Monday 29 April 2019

Vintage Photos, Collage, Ephemera and Embellishments.

I love my mixed media work but I also love working with all those things in the title of this post. Today I am using the new Found Relatives Vintage Portraits with some older Tim papers and bits and pieces I keep for creating my vintage collages.


I love this photo of a young girl and her teddy bear, she is sitting so beautifully for the camera and is composed and happy. I bet this portrait became a favourite of her parents.


The heart is a little one die-cut from corrugated card and given a large splattering of white paint and mounted over some linen thread. I also tied the neutral bow to it to give additional interest.


This embellishment below just came about with me finding the small piece of black seam binding and the piece of tape in a box and put them together like this. I wanted the red to continue drawing the eye around the page and the black balances the Heartfelt sentiment  in the other corner.
You can just see some vermillion stamped text, it is randomly dotted over the grungy panel which was the result of a DecoArt project I made for May. So keep your eyes peeled for that coming soon.


A scrap of hessian, red and white borders and the Heartfelt sentiment carry the eyes across the page picking out the textures and patterns. The little red flower is one I made years ago and it found it's way into my box of bits when I disassembled a project it was on. Do you do that too, take something to pieces that you don't want to keep any more and recycle the elements?


I wonder if this little girl is going on a journey as this red and black ticket fitted in perfectly with the colour scheme and the pen nib reflects the idea of typed and written text in the right hand piece of layering paper and of course you just get a glimpse of the red stamped text too. Perhaps she grows up to be a writer or a travel journalist?


I love the kraft, red, white and black palette and as you saw this was created in one of my kraft journals which I think will now become just for paper dolls, lost relatives and photo booth collage art.


xxx

Friday 26 April 2019

Treasures - stamps and acrylic watercolours

I've been away for two weeks for some sun. 
I had this little tag in reserve and it's perfect to slot it in here.


It's very quickly made and simple to do but I just love the effects.

Process steps
A coat of gesso layered thinly with a palette knife.
Dip, drip and dry with watery prussian blue hue, 2 or 3 dips did the job.


Stamp Andy's fossils and fern in black archival ink. I used the stamp platform to get a really dark and clear image.


Watercolour the images with watery washes of translucent media acrylic paints to get the gorgeous bright tones shining back at you.


Finger paint some colour around the images using the washes and finger daub some neat quinacridone gold at the bottom.


Stamp the title word and blend ground espresso distress ink around the edges.


Not my usual style I know but it came from nowhere whilst trying to get some projects finished and the vintage feel really appeals to me. It's like a n illustration in an old book.


xxx
Supplies
Stencil cover tag from Tando Creative
DecoArt Media Acrylics - quinacridone burnt orange, hansa yellow medium, quinacridone gold, sap green, prussian blue hue, translucent white
Andy Skinner stamps - Stampendous - Fossils


Monday 22 April 2019

Media board for Andy Skinner

I have been having fun with chipboards for this project. I love layering up greyboard shapes but sometimes they end up protruding too high especially if you want to use some in a journal or on media boards. So for this project I have soaked some of my Andy greyboard shapes and pulled them apart and it's amazing how you can then play with distressing the layers of the greyboard and even get to put some back together again to create different shapes as I have done here.


I am using a piece of greyboard cut to the size I want as a page for the Andy book I am making.

Process Steps
Paint the greyboard with gesso but do not have too much on the brush so that this almost becomes a dry brushing technique.

Repeat with cerulean blue and prussian blue keeping the edges darker.


Scrape over some gesso with a palette knife keeping it horizontal to the board and getting a distressed look. Dry.


 Repeat with some white crackle paste and this time leave to dry naturally.


Take your chosen greyboard shapes and soak the ones you want to split into thinner pieces and distress. These can be dried with a heat gun.


I split the industrial wings into 4 pieces and took the two thinnest ones for this project. When they were dry I glued them together to create a new shape with a hole in the centre and decided to use a retro palette for the rest of the colouring up.


