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

Halloween Backgrounds - Distress inks and sprays

 Been playing with a variety of colours to make some distress backgrounds for potential Halloween backgrounds. I like most of them lol.

It's Valentine's Month

 This card was made for hubby as well as a new FaceBook challenge at Country View Crafts Challenges where the theme is - 'Love'.

The background was made using Aged Mahogany Distress Stain and Tim Holtz Hearts stencil and created by mono-printing the stencil three times onto the card. Although it looks uneven and very distressed I can live with it as I knew I was going to collage over the top and therefore cover a lot of it up.

This fits an 8x8 card blank.  

The ephemera papers are mostly either from Tim Holtz Ephemera packs or cut from his paper pads.

The 3D  heart is cut from Tim's Thinlits Faceted Hearts die and VALENTINE was printed from his Valentine Silhouettes stamp set, laid out on a piece of vellum.

Here you can see how I used the vellum to create that translucent look.

These are some of the embellishing bits collected together.

The Faceted Heart has a small heart punched from one of Tim's punches and stamped with a small text stamp. The stars are also from another small punch by Tim.

Hubbly loves feeding the birds and doing a bit of bird watching from time to time so this paper came in handy.

I'm pretty sure the text letters are from a Tim die. I keep extra die-cuts in a tub so I didn't have to get the Big Shot out. You can also another of the little white hearts placed strategically in a line of hearts where there was a gap.

I also used a Season's greeting die-cut and some small snippets (also all Tim Holtz).

Thanks for stopping by.

xxx

Sew Special at A Vintage Journey

Wow, it's the first Friday in May and we are gathering at A Vintage Journey for Jenny's 'Sew Special' challenge. I so enjoyed designing and making for this theme, it's one that's been off my radar for a very long time yet used to be one of my favourites and as I had a canvas with tissue wrap on it ready to be used, I went for it. Gathering all my sewing elements and stamps together I began to get ideas in my head and had to start making choices and decide what would go together.

Background

This started it's life whilst teaching my 'Collection of 3' workshop recently and is made from a piece of canvas from a canvas pad. I began by dipping it into broken china and dried marigold distress inks and spritzing it with water to move the paints around and then heat dried it.

 Later I used a stencil and white crackle paste to create a textured design and when it was dry I sprayed on some broken china and tea dye distress stains, spritzed a little with water, let them drip and merge a bit and dried it, then used the stencil and ground espresso distress crayon to create some darker patches of the pattern.

Dress Form

Although the Hot Picks sewing/haberdashery stamps have been out a long time they remain my most favourite images for this theme. I used HP1215EZ for the dress form and cut it out after stamping on card. I took Wendy Vecchi's cornflower blue EP and covered the whole shape, the a layer of thick, clear EP before using Wendy's tea Rose EP but localising it to the body form only. Next I stamped over it with ground espresso DI and covered it with walnut stain distress powder and heated it so that the powder created a mottled outline, then I edged with coffee archival ink, heated it, covered with versamark and the clear EP again before stamping into it with the coffee archival ink. It created somewhat smudged look but it's grungy and distressed which was what I was aiming for.

    

Sewing Machine

This was a chipboard piece I found in my 'sewing' box, I covered it with versamark and walnut stain distress EP and when cool I blended hickory smoke Di all over, then sanded the edges and blended them with ground espresso. Next I used the clear, thick EP, flicking a lot of it off before heat drying and then blended over black soot when it was cool. To finish off I stamped a design in versamark and used gold EP and did the edges the same.

Thread winder and coat hanger

More chipboard pieces covered in picket fence DI, stamped text with black soot then covered with fine, clear EP. Edges sanded and blended with ground espresso before winding thread onto the card.

Ruler border
For this embellishment I used a piece of off white card (Marianne Designs stamping card) and followed Sheena's faux leather technique but mixed it up to make it fit my project. Once I got to the stage where the softened and flexible card had been put through Tim's embossing folder I then carried on in my way.

When it was fully dry I dipped and spritzed (with water) using dried marigold DI, dried it, repeated with just a little vintage photo and again when dry I rubbed over both broken china and ground espresso ink pads to get my aged look.

Spools
These were simply scratched with a prima distressing tool, blended with vintage photo and ground espresso DIs and thread, hessian and lace added to them.

I put the smallest, which was cut in half to provide a flat back, on the canvas frame, you can also see the finished thread card with needle embellishment given a rusted look.

The Butterfly
This was also a demo/teaching left over  and made using Tim's layered butterfly die and embossing folder, distress embossing powder, distress inks and gloss varnish. You will see on the finished canvas that I added lots more ground espresso DI round the edges.

Here's the body when it was finished with a small dress form shaped stamped with cotton reel tops and a rusty scissors embellishment added.

The canvas
This was given a layer of music score tissue wrap before being dipped in watery dried marigold and picket fence distress paints and edged with vintage photo and ground espresso.

So there we are - my contribution towards the 'sew special' challenge. I hope you will be able to join us where there is a prize this month from Calico Craft parts. Have fun.

With much warmer this week here in the UK we have been attacking the back garden and getting it sorted out for the summer - new turf has been laid, fence painted and shrubs and tubs to be finished. We're getting there.

Enjoy your weekend with whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Distress Spray Stains at Country View Crafts

Did you know that Susan has the brand new distress spray stains in the shop? I have been having a play and made another Christmas card using the sprays for the background.

All the process steps can be found at Country View Crafts project blog today. It would be lovely if you could pop over and take a look.

I hope your week is going well.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

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