Saturday, 8 February 2025

CVC Challenge February 2025 #1 - Romance and Friendship

 PRETTY GRUNGE AND MORE

I thought I'd make all of my three grandchildren a Valentine gift, which would also be a bit of a keepsake. (Well it will be if they like them lol). So here are three small shadowboxes.

The heart was made using layers of Americana Decor chalk paints, metallics, PaperArtsy Fresco Finish and Distress Spritz. I just painted, sponged, waxed, rubbed and sanded it until I was happy with the results. 

Ella is the eldest and at university training to be a teacher, she is the pink girl. I found a background already made and distressed, cut it to size and attached it to the back of the inner white frame. I also found a piece of card embossed with Eileen Hull's lace folder and again in the pink tones. I cut strips to cover the inner frame, splattered with a mix of picked raspberry distress stain and worn lipstick Spritz mixed together and also with white acrylic paint. Once finished I rubbed the white paint over the raised areas of the texture to bring the pattern back to life.

I collected elements together to build the design, painted and rubbed down some metal bits and as I built the project and as I got further into it more pieces were gathered, altered/distressed and added.
Close-ups of the elements.

The distressed heart.

A shabby bow coloured with distress inks.
Snippets to create interest in the background.
The largest of the two bottles, both were painted with collage medium, left to dry and then painted with crackle paste I filled this one with pretty coloured beads, painted and distressed the cork and tied pink thread around it.
Three little flowers were tucked into the corner.
The smallest bottle was coloured up with alcohol pearl and a snippet cut down to fit. On top is a small pink eyelet.
Here is a small frame with a distressed metal button, an altered key and a glittery heart.
I also added a metal plaquette, small metal snowflake and beads, Ella's name and rub-ons to distress the frame.


xx


Supplies

TH- Distress Spray Stain - Picked Raspberry, Spun Sugar, Seedless

TH - Distres Spritz - Worn Lipstick, Villainous Potion

TH - Collage Medium, Crackle Paste

TH - Rock Candy Glitter

TH - Snippets

TH - Gumdrop Hearts

TH - Metal Plaquettes, Gumdrop Hearts,  

Ranger - Patina - Cinnabar, Rust

Ranger - Alcohol Pearl - Deception

Ranger Archival Ink - Hydrangea

Americana Chalky Finish - Innocence

All & Create Rub Ons - Acid Blends

Eileen Hull - Lace embossing folder


Maddison

TH- Distress Spray Stain -  Seedless Preserves

TH - Distres Spritz -  Villainous Potion

TH Distress Ink - Villainous Potion

Friday, 7 February 2025

Creating your own craft supplies

 Collage Snippets

We buy so many craft tools, materials, supplies and equipment to enjoy designing, creating and making our arts and crafts. We become interested in what we are attracted to and begin learning about our chosen activities and we draw, cut, paint, sew, experiment, trial, evaluate, appraise and assess our results. We become designers, creators, inventors, craftsmen and women, artists and artisans. We focus on significant interests and activities that give us the most pleasure and we often engage with like minded people and can become fascinated and absorbed by what we do. I know that is what has happened to me over the years and I love being totally wrapped up in creating and hours can pass by without me noticing what else is going on around me. I get totally engrossed and lost in my thinking, research and experiments. When I've finished, nothing pleases me more than that feeling of being happy and satisfied with what I am holding in my hands.

Having said all that keeping up with all the new trends and products can be difficult as everything gets so expensive and we all love to try out new and different things which can cost a fortune. But there are many ways to help us achieve the looks and designs we are happy with without necessarily going for the most expensive all the time. So ...........

Imagine - you're at the point of pulling a design together and for me that often would mean adding a collage to a project to get the desired vintage/shabby/artistic feel that pleases me. BUT I have almost finished that pack of Tim Holtz snippets that I love to use and I haven't ordered a new one yet from Country View Crafts. What can I do as I desperately want to get it finished and not put it away to have to come back to? I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve - one is I have bought some sets of Tim Holtz stamps that will allow me to recreate some of his snippets for myself (see supplies below). The ones I stamped recently are just black permanent ink onto white card so they can be used on their own or can be coloured up to fit any project.






 Brilliant - I create some backgrounds, stamp and cut ready to use. That helps tremendously but they are not always on the right colour background etc, they just don't fit the bill on this occasion. Hmmm ok my next port of call is go to a bag of snippets that I have called 'Household Snippets' and see if there is something there that will make me happier. I peruse through all the small pieces that have been cut from ....

Old Maps

Books
Stationery, particularly posted envelopes.
Packaging - this was the result of just two small boxes.
Other general household items ie new clothes tags, parking tickets, fruit boxes or nets.

They can't be classed as vintage (old books can!) but they are great fillers for when you need them.

What do you use to create little fillers like this?


xx

Supplies

TH - Stampers Anonymous -Tidbits CMS488, Curator CMS493. Paint by Numbers CMS483, Correspondence CMS225, Ornate Trims CMS326

Monday, 3 February 2025

Incorporate your own sketches into a collage 3

 Pen and Ink sketches on distress ink backgrounds with collage.

