Dreams can come true

Here I am again with another journal page using the lovely Lynne Perrella stamps.

This page was created using the following steps - - - - -

Using a piece of watercolour paper, spray with no more than three co-ordinating colours, let them blend a bit and heat dry.

Spray with a darker shade of colour randomly through a stencil/mask, then turn it over and press the excess ink onto the paper in other areas. Heat dry.

Stamp using a texture stamp and white acrylic paint and dry.

Stamp your focal image and a flourish using black archival ink.

Use the faux bleach technique to remove some of the colour over your focal image, this makes it stand out a little more.

Use oil pastels to add some small spots of colour.

Print/stamp a saying and add to your page using a black pen to outline/doodle round it.

I ink the edges of my paper with walnut stain distress ink.

There you have some great layer steps which you could use to produce your own journal page.

Have a wonderful week and hopefully some creative time.

hugs Brenda xxx

A little touch of Tim at A Vintage Journey

Well after ‘time flying’ from the last challenge it is Alison’s turn to take us along another route of the journey and she is challenging us to think about a little bit of Tim. What she says is - Keep it small please!  I'm looking for Vintage and Tim Holtz style ATCs - a single ATC or a set - perhaps a trio that match.  And I'm being a purist here, so only ATCs, please - no ATBs or Chunky ATCs allowed.

Mmmmmm small eh? Ok here’s what I came up with using the shattered stains technique for the backgrounds and Tim’s papers for pieces of ephemera which fit perfectly with the 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch size pieces of art.

I began by looking at Tim’s paper pads – they are a treasure trove for snippets and small bits for little projects. In fact long before Tim bought out his ephemera packs I had my own box full of small pieces I have kept from his papers and the things I love the most are his photo portraits. I use them quite a lot in projects and along with the photographic studio cards in the French Industrial stash the seeds of ideas for my ATCs were born.

I cut out three portraits and 3 studio cards keeping colours together and along with lots of other bits from my box I managed three colourways.

I cut myself three pieces of card and used distress stains to make the backgrounds.

I then cut three ATCs using Tim’s die and started designing the layouts. These are the rough placements before I distressed any of the elements.

As I was designing these I imagined what was going on in their lives and what meaning all the little pieces of ephemera had for them.

This couple got married during the war on the 15th January 1942. It had to be arranged at short notice as they didn’t want to wait until Jimmy came home again, he just didn’t know when that would be. He was being deployed in Europe after the bombing of Pearl Harbour the month before. After a ceremony with close family the couple went to the Thornton Theatre that night to see a show, on the way they stopped at Hill’s Photographic Studio to have some pictures taken as a memento of the day. Time was of the essence as Jimmy had to be back on base by 9.00 am the next morning.

This pair of friends found themselves at Crystal Beach on their day off from work and spent their time chatting about starting a metal scrap business for the war effort. It was the 3rd October and the US had just announced their new initiative of " scrap days " encouraging every American to help the war effort by giving scrap consisting of metal and old clothing to the nearest scrap merchant who would then be able to provide much needed raw materials. To cement their partnership they decided to have a photo taken at the Gibson Studio.

These girls have been friends since school and often enjoy a day out together when they can. On the 25th November they had their photo taken at the Walton Photography Studio before venturing out to do some shopping and then a game of Bingo at the Majestic Theatre. They enjoyed a bottle of fruit punch each and then found they were winners of £25, calling on the number 25. What a great day they had and 25 became their lucky number after that.

It’s been lovely to return to some collage work, it really is my favourite way to create works of art.

Please come and join us by making an ATC (or two, or three lol) and share your inspiration at A Vintage Journey.

hugs Brenda xxx

Hanging Heart – Create a story of soulful moments

Well August is marching on, I can't believe how quickly the months are going. Autumn is just round the corner.

I have an altered wooden heart for you today, you know the ones you can pick up for about £1.50 in the Range. I’ve tried to keep it fairly light in colour but with a vintage shabby style.

Process steps

Scrape Fresco Finish paints in chocolate, stone, vintage lace and cream over the heart and let dry.

Paint over some PaperArtsy metallic glaze and old gold FF paint.

Edge the heart with the old gold.

Splat a little victorian velvet and dried marigold distress stains on the craft mat and dip the heart in one colour at a time, mist lightly and let colour drip then heat dry, repeat for the next colour.

Make up the embellishments – the book plate, heart, bottle, metal wings and top hat were given a coat of gesso to seal them. When dry they were coated with clear distress crackle paint along with the flower, bead and butterfly.

They were all coloured with victorian velvet, dried marigold, rusty hinge and walnut stain distress stains.

The muse token,pen nib and washer were given the rusted treatment using crafty notions rusting powder.

Blend some Onyxite treasure gold over the rusted items and the neck of the bottle.

Cut a star from the industrious stickers and push into the coffee archival ink pad to colour it brown.

Distress the TH ticket, cut to shape to fit inside the bookplate.

Colour the crinoline flower with the distress stains.

Using the stuff to say set of TH stamps stamp the long set of words and cut out the ones you want for your personal quote. Edge them with walnut stain DI.

Now we are ready to assemble it all together. I was tempted to add some stamping, remnant rubs and/or texture paste to the background but in the end I didn’t because I wanted the distressed elements to stand out on the grungy base.

Hope you like my altered heart today, thanks for taking the time to stop by and take a look at what I am creating.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

 
Enjoy the rest of the week.

