Vintage Shabby Collage Journal - Stamping with Tim Holtz Flowers

 Using scraps from projects and snippets to create little collages.

I have a double spread today using materials from a variety of companies but the important ones are listed below.

The background stamping was done by using hickory smoke oxide, this leaves a fabulous impression of light on dark.

Here is the train driver who is carrying a cargo of flowers to the airport where it all will be sent to florists in Paris and New York. The boxes are carrying fragile freight and he does not want his cargo to get crushed. It is a great responsibility to get all the boxes delivered on time and safely, but he is experienced and wise and ready to do a good job.

Claude, this dedicated driver carefully carried all the packages for miles, stopping at stations to pick up and drop of passengers, many of them regularly taking this route and train knowing that Claude always did a good job at keeping the train to time. As he pulled into his platform at Charles de Gaulle Airport he was thinking of all the arrangements that had been made to transfer the cargo to the plane travelling to New York and to shops in Paris. He watched the handlers remove the boxes from their carriage and gave a sigh of relief knowing he had got them safely to the terminal and they were now off to their final destinations.

Claude was happy and satisfied that his task had been accomplished and he was ready to head off hme to his family.

• “Just living is not enough ... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” – Hans Christian Andersen

xxx

Materials

Stamps - Tim Holtz Flower Jar CMS297, Perspectives CMS213, Ledger Script CMS241

Distress inks - scorched timber

Distress Oxide - hickory smoke, walnut stain

TH Snippets - Urban Layers

TH Collage Strips - large

TH Words - Small Talk

The Graphics Fairy - Fleur Tab

TH Cello Sticker Tape

TH Clipping Stickers

TH - papers

Sakura Micron brown pen

Scrap Collage Journal

 Using scraps from projects to create little collages.

Having spent a fair few days on creating six panels for my next workshop, using Alison Bomber's newest release of stamps, I needed a bit of a break. I have loved creating the panels and I'm really pleased with them but I felt I needed to design and create something small and more personal, just for me. Sitting right in view were a number of bits left over from my creative process, so I set about sorting some of the pieces I could use and also raided my collage tub to add to it and ......

...... Eh voila!

An inky scrap of card from the workshop collection of scraps plus the pressed foliage stamp that had been fussy cut, one of Alison's words snippet, an ephemera stamp in the right hand corner and a part of a delivered envelope I had saved in my collage pieces tub.

It was so satisfying getting something created in just over an hour rather than the days it takes me for much bigger projects. It's left me ready to do more ......

xxx

More 'Lockdown' creative time

Thank you to Alison (Words and Pictures) and Nikki (Addicted to Art) for another fabulous creative and chatty session on Sunday. We all worked on our journals with me creating a panel to add to a collage in my vintage journal.

I have to say having a couple of crafting buddies who ca get together in this way gives us a very therapeutic window of time in this pandemic lockdown and provides us with an opportunity to catch up and enjoy just being with other people we know and love.

The background panel started with a layer of tinting base scraped across a piece of card with some washes of burnt sienna, raw umber, paynes grey and titan buff and dried before adding the stars. These were created with one of Tim's shifter stencils and the above colours as well as quinacridone gold, raw sienna. burnt umber, carbon black, titanium white and pyrrole red. I used a small blending tool and foam to layer the colours through randomly.

I started collecting some pieces together to begin the collage .....

...... working just on the panel to begin with. 

When I was happy with that I then brought together more oddments to build the page collage. All of the bits are from snippet boxes I keep, both of papers, words, fabrics and die-cuts. I love using up leftovers in this way.

If you have a moment please pop over to see the fabulous designs by my lovely intrenet companions.

Nikki

Alison

xxx

A Misty Morning Notebok - DecoArt Media Team

A Misty Morning Journal/Notebook - mixed media style

This is a project I made for the DecoArt Media blog last autumn.

The process steps of this project were an experiment in creating that overcast look of the early autumnal mornings that have that blurred and more nebulous feel to them. 

1. Cut two pieces of greyboard 11 x 22½  cms and seal with a coat of gesso on both sides.

2. Use a medium size brush and wet the surface all over with water and let it pool in places. With the wet brush pick up a small amount of raw umber and dabble it in a couple of places around the edges. Whilst still wet repeat that step with medium grey, quinacridone gold and titan buff keeping it lighter and more watery in the middle. Dry with a heat gun after each layer. Repeat this a couple of times more to get some nice layering effects of the watery colours. Finish with some light splattering of the same colours used and lightly distress the edges with a sanding block and brown distress ink.

