CVC Challenge February 2025 #3 - Romance and Friendship

Happy Valentine Day 

I am sneaking in a third project for the CVC February challenge which is a last frame and this one is made for my 6 year old grandson who wants to be an Astrologer. I picked out what are the nearest products I could to fit in with his story and this theme.

I began by taking these metal elements found in my supplies and used the shown products as a play time to give a rusty look to them. Cogs and gears to represent machinery, spectacles because he loves Harry Potter, a compass to help him look in the correct direction when looking for stars and planets with his telescope and propellor as he also has a love of aeroplanes. (I just couldn't fit his love of lego into this project but he's a genius with it).

For the background I used the gears embossing folder and swiped the rusty ginge embossing ink pad over to create a rusty look but as always with me everything changed as I played with different products in the process of creating the layers.

I can't honestly say what I did for each layer to end up with the design below but I had fun.

These are all the products I used and there must be at least another 4 layers on top of the rusty hinge that I started with. It certainly doesn't look like I expected it to but just experimenting always takes you down a different path and that's the excitement of it all.

Things came together well as I collected together elements to sit in the ledge at the bottom of the frame. and added words to bring it all together.

A couple of bulbs to light his way, clock gears and clock hands in the bottles represent time, time he spends creating things (he loves his arts and crafts), time he will spend gazing up at the night sky. (I already have a fabulous photo of him out one clear evening last week where he was looking for the alignment of the moon with Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars). Spectacles to represent his love of the Harry Potter books, and hearts for Valentine's day.

I made up small labels to add to those bottles, bulbs and heart.

xx

Supplies

TH- Distress Spray Stain -Faded Jeans,Stormy Sky

TH - Distres Spritz - Uncharted Mariner, Vintage Photo, Crackling Campfire

TH - Distress Inks - Faded Jeans, Rusty Hinge, Uncharted Mariner

TH - Collage Medium, Crackle Paste

TH Foundry Wax - Statue

TH Embossing folder - Blueprint and Gears

DecoArt Fluid Acrylics - Quinacridone Gold, Prussian Blue Hue

All & Create Rub-ons - Acid Blends, Wanderlust Passport

Quick Valentine cards

 Inspired by Tim Holtz

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

These are some simple Valentines cards to go with the frames I have been making for the grandchildren (plus one for hubby as well). I was inspired by the Tim Holtz Valentine Live and his beautiful cards. These are very different to his but the design is the same.

All of them were made with backgrounds cut from left over bits from other projects, splattered with white paint.

There's a banner of embossed vellum paper and then the stamped love token by Tim Holtz.

xx

https://www.instagram.com/p/DFi6iBeTzNj/?hl=en

Supplies

TH stamps - Mini Blueprints 2

TH Distress inks - no colours identified on the offcuts.

TH Punch -  hearts that went in the envelope.

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

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

From the HeArt Shadowbox

Happy Valentine's Day

How about this for a present to a loved one on this special day?

Cut some patterned paper the size of the back of the frame and using a stencil and modeling paste create a textured pattern.

Scrape through some white gesso, heat dry and then random stamp with permanent ink. I used vermillion with black over the top to get a two tone effect.

Take a greyboard square and scrape some gesso lightly over the top to create a little texture.

 When the gesso is dry paint it with a coat of cadmium red and quinacridone magenta, dry it and give a coat of transparent red iron oxide mixed with raw umber and before it dries flick some water over the surface let it stand for half a minute or so and then gently roll over some kitchen towel to remove the water and some of the paint underneath it. This technique gives you that mottled effect.

Take a small wooden heart (did Elvis pop into your head then? It did mine lol). Daub a little white gesso onto it, turn it over and press the gessoed side onto your craft mat (or something similar). This gives you a very quick way to create a different texture.

Daub a little paynes grey over the heart, dab most of it off and then repeat in a couple of random areas so you get contrasting depths of the colour.

I painted on the reds and raw umber dabbing off with kitchen roll to continue the mixed colour effects ....

..... and dry-brushed white gesso over it to reveal the texture again.

I then swiped over the vermillion red ink pad to bring the reds to life more.

Again I added some white dry-brushing but this time nearer to the edges.

I painted the edge of the heart with white gesso and sanded it back when it was dry, finishing with blended ground espresso distress ink.

To finish the square I sanded over it and around the edges and blended that with the distress ink too.

I took a cheap craft metal frame painted it with a mix of the reds and raw umber paints, let it dry and then blended over some iced espresso metallic lustre.

All I needed to do to complete the shadowbox was to make my own sentient for the metal frame .....

.... and put it together.

No embellishments, no collage just a simple design with lots of technique.

I dipped the white frame into a few watery washes of the colours I had been using but was not happy with the overall finished result ...

.... so that's when it got sanded and grunged up a bit with the sanding block and ground espresso distress ink.

That's better!

Now I'm happier with it.

Enjoy your Valentine's day with special people in your life and listen to your own HeArt.

hugs Brenda xxx

DecoArt white modeling paste DecoArt Mixed Media - White Gesso Ranger Archival Ink - Vermillion Ranger Archival ink pad - Jet black Decoart media-fluid-acrylic paint---cadmium-red DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic Quinacrodone magentaww.countryviewcrafts.co.uk/decoart-mixed-medi DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic - Paynes Grey DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid Acrylic - Raw Umber Tim Holtz distress ink pad - Ground Espresso

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