Guest at Anything But Cute

I so rarely get the opportunity to enter challenges these days so it's always a pleasure to take part but to find myself chosen as the winner of Anything But Cute's Summer Fun challenge was the icing on the cake and I get to do a guest post over on their challenge blog. Thanks to Pamellia and the brilliantly talented team for the opportunity.

The lovely Branka has chosen the challenge and of course if you've seen a previous post of mine this month you will know I sadly lost a very great friend recently to cancer, so this project and theme is dear to my heart.

At Anything But Cute they describe the theme thus-

Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more people. We want you to show us a mixed media creation that's inspired by friendship. You can create anything, from tags to art journal pages but make sure it's a mixed media piece. Let's celebrate friendship together!

For my make I took one of Tim's mini clipboards to alter.

It's about celebrating our friends and friendships and for me that's not only my personal friends that I have made over the years but all my blogging and crafty friends many of whom I have met in real life. Where would we be without each other?

I chose to use a vintage photo that I picked up from the internet that shows a group of friends - I think they may have been in a production as they might well be wearing costumes - but whatever they look happy together.

Please pop over to Anything But Cute to find their challenge details and if you would like to see how my project came together please click HERE to be transported over.

Have a wonderful week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Upcycle for Frilly and Funkie

I am so pleased to be a guest over at Frilly and Funkie today where the host is the lovely Suzz and the theme is 'It's not easy being Green'. In honour of Earth day which is tomorrow we are to create an upcycled project and to repurpose an existing item, recycle an element that would usually be thrown away or use scraps in a creative way. On this project I've taken lots of scraps destined for the bin and altered, adapted, recycled and upcycled elements.

I started with a tin that has been sitting on a shelf out of the way for a couple of years. I nearly threw it a while back but held onto it 'just in case', you know how you do? I decided to take it out and when I realised my new little collection of cabinet cards would fit in it, I knew where I was going with it.

I took out some media acrylics and a piece of dry kitchen roll and dabbed burnt sienna all over and heat dried it. Of course metal gets hot so we need to be very careful we do not burn ourselves.

The next layer I used burnt umber and dabbed it over randomly leaving some of the burnt sienna showing and dry.

I repeated the random dabbing with paynes grey and heat dried. Now we a beginning to see a lot less of the pattern underneath.

The trick now is to use all three colours together so they are wet at the same time and you can blend them together and over the previous layers.

The using a paint brush paint a coat of quinacridone all over.

Then finish with very light and random patches of all three colours again.
 As you can see there are minute changes in the last three layers but you see it happen when you do it yourself irl and you have control of what colour goes where.

I left the tin overnight and put the lid on, I wanted to see if the paints would get rubbed/scratched off with opening and closing the lid, but I'm pleased to say there was no wear, however I am sure there will be over time and I don't think a layer of varnish would prevent it.
The next day I scraped on a layer of transparent crackle glaze and left it to dry.

I took the time then to decide on what embellishments I wanted to add.

Birdcages - given a watery coat of cobalt blue hue and metallic silver mixed and dried. Some areas were sanded back and then a watery wash of quinacridone gold painted over. More sanding back and ground espresso ink blended in. These were saved from my friend who was going to throw them out, they are muffin bands.

The butterfly - this was a mop up piece and painted so I didn't waste paint from a previous project - it had been given a rough coat of phthalo blue mixed with translucent white. I blended ground espresso over it and flicked it with water, then dried. I splattered watery cobalt turquoise over it, dried and repeated with watered down metallic silver. Next came a coat of quinacridone gold wash, dried and a quinacridone gold glaze (ultra matte varnish coloured with the quin gold paint). Later I decided this was a bit boring so I painted over with the clear crackle glaze to see what happened. Yes some tiny cracks appeared when I rubbed in white antiquing cream and to take the shine off of it I gave it a coat of ultra matte varnish, oh and that's not until I had sanded and inked the edges again!