When they were dry the small rectangle and the heart got a coat of quinacridone red and a wash of carbon black over them.
The industrial wings had cobalt teal hue, titan buff, a tiny amount of yellow oxide stippled over them then a random wash of red iron oxide.


Back to the backboard now it's dry and cracked. Mix a watery wash of turquoise blue hue and prussian blue, paint it over and rub away immediately with a piece of dry kitchen roll. This takes the edge off the white and tones it in with the colours we originally used. It also gives us some nicely defined cracks. Seal it now with a coat of matte varnish.


Use transparent red iron oxide and yellow oxide washes to layer more colour over the background. Dry between each layer.


Use paynes grey as a thick wash to go round the edges use a water spritzer and heat gun.


Stamp the words, add your chipboards using heavy gel medium and finish them with a coat of matte varnish.


It didn't quite look finished to me so I added a few remnant rubs, then I was happy.



The colours are pretty good too. It's not a palette I've used before but I'm loving the retro feel to it.


I'm sharing a shorter version of this over on Andy's blog today for my April DT piece.

xxx


Supplies
Andy Skinner stamps - Stampendous - Curiosity and Unexplained
Andy Skinner greyboard shapes - Tando Creative - Industrial Wings, heart and miscellaneous pieces from kits.
DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - cerulean blue and prussian blue, quinacridone red, carbon black, cobalt turquoise, transparent red iron oxide, titan buff, yellow oxide
DecoArt Media Speciality - white gesso, white crackle paste, matte medium, heavy gel medium, ultra matte varnish

Friday 19 April 2019

Route 66 media board - Tando Creative

I have a quick post today sharing a small media board from Tando Creative, one I made for one of the visits Di made to Hochanda.


The Route 66 badge was stencilled onto a piece of leftover painty paper using  cerulean blue, phthalo blue and paynes grey media fluid acrylics.


The quote was stenciled using black modeling paste.


The background was created using a cracked distressed technique I have used before. The blues were chosen to get a retro look.



Short and sweet I'm afraid but sometimes time is of the essence.

Thanks for popping by and -
xxx



Monday 15 April 2019

Mixed media - Stitch/sew journal panel

I created a new journal at the beginning of the month to hold small panels with a sewing/haberdashery theme so here's the first one. If you missed the making of the gorgeous journal with neutral outside covers you can find it here.


Process steps.
1. Tear patterned/designer papers randomly and glue to the panel. Also add some tape measure washi/tissue tape.


2. Dip this in watery gesso and dry a few times until you have a lighter and more cohesive look to the background.


3. Add some black asemic writing and areas of light colours to match the tones of the first papers you used with oil pastels or water soluble crayons. (I used oil pastels, sometimes scribbling 2/3 colours together then I heated them with a heat gun and rubbed them with my finger to blend them). Also distress the edges and blend some  ground espresso ink around them.


4. Cover the surface with embossing ink and cover with vintage beeswax baked texture by Seth Apter and heat emboss. Repeat with a layer of UTEE.
 Heat the surface and add a little of the bone mixed media powder from ranger.


5. Rub a coffee archival ink pad around the edges to frame the panel. Heat gently to dry.


6. Now add a third layer of embossing and again I used UTEE and have your stamps and watering can archival ink to stamp into the molten surface. Hold the stamp there for a few seconds so the the embossing cools down a little before removing the stamp.



7. When it had cooled completely I bent the panel t get it to crack the embossing and rubbed white antiquing cream all over. It needed to dry for 5 - 10 minutes.


8. In the meantime I collected together a few embellishments together and blended DI and dark grey and burnt sienna premium acrylic paints over the metal pieces.


9. When dry I rubbedback the background to give it a more shabby vintage feel.


10. And added embellishments. The hooks and eyes are torn from an old packet I gathered from my Mum's supplies many years ago.


The scissors are flat backed and I added some paints to age them.


I added a little burnt sienna to the buttons too.


I absolutely love the finished effects. It's not at all how I thought it might look and I was very surprised at how dark the vintage beeswax embossing is, but mixing it with layers of clear worked well.


This will now be added to the journal.


Thanks for taking an interest and popping by and ........
xxx