Seaside theme - Country View Crafts and Tim Holt products 2024

For a new challenge at County View Crafts Challenges 'All Things Seaside' on FaceBook I've used a clipboard as the substrate for my project and created a fairly flat collage so that the clipboard can be used.

The board was painted with Haystack and stamped with Buff PaperArtsy chalky acrylics. I used one of Tim's ledger stamps.

 

Then over this I created a collage.

xxx

Products by Tim Holtz

Layering stencil - Rosette

Stampers Anonymous - Ledger Script CMS 241

Papers

Idea-ology, ephemera, snippets, typed tags, cello sticker tape, word chips, paper strips

Sizzix Dies - wildflowers, numbers

Distress inks

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

Through the lens of time

Country View Challenges has an 'Industrial' theme this month and it took me a while to get myself going on this. I had chosen the clip board as the substrate weeks ago and I covered it with the embossed foil tape but then it just lay around my craft room waiting for inspiration to hit me. I had a couple of ideas but as I went searching for things another idea popped into my head and with the help of Pinterest I ended up with this very quirky aged, industrial style camera lens with clocks in it - hence the title today. Although nothing like my finished article THIS CAMERA (click to be transported) became my visual inspiration.

Firstly I wanted to re-create the ridges around the inner part of the lens and some corrugated card came to my rescue. I cut four pieces each 1 cm wide and 14 cm long and carefully curved them round the outside edge of the greyboard smaller circle (bought as a wreath). When it was dry I gave it a coat of black gesso, dried it and carefully went round dry brushing the ridges and the centre piece with media metallic silver when that was dry I brushed on treasure pewter. Over the lower area I added washes of paynes grey, black and raw umber and finished with a media gloss varnish to give it a more shiny plastic effect. The numbers are remnant rubs aiming to imitate the exposure range of the lens - but I had to take on artistic license here.
 

On the larger circle I chose to use my camouflage chippy paint technique creating the outer part of the lens finishing off with several washes of prussian blue, titan buff, quinacridone gold and paynes grey and a touch of transparent yellow iron oxide. I glued on rusty circular pieces for the screw heads gave it a coat of media ultra matte varnish ....

.... but later I came back to it again and added some ransom patches of transparent crackle glaze and patina antiquing cream. I love the close-up detail of this.

The centre of the lens has been built up with a circular piece of foamboard again given the crackle and patina antiquing cream treatment ...

.... a die-cut picture wheel - coated with sand texture paste and given rusty washes of paint ...

.... and metal clocks and clock part also rusted up ....

 .... when put together have a very industrial feel to them.

There are two boards here with different sized circles cut out and when layered give the perspective of looking into the lens aperture ....

 ... and a few more pieces to add as embellishments - all altered in one way or another.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look and see how this came together. Something a bit unusual for me but I still had fun with all the DecoArt paints and mediums getting different finishes.

There's lots more inspiration from the design team over at Country View Challenges. I do hope you will join us and maybe you will be lucky and win the birthday voucher.

Have a great week, be creative and and listen to your heART.

hugs Brenda xxx

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.

Yousuf Karsh

Tic-Tac-Toe for AVJ

What is tic-tac-toe?

Wikipediea says -

Tic-tac-toe, or Noughts and crosses, is a paper-and-pencil game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game. So this is how this challenge title came about.

Annie is our lovely hostess this week at A Vintage Journey and she has described your challenge thus-

With so many Tim Holtz/Ranger and any other similar products we would like you to choose at least three items from the grid below and incorporate them in your projects. You can choose items horizontally/vertically or diagonally, it's your decision. Please, please include the name of the items you are using within your post, not just in the link to the challenge.

Idea-ology or any metal embellishment	Sprays	Ribbon/twine
Paint	Ephemera	Die cuts
Foil tape	Texture fades	Stains

For my Creative Guide sample I have taken the diagonal line from top right to bottom left. My Idea-Ology component is the ‘Found Relative’ photo, to embellish the collage I used Tim's Expedition ephemera pack and I used distress stains on the background (see below process steps).

Get yourself a cuppa and have a wander through the post, be warned there are quite a few photos.

Process steps – I dipped into Tim’s background technique as demonstrated on his July tag of 2014

To bring the piece together and add details -

 Alter the bookplate, this simply has some antique linen distress paint dabbed on it. Simple but lovely effects.

Ink the edges of chosen ephemera pieces ....

... and know exactly where you are putting them on the collage.

 Add some sewing and die-cuts......

..... and make charmed embellishments.

As this is such a large collage I built the lower with the large layers first and put it to flatten under a heavy box. When it was dry and flatter I added the next level of smaller elements and flattened it again. 

Finally I adhered the bulky elements to finish it off.

The altered clip board was made quite quickly -

I covered it completely with tissue wrap - this paper is so forgiving

I again used distress paints to alter the look of the clip (which was bright silver to start with).

Finally I glued the collage to the board - I couldn't resist taking a picture of the other bulldog clips all round it.

 The little charm was added to the clip.

Finished.

I've just noticed I haven't shown you how to get the exra mile out of your Found Relatives cards. Can you see the gorgeous patterned piece that looks like a playing card. Well carefully peel the back off your relative card and you too can have an additional element to add to your projects.

I am really happy with the way this turned out and have bought several more clipboards so that I can experiment with other designs.

I hope you will pop over to the AVJ blog to see all the amazing creations from the Creative guides and hopefully find some time to join in the challenge.

Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend, I am off to London tomorrow to see 'Memphis' at the Shaftesbury Theatre and we are going to stay overnight, this is our Christmas present from our gorgeous kids Ben, Bev and Maddie.

hugs Brenda xxx