POTENTIAL

Following up two posts earlier in January (see links below) this is #3 in my pen and ink, flowers and seed heads, collages journal. It is dated 27/02/21.

I love seed heads, I pick them in the wild, I save seeds from the garden and grow them and I love drawing them.
Poppy seed heads always make me happy to look at and .... to gather the hundreds of tiny seeds that fall from those beautiful pods.
Like the previous 2 collages in this collection I have used papers, ephemera, die-cuts and a focus word.


Thanks for looking.

xx


Links to previous collages

 CREATE

http://www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com/2025/01/during-pandemic-i-did-very-little-art.html

CONSERVATION

http://www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com/2025/02/incorporate-your-own-sketches-into.html

Incorporate your own sketches into a collage 2

Pen and Ink sketches on distress ink backgrounds with collage.

CONSERVATION


Following up a post earlier in January (see link below) this is #2 in my pen and ink, flowers and seed heads, collages journal. It is dated 24/02/21.

The drawing is on a distress ink panel .....
.... incorporated with papers, ephemera, tag, die-cut leaves and word.
The stars on the bird ephemera have been stamped.
Thanks for looking.

xx



Link to first collage CREATE

http://www.bumblebeesandbutterflies.com/2025/01/during-pandemic-i-did-very-little-art.html

Friday, 31 January 2025

Affirmations 1 - Distress vintage layers

Be Brave 

It's the end of January as I'm writing this, the weather has been wet, chilly and even freezing but today we had some sunshine , blue skies and temperatures up to 10 degrees, you could almost say balmy weather. January into february is my SAD time when I need some love, time-out, friendship and excitement. But there are many of us in this position so I am going to build a box of affirmations to cheer me up.

This is #1. Just a small card 12 1/2 x 7 cms, covered in papers and ephemera with distress texture paste (matte), scraped into the edges of some of the bits of card, finger rubbed and then some distress stains painted in to give it some depth.

I carried on adding some inks spritzes of water and layers of pencils until it was nearly covered, dried it, ........

 ...... and rubbed away with a wet wipe to expose some of the pattern and text from the original layers, again dried it and finger rubbed some white gesso to create some highlights.
I finished by splattering some white gesso and distressing the edges of the card and rubbing walnut distress stain over them.
Now the background is complete, let's gather the collage elements and adhere them together to complete the project.





xxx

Supplies
Random papers, labels and pieces of TH ephemera
TH - Distress Spray - Pumice Stone, Ground Espresso
TH - Distress Crayons - Walnut Stain, Vintage Photo, Antique Linen, Hickory Smoke, Picket Fence, Pumice Stone.
TH - Ephemera
TH - Ephemera Snippets, Number Strips
TH - Distress Texture Paste - Matte
TH - Distress Ink - Walnut Stain
DecoArt Americana White Gesso


Friday, 24 January 2025

Winter Scene 2 for Country View Crafts

 Distress Journal Panel

1. Stamped the tree/branches with walnut stain DI, then stamped the bird with cornflower blue and  black archival inks leaving the belly uninked and then the barn with black and the trees with peat moss. The tree trunk was made by double stamping the branch from the Mr Frostie set and then using a fine brown drawing pen to give it a seamless appearance.

2. I played with dabbling and dipping gathered twigs and broken china DIs to start the background off.

3. The background tree line was an experiment covering the stamp with pine needles DI and dipping it into watery chipped sapphire and broken china puddles then stamping at various heights to make them look further away and melting into the snowy background.

4. I dabbled around the tree line using a brush with the two blue puddles of DI until I was happy with it.

5. I used the watercolor pencils on the barn, the bird, the tree and branches the bird is sitting on.

6. The bottom of the scene was looking a bit wishy-washy so I added some rustic wilderness with a brush and water..

7. I tore some paper to cover most of the scene and stamped text above and below the bird using watering can archival.

8. I then covered the bird and splattered watery Snowflake fresco finish paint to make a snowstorm but the text stood out too much so after drying the splatters I brushed some watery white paint over it and knocked quite a bit of it back. The snow seemed to have died down so I splattered again.

9. Finishing was about playing with the details, painting and inking the bird's belly, darkening the tree, dabbling some white paint around the foreground in a few places, touching up and strengthening shape with pencils and pens.

So my second wintry scene is finished and I added it to my Distress watercolouring journal.






Supplies

I decided to try some new card for this project (Paper Mill Direct Arena Super Smooth 300gms). I cut a panel 18x15 cms. I'm, pleased to say it worked ok with wet inks, dipping and drying, stamping and paint.

Tim Holtz - DIs - walnut stain, gathered twigs, vintage photo, chipped sapphire, broken china, pine needles, rustic wilderness.

Tim Holtz - Distress Watercolor Pencils - mermaid lagoon, uncharted mariner, gathered twigs, brushed corduroy, ground espresso

Tim Holtz Stamps - Nature Walk CMS181, Mini Holidays 2 CMS096, Scribble Woodland CMS282, Mr Frostie CMS499, Letter to Santa 053

Ranger archival inks - cornflower blue, potting soil, peat moss, black, watering can.

Miscellaneous - white posca pen, brown and black fine drawing pens.