new from scratch but I have decided I would also like to revisit some of my older posts and recreate the steps I had put together to make a new piece of art work and to create something completely different. Hence the title.

This piece is going in my Positivity Journal

Another one of these coming soon.

hugs Brenda xxx

Fossil panel 8 - Extinct

Another fossil on a different background for the Eileen Hull Passport Journal I made to take to Stitches in February.

Process steps

1. Paint black and cobalt blue straight onto the substrate without mixing and dry.

2. Over that paint a thick layerof weathered wood crackle medium and leave to dry naturally.

3. When perfectly dry paint over a layer of titanium white and leave to dry - watch the cracks appear as it does so.

4. Stamp the text with a mix of black, burnt umber and titanium white on the stamp and again dry.

5. Stencil the scales effect with left over paints and dry.

6. Splatter and dry several times with titanium white.

7. Blend some quinacridone gold round the edges and dry.

8. Give a coat of satin glaze all over.

9. Stamp the fish on a painty piece of card - mine was a leftover from another project - first in black archival ink and then in white gesso using the bump technique. See how the black behind shows through a little and gives a striking finish.

10. Paint over a watery quinacridone gold wash in areas and dry.

11. Finish with a coat of satin glaze.

Add the word and adhere the fish to the background to finish. 

This creates a lovely textured image and an image that really pops.

Rusty and Crusty at AVJ

Rusty and Crusty - what a great theme and one I think I've gone to town on lol ...... but it took me ages and many designs to get this finished. Do you ever get one of those projects where you really can't find a way to finish it off? But I got there.

So the lovely Autumn is our host this week at A Vintage Journey and she says -

"Many of us love rust and enjoy looking for new ways to get that authentic look of crusty peeling metal. For this challenge include some rust in your vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk project, whether it be the real thing, a faux technique or just a rust colour on your project."

Start with my media board which is 12 1/2 x 18 cms.

Edge the media board with heavy gel medium and sprinkle in some art balls and micro beads for different sized textures.

With a palette knife spread over some thin texture sand paste, blast with a heat gun and leave to finish drying. 

Paint a good coat of black gesso over the media board getting into all the little recesses and dry. The edges looked a bit sparse after I took this photo so I added some more texture sand paste inbetween the small art balls. 

Daub and stipple raw umber, burnt umber and paynes grey media acrylic over it. This looked better.

For the next layer I took a piece of embossed card, adhered it to thin greyboard and scraped sand texture paste over it.

I then used one of Andy's quick rust techniques as a starting point but bringing in some lighter 

patina colours as well for contrast. I sealed the surface with grey gesso (black and white gesso mixed) dried it and then added washes of yellow oxide mixed with raw umber and cobalt turquoise mixed with raw umber on the surface together and dried.

Next came a watery coat of quinacridone gold, some neat painted around the edges and then a layer of ultra matte varnish.

To finish I gathered some bits and pieces to embellish the two boards having more rusty fun with a wooden heart and white crackle paint.

I also added some remnant rubs for more interest.

There we have my contribution to the Rusty and Crusty theme and I hope you like the different ways I achieved the rusty and the crusty effects lol. I'm sure you will enjoy popping over to see what else the Creative Guides have created for you.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Photo Booth Collage - mixed media style

I thought I would share this small journal panel made in the same way as I have created a photo booth collage over at Country View Crafts Project Blog today - both are mixed media style. Once made up these can be used for journal pages or card toppers - you choose.

This one was made using DecoArt media fluid acrylics which is slightly different to the CVC one. 

I used very little in both collages and even less on this one.

The steps are the same though although I used watery raw umber to edge this panel, just dipping the sides into it and drying as I went along.

If you would like to see how you could put one together similar to these using your own products and colours the please pop over to the CVC post where I explain how to do it.

Thanks for popping in - I hope you are having a good week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Updated from CVC

Take a piece of media card and scrape some gesso over it and dry. Then take some of the mini Artistic Flair tab stencils - these are so cute and great for small projects - with a palette knife again scrape gesso through it creating random areas on the card.

When dry spritz little areas with water and with a brush dip some of the Amsterdam  Acrylic Ink Cool Grey into it, tip the card to let the colour swirl into the recesses etc. Dry and repeat with Burnt Umber.

Put one small drop of the Burn Umber ink onto a craft mat and smooch it into a smudge shape and quickly before it dries drag the card through it and the colour will transfer randomly.

Distress the edges and blend in ground espresso distress ink. The gather some little bits for a collage or add embellishments of your own and use as a journal panel or a topper for a card. I used a photo booth pic and a type charm with some of my collage scraps.