Vintage Photos, Collage, Ephemera and Embellishments.

I love my mixed media work but I also love working with all those things in the title of this post. Today I am using the new Found Relatives Vintage Portraits with some older Tim papers and bits and pieces I keep for creating my vintage collages.

I love this photo of a young girl and her teddy bear, she is sitting so beautifully for the camera and is composed and happy. I bet this portrait became a favourite of her parents.

The heart is a little one die-cut from corrugated card and given a large splattering of white paint and mounted over some linen thread. I also tied the neutral bow to it to give additional interest.

This embellishment below just came about with me finding the small piece of black seam binding and the piece of tape in a box and put them together like this. I wanted the red to continue drawing the eye around the page and the black balances the Heartfelt sentiment  in the other corner.

You can just see some vermillion stamped text, it is randomly dotted over the grungy panel which was the result of a DecoArt project I made for May. So keep your eyes peeled for that coming soon.

A scrap of hessian, red and white borders and the Heartfelt sentiment carry the eyes across the page picking out the textures and patterns. The little red flower is one I made years ago and it found it's way into my box of bits when I disassembled a project it was on. Do you do that too, take something to pieces that you don't want to keep any more and recycle the elements?

I wonder if this little girl is going on a journey as this red and black ticket fitted in perfectly with the colour scheme and the pen nib reflects the idea of typed and written text in the right hand piece of layering paper and of course you just get a glimpse of the red stamped text too. Perhaps she grows up to be a writer or a travel journalist?

I love the kraft, red, white and black palette and as you saw this was created in one of my kraft journals which I think will now become just for paper dolls, lost relatives and photo booth collage art.

xxx

Oh Christmas tree for AVJ

Hi Everyone, it's November (eek how did that happen???????) and it's a new challenge at A Vintage Journey with a very unusual but brilliant theme from Nikki. She has called it
'Baby you're a firework' 
and she has described it for us - "Fireworks are a big part of celebrations at this time of the year. Be inspired by them to create a Tim style project; think distress glitter, bold colours, ink and paint splats and fun. Go on, light up that night sky".  Well when thinking about what I could do for this I had some new goodies arrive and in the box was Tim's new 'Sparkle' embossing folder, it immediately reminded me of fireworks and as I am in a mission to get my Christmas cards done I was off making four of them.

Playing with a mix of brushos and distress inks and Tim's new woodlands dies and the sparkle embossing folder I created what was going to be a quick and easy card (so I thought!) that can be sent through the post. However, as always with my 'overthinking' this became a longer project than anticipated. I just can't leave things looking unfinished to me and have to keep playing adding more and more details until I am satisfied with it.

So to begin I embossed a piece of card and painted it with gesso, dried it and mixed brushos and distress inks to get that lovely blended watery look. (1)

I inked the edges with broken china and ground espresso and sanded back the twinkles until they were white again. (This is how I thought I was going to leave them). (2)

Having diecut the tree from dark green card I painted areas with decoart ice crystal glitter paint and when that was dried I added some glossy accents in places and sprinkled on clear rock candy glitter.

When dry I adhered the tree to the card and used watery ground espresso, pine needles and forest moss distress inks to paint in the gaps in the tree. Although you can still see the twinkles through you get a more defined colour to the tree.

It was at this point I felt it need something else (see how I have to add the details?) so I mixed some crystal glamour dust with white gesso and painted on some glistening snow to the tree also adding some to the bottom of the panel to give the effect of snowy ground.

I then used a quickie glue pen to add some glamour dust to most of the top sparkles really making them twinkle. Now things were coming together, but I walked away from it and did something else before coming back the next day.

I wanted to create a couple of borders to go behind the panel, one is Tim's tattered lace strip die the other is the waste from the trellis frameworks die which I dipped in broken china and vintage photo distress inks before stamping Tim's ledger stamp in watering can archival ink.

To provide an embellishment I die cut the snowflake on the edge die using old glitter card I found in the cupboard......

.... but it was rather plain and as I looked around for something to 'pretty' it up I was reminded of the work that Annamarie (of Annamarie Designs) does which looked beautiful on her stand at Ally Pally in September. I had bought some of the natural accents and combined it with a bow and tiny punched flowers. I also added some watery distress ink to it all to make it look a bit more grungy.

With the waste from the glitter card I punched some little stars using Tim's small star punch, edged them with ground espresso and adhered them to the panel. (here I go again adding more detail again!!!!).

Anyway once assembled I am really quite pleased with the overall effects and have made four of these that can be sent out at Christmas - I just hope the snowflake embellishment holds up in the post.

So there's my firework link, sparkles in the background with a wintry tree in the foreground and lots of glitter and bold colours in the background too.

Thanks for joining me today I hope we will see you over at a Vintage Journey and remember the theme is not about fireworks per se, it is more about using inks etc with splats and splashes on your project. With glitter and that twinkle pattern I think I have lit up the night sky.

We look forward to seeing your linkup at the AVJ blog and how you interpret Nikki's fab theme.

Have a great month before the chaos, I mean fun really starts.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim's May tag

Tim's tag this month is right up my street, vintage, ephemera and collage with hessian and some texture paste - a match made in heaven methinks.