The bottle -  was left over like the butterfly and had the same coat of phthalo blue and translucent white. I gave it a very thin coat of translucent crackle glaze and when dry blended over ground espresso again but it looked too dark and quite uninteresting so I painted over a thin coat of white crackle paste and I love how it picked up the distress ink as it dried. I finished off with some watery cobalt turquoise and quin gold and once more sanded and blended the ground espresso on the edges. Now it looks better.

The arch - was left over from another project and I think had been dipped in quinacridone gold and paynes grey. I took it, sanded the edges and blended in ground espresso. What happened next was totally unexpected - the distress crayons and mini latticework stencil were lying on the floor (as they do!!) so I decided to bring in some pattern and hey look what it ended up like - love it.

The chloe stems were left after designing a workshop project and I had one die-cut in peach and another in cream, I decided just to give them a quin wash and then a little paynes grey.

The image was printed from the computer and needed aging and as I was enjoying crackling everything I remembered my friend Julia's images on a project where she had cracked them too. So I got out some new Tim Holtz goodies, coloured the image with distress crayons and a water brush and then sealed it with crazing medium. Not sure I like it really!

Look what happened to the lid when I went back to it and the crackle glaze had dried and I had blended patina green antiquing cream over it. Maybe I had got it a tad too thick in places with the glaze?

I die-cut Tim's new lace thinlits dies three times from some waste card that had been given some rusting and patina treatment a while back and adhered them to the sides of the tin.

Then I put everything together to create a collage on the lid with all the elements I had altered and saved from destruction.

And here are my cabinet cards I bought at Brick Lane Market a while back, they're 2 1/2 x 4 ins. Two of them have dates on the back of 1870 and 1872, I think they are amazing.

I think they will feel right at home in this 'ancient' time-worn tin!!!

Thanks to the fabulous team at Frilly and Funkie for having me as their guest today.

hugs Brenda xx

A quote I found and included in my Frilly and Funkie write up.

“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”
― Erma Bombeck

What makes me smile for Our Creative Corner

I am so excited as I have been asked to be Guest Designer at Our Creative Corner today and it's the lovely Jan from Scrapbooking from the Attic was has invited me to take part and who has chosen the theme - "What makes you Smile", Thank you Jan for the invitation, just reading the title did just that and got me thinking. There are numerous things that popped into my head, my family and my grandchildren who always put a smile on my face, holidays we take, my garden ....... the list could go on and on. But what makes me smile in the art and craft world? It has to be my love of vintage and shabby projects, collages and being part of a wonderful visual and real community of friends and artists who are so very friendly, kind, sharing and generous in many ways.

To get started I spent some time doing lots of perusing and trying to make a decision about what I should make for today (I do procrastinate so easily you know) and decided to list all the elements that currently make me happy - trinkets - idea'ology, pen nibs, keys, numbers, rust, charlotte dolls, string, found relatives - heritage photos, 3D projects, vintage colours and putting this thinking to work I came up with a canvas.

There are of course many more photos on the OCC blog and I have written my post with the idea of explaining my thought and design processes as I create, build and complete a project. I hope you will join me to see how it all goes and to see the complete project

Gosh it's been a busy week, this is my fourth post since Sunday so I probably won't see you here for a few days now but have a great weekend.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx


Updated - post copied across from OCC

I'm so pleased to be joining you at Our Creative Corner today with a mixed media canvas that has so many things on it that make me smile.

When Jan invited me to be a guest I was preparing to go away on holiday and of course that made me happy, but when I came home I needed to spark the mojo again so I decided to write a list of some of those smiley things that I love to use in my work, particularly those of the art kind.

Here's some of those I included - vintage/shabby, heritage photos, trinkets/idea'ology, butterflies, pen nibs, rust, wire, 3D, Tim Holtz, photo booth, collage, numbers .......... you get the picture?

One of the things I love reading about on the blogs is how people go about creating their designs - - - as they go along, in their heads, sketched in a journal - - - there are just so many ways and if you are anything like me you may well have tried a number of these, but there is one way I can honestly say I never do and that is have a picture of the finished project in my head before I begin - it just doesn't happen for me. I tend to have an idea of where I am going and for this project it was canvas, mixed media, layers, vintage and repeating some process steps that I have been teaching recently - so lets follow my train of thought.