3. Mix some white modeling paste with a little tinting base and apply through a stencil with a palette knife. Leave to dry.

4. Start creating a misty background effect. Spray over and around the stencilled flowers with water and use a paint brush to blend in some medium grey media acrylic paint. Spritz with more water, let it drip and flow around the flowers and dry. Repeat process with another layer of the medium grey mixed with dioxazine purple, a third layer using dark grey and then a fourth using titanium white. Splatter some of the medium and dark grey as a watery wash.

5.  Choose a small, fine paintbrush and using sap green, burnt umber, quinacridone burnt orange and titan buff, mix colours and water to paint in a background colour to the stencilled wildflowers.

6. Add in some of the dioxazine purple and dark grey to add more detail to the flowers and leaves and also some levels of lower background foliage.

7. Having given the flowers some depth we're now going to knock them back a bit by wiping some white antiquing cream down the flowers, drying it with a heat gun and then using the fine brush and clean water to pull back random parts of the flowers as if they are peeking through the mist.

8. Finally I used my stabilo black water pencil to create some dark shadows and more murkiness and also added a little wash of the quinacridone burnt orange to bring back some faint colour. I loved the use of the watercolour pencil so much I added some shiraz red to the flowers too. I hope I've not overdone it!!!

To finish the booklet I re-sanded the edges and inked them and added a computer generated title and ......

.... I made holes to add rings to hold it together and filled it with some papers.

Supplies

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic Paints - raw umber, dark grey value 3, quinacridone gold, titan buff,  medium grey value 6, dioxazine purple, titanium white, sap green, burnt umber, quinacridone burnt orange and titan buff. 

DecoArt Mediums - modeling paste, tinting base,titanium white antiquing cream

Book It! A Vintage Journey challenge and Eileen Hull Passport Book

I Just love creating handmade books, mini albums and journals etc and as  a child I was an avid reader but all I seem to read about these days is new techniques and craft ideas etc. :o) x

There is nothing better than curling up with a good book to take us away to another place! This month over at A Vintage Journey we'd like you think about books - perhaps you will make a book, or a journal, create a journal page showing a scene from one of your favourite books (do please tell us what book!) or a card showing someone reading or made using text stamps, stencils or word stickers. Just remember to create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I attended a workshop with the lovely Antonis Tzanidakis last weekend and bought some of his papers and stamps to play with. I decided to use these to make a little grungy, mixed media passport style book.

Process steps

1. Cover some black card with patterned paper - I used Mechanical Fantasy from Stamperia by Antonis. Cut two covers from the die.

2. Cut a spine from mountboard, stamp it with the typewriter from Tim Holtz Inventor set.  Daub some paints over it, stamp it and dip in some watery colour washes using the same as you just used.

3. Add some additional colour to the papers and spine, seal them with matte medium and give a coat of clear crackle glaze and leave it to dry naturally.

4. Paint the back of the covers with the titan buff paint. With a palette knife drag over cobalt blue and quin gold and dry. Stamp. Repeat the dragging over with white gesso. Seal with a coat of matte medium mixed with both the quin gold and cobalt blue and when that is dry again give a coat of the clear crackle glaze and dry naturally.  Also crackle glaze the spine.

5. Brush everything (inside and outside of the covers) with oil paint to get into all the cracks, then rub back with a baby wipe and dry kitchen roll to leave the cracks and crevices aged with the paint.

6. Stick the covers to the spine and add embellishments to the front. It was here I swapped the inside and outside covers over. I prefer the painty layers to the patterned papers.

7. Die cut pages with patterned papers and watercoloured papers and insert them as three signatures  into the booklet using elastic.

My book is now ready to use tor any "Stuff, ideas and things"

I hope you will be able to pop over to AVJ to see some other wonderful creations from the members of the team posting this month and maybe we'll see you joining in as well?

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

Stamperia Mechanical Fantasy paper pad - Antonis

DecoArt premium acrylic paint- titan buff

DecoArt Media acrylic paints - Cobalt Teal Hue, Quinacridone Gold
DecoArt Clear Crackle Glaze, Matte Medium

Tim Holtz stamps - Inventor
Eileen Hull dies
Tim Holtz supplies