 

hugs Brenda

Nothing ventured, nothing gained – Positivity Journal

Hello Everyone, I hope you have had a good week. I thought I would share another of the altered playing cards that I have been making ).

Although I have been following the ideas and techniques from Stephanie Ackerman, I am using different colours and am using them in my small Positivity Journal. I have two to share over the coming week or so, both using the same design on the card, but different colour combinations on the pages.

The background was made with tissue wrap, daubed with distress paints and wiped back in places with a babywipe.

Sprays and masks/stencils create some great texture and contrasting colour …..

…. and tissue tape adds another layer to the depth.

A computer generated quote to help me remember to always try new techniques and look for new ideas.

Another one of these soon.

Have a fabulous week and take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tag Friday - Cracked Seahorse

Today is Tag Friday with the winners' announcement at A Vintage Journey and I am contributing a seahorse tag as I just love the sea themed creatures on Tim’s dies.

The background was made with Tim’s bubble embossing folder, inked before running it through the Big Shot and then spritzed with water and dipped in some more salty ocean DI. I heat dried it and gave some depth to the bubbles by painting them over with white linen dylusions ink.

The starfish was cut from card painted with antique linen distress paint, edged with walnut stain and when dry a coat of rock candy distress crackle paint and some micro beads added to it. I love the texture it gives.

The seahorse was given the same treatment minus the beads and inked over with walnut stain DI.

I didn’t feel this needed many embellishments so I chose these two which I painted with antique linen DP before adding them to the finished tag.

The seaweed was made by cutting up the fronds from some green card run through Tim’s waves embossing folder, dipped in some white linen ink and edges with walnut stain DI.

Before bringing everything together I added some stamped text and distressed and inked the edges of the tag.

I hope you will have time to create something for yourself and for our latest challenge ‘Tim Flies’ before it ends next Thursday.

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

hugs {brenda} xxx

Another Lynne Perrella journal page

I have been having great fun in my journals over the past couple of months and this is one of the pages where I have loved using the Lynne Perrella stamps. Way back in the year I would have told you that I didn’t like these sets of stamps – it was because I didn’t know how I could use them. Now I adore them and love playing with bright colours and these gorgeous images.

I sprayed, blended and dried Dylusions spray inks.

I sprayed through a stencil and used the surplus ink on the back of it.

I stamped some background text and masked the bottom border to be able to stamp the corner foliage.

I also used the faux bleach technique again for the face.

I used a waterbrush to colour in other areas.

I used a white posca pen to add highlights and …..

….. I stamped the saying on a piece of sprayed card and adhered it to the page.

Lots of layers here and a recipe you could easily follow yourself if you wanted to try something similar.

Thanks for stopping by.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Layered Bee - Where have you been?

I have used a cork tile as my substrate for this project creating a collage using the Tim Holtz Layered Bee die and embossing folder.

More details are over on the Country View Crafts Project Blog if you have time to pop over.

You will see how I created the dimensional wings for this gorgeous creature.....

... and other effects to create some texture.

Thanks for stopping by today to take a look at my ‘Where have you bee’n?’ tile.

hugs brenda xxx

Time Flies at A Vintage Journey

I seem to be repeating this statement over and over again and I really can’t believe how quickly time passes, even more so as I get older (funny that’s just what my Mum used to say too).

Today sees us start another leg of the journey and it’s Chris who is asking us to think about time – her brief is about - ‘Anything relating to the passing of time which includes Tim's products - stamps, dies, Idea-ology etc. This is down to your interpretation of how quickly time passes and how you can demonstrate it but we want to see Tim's techniques too please. The world's your oyster’.

So a bit of Tim technique, a bit of Tim stamping, a bit of Tim embellishing, ok so this is what came out of it all.

I am afraid I didn’t take the cue about time passing, instead I did a literal interpretation, more about time flying. So I have altered a clock and added one of Tim’s pocket watches.

I had great fun shabbying up this watch with antique linen distress paint and using a clock face stamp from Mini Classics and some painted cogs and hands. I also stamped the long list of words from Stuff to Say and added the Timeless sentiment.

The bird is from Nature Walk, stamped with vintage photo, walnut stain and weathered wood distress inks and I painted in some broken china and edged with walnut stain and a brown permanent pen. It seemed rather flat so I added some details with the brown pen and then gave it a coat of clear distress crackle paint.

The background was made using Tim's clock face embossing folder where I rubbed walnut stain DI over it before running it through the Big Shot with some oyster coloured card. It then had layers of antique linen and broken china DIs and some light mists of water, making sure it was heat dried in between each new layer.

The clock was taken to pieces and given three coats of Decoart chalk paint starting with  and adding some candle rubs in between which allows me to rub away parts of each layer to expose the original wood and the other colours of paint. I also rubbed in some walnut stain distress ink.

I continued working on the clock case by adding some TH remnant rubs and distressing them with the stiff brush he uses, then I dry-brushed with some of the lace chalk paint, then used the three colours of paints through Tim’s harlequin stencil – this really shabbied it up.

To pull the inside together I used distress paint over some small metal cogs and adhered the background, watch, bird, cogs and words into the clock case.

Once I had found a small piece of chain I had the focal part of the clock and the remit for the challenge theme – Time Flies.

This made a real change for me to upcycle and alter something, haven’t done much of it lately and this was great fun. In fact I think it’s good enough for the conservatory and dust free to as all the parts are behind glass.

hugs Brenda xxx