Here's our little starlet, Nancy, who has travelled from England to the good ole US of A to find stardom. 

She arrived in New York but the small part she had in a short running play didn't lead to any further opportunities so she has decided to travel by train across to the west coast and to Los Angeles to see if she can get her name up in Hollywood lights. This is my good luck tag, hoping she will find the fame and fortune she is seeking.

I don't have Tim's adhesive backed canvas so I used watered down pva and adhered some to kraft card and then cut the tag using his tag and bookplates die. (I merged two photos together here).

The bookplate was cut at the same time as the tag from kraft card and sat calling me to use it, so I slathered over some rock candy crackle paint and when dry I dipped it in walnut stain distress stain, spritzed it with water and heat dried it. It now looks a bit like worn leather. As you can see I got the sewing machine out too. As I don't have the new thinlits mini flowers die I used my good old faithful tattered flower garland strip die.

Before I go I would like to share a couple of photos from our recent trip to California. One of our visits was to a wolf sanctuary out in the wilds of the desert. Here they have rescued a number of wolves over the years which are cared for and looked after and live happily away from man's harm. These were the wolves that were filmed and appeared in the movie and the series of Twilight. One particular one is very friendly and loves to be out of his pen, he is very happy to be rubbed and fussed and will lie down by your feet. Here are Ken and I enjoying some time with him with our friends Joni and Leo.

I also wanted to share a photo of my dear friend Terry and I. We were able to meet up again and go shopping together for crafty things and as we take our hubbies with us too we all had lunch together. It was such a special day with time to chat and catch up as well as spend some of those dollars I had taken with me lol.

Well I hope your day is going to be full of possibilities.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Kraft cards for Country View Crafts

I love using kraft card in my work and was so pleased to find some good quality and 'real' kraft coloured cards in Michaels last year. So taking the plunge I decided to create my designs straight on the card itself - - - - scary!!!!!

Taking a palette knife I daubed small amounts of gesso onto three cards.

Then using torn paper I masked off  areas and stamped through the gaps to get my random stamped sections.

Next came  torn strips of tissue/washi tapes........

....... and strips of stitched torn paper or stitched hessian ......

.... then stamped and inked images I found in my left over images box and watercoloured them with distress inks.

I finished them all with a stamped word and a single embellishment.

If you like to use kraft card somewhere in your projects then we would love to see them at Country View Challenges. There is a £20 voucher from Country View Crafts for the lucky winner.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Corrugated butterfly tag

I seem to be in a brown and cream mode with corrugated and kraft card at the moment and I am enjoying using gesso, paints and inks together on the same project. I also used brown and white pens on this too.

I made this tag for the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week. I stamped the butterflies on kraft card using the Tim Holtz Papillon set in brown archival but decided they would look better outlined in white, so with a posca pen I went round each one, then pained and detailed using distress paints, distress inks the white posca and a brown pen until I was happy with them.

The theme is stripes – and it is the corrugations that have created mine. Scraped with a layer of white acrylic paint they really show up and covered with distress ink on the butterfly, you can see where they are.

Having made the butterfly up and collected the pleated ribbon (this gives a kinds striped effect too don't you think?), flowers, film strip (more stripes?) and sentiment, I assembled it using the tiny attacher and wood glue.

I made antennae using thin florist wire, look how the stripes show up on the butterfly wing too  …..

and added a pearl gem covered in butterscotch alcohol ink.

The larger flower is from Prima with two small paper flowers and kraft covered florist wire tendrils.

I am off to my granddaughter's sports day Friday afternoon and am doing a workshop with my lovely ladies on Saturday.

Have a great weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Update - my lovely friend Julia just left me a comment on my Tim tag for June telling me she had seen it pinned on one of Tim's own boards on Pinterest. No she must have dreamed it (she suggested she might have done), but I go to check out Tim's boards and I find THREE of my tags on his Stamper's Anonymous board. Oh wow, thanks Tim, I feel very honoured to see my work in with some very famous crafters and artists. 

Kraft away.

Welcome to Sunday in a cold and chilly UK, please can we have summer?

I have been so busy with the new challenge blog I haven’t had much time to create and make this week, but I wanted to do something for the  Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge where they want to see us use kraft in our projects.

I started with a piece of kraft card and some die-cuts glued on then scraped gesso across.

Next came some black paint, some white gesso through a mask and some dribbled white gesso.

Using corrugated card I die-cut one of Tim’s beautiful butterflies and distressed with gesso, black enamel accents and walnut stain DI.

I used more movers and shapers to create the little arch and a corrugated fleur de lis.

Having used walnut stain, antique linen, picket fence and a touch of rusty hinge distress paints on kraft card I die-cut using the tattered flower garland, painting white gesso round the edges of the petals and text stamped each one with black archival.

I also used one of Tim’s metal book plates to create the focal sentiment, again shabbying it with white gesso and using remnant rubs for the words.

Then with hessian, lace and some more remnant rubs I created the collage.

Oh and nearly forgot I added some little flicks of watered walnut stain DI.

Have a wonderful day whatever you have planned and a fabulous week ahead.

hugs {brenda} x0x