.................................

I wanted to used die-cuts to lay down some texture but I knew I needed to have an idea of my layout first so I began to gather elements together laying them on the canvas building the design until I had an idea of what it might look like. Now this isn't to say this is how it will end up (as it didn't) but it sure does give me my starting point. You can see I was also thinking about what final embellishments I might go for, but as you can see some of them changed too.

Here we see layer 1 on the left with the elements from the Tim Holtz Trellis framework die, inked with walnut stain distress ink and adhered to make a textured background. I gessoed around the tessellated shapes but not over the pieces as the card picks up the paint better without it. On the right is layer 2 where I have added a babywipe painted coat of cerulean blue, cobalt turquoise hue and phthalo green-blue DecoArt media fluid acrylics, keeping the colours very pale and watery.

I have used two of Tim Holtz's stamps to create layer 3 on the left, stamping with black archival ink randomly over the canvas. In wanting something a little more feminine I then used the Tim Holtz flourish die with DecoArt white crackle paste to make layer 4. Now you can start to see the depth building.

Whilst the crackle was drying I started on the cameo frame gluing three card pieces together to give some depth. I then gave it a coat of gesso and dried it, a coat of cerulean blue, then some watery washes of prussian blue hue, cobalt turquoise and phthalo green-blue. When dry I blended walnut stain distress ink all over, flicked it with some water and dried it to get a slightly distressed look and sealed it with glue 'n seal.

I gave the ornate frame three coats of gesso drying between each and when perfectly dry I daubed a little glue and seal in a few places with my finger and also let that dry. I mixed a small amount of phthalo blue-green with translucent white and gave it a watery wash then rubbed over it with a babywipe and some mottle white areas appeared as the glue and seal made a resist. Next I text stamped over it with watering can archival ink and sealed it with glue and seal.

Next on to the embellishments - adding some tiny photos and remnant rubs to the film strip .....

.... messy painting and dipping the bird cages and then inking the edges with walnut stain (these were cut from a muffin wrapper) ......

.... using Tim's altered surfaces technique in his Compendium of Curiosities III to achieve this chippy paint look on a numeric alpha part.

.... painting the long arrow, rusting the pen nib and putting the heart charm and tag label pendant together with paint and treasure gold.

Back to the canvas and I added some of the acrylic paints I was using, mixing them with water, daubing a little on the canvas and spritzing allowing the colour to run and seep into the cracks and crevices.

Finally I started to put the design together, but as is usual with me, I was not happy with just the bits I had chosen to embellish the canvas and more was needed. I had thought I wouldn't put a back on the cabinet frame but the lovely photo booth picture looked lost with a very busy background and the piece of wood I had got out in the beginning to link the top and bottom focus areas just didn't work at all so I used a strip die to cut something more ornate and just dabbed it with some of the paints to achieve this distressed look. The flower is metal and acrylic again given some painty splodges to bring the colours into this very monochromatic appearance.

So finally I put all the elements together - here are some close ups.

There are three main focal points to the canvas, the top cabinet card, collage elements and photo booth picture .....

... the central section that 'connects' the top right and bottom left, thus creating balance and harmony to the overall piece and .....

.... the bottom left section that is smaller in size but still balances the overall composition.

I loved stamping over the small parts from the Trellis frameworks die, it provides additional interest to some of the pieces ....

.... as does the crackled flourish.

The darker brown of the ornate strip seems to provide that additional contrast in colour that was needed to my eye, and although it is a more elaborate piece it still seems to fit with the busy background of .......

.... colour, crackle and stamping.

I added the heart and flower to take away the starkness of the rigidity of the straight ornate strip, it too needed some variation in line.

So I think I got all but one of the smiley things in from my list and loved every minute making it. I hope you enjoy looking at it and hopefully it will make some of you smile too.

My thanks again to Laura, Jan and the team for having me. Don't forget Jan has chosen this fabulous theme so I hope you will be able to pop to the challenge post to see the wonderful samples from the design team and hopefully join in with a chance to win a package of Tando goodies.

hugs

Brenda 

xxx