Layered butterfly birthday card - use kraft card at CVC

I don't seem to make too many cards these day but there is always that special one needed at some point and this is one of those. My dear sister Chris had her birthday a couple of days ago and this is the card I made for her.

I started with a piece of Tim's correspondence papers cut to fit an 8 x 8 kraft card. I had just bought a tub of clear gesso for the first time and decided to experiment with it. (I am waiting to get my DecoArt products and want to try theirs too). This one is rather runny so I couldn't paste it through a mask with a palette knife so I daubed it through using a small piece of cut and dry to prevent seepage - it worked yay. I heat dried it and then lightly blended chipped sapphire distress ink over it and wipoed it over with a babywipe to clean the ink off of the gesso and heat dried it again. In fact I did this three times to get the depth of dark blue in the middle of the area and lighter tones at the edges.

I used the fabulous layered butterfly and embossing folder with kraft card .....

.... and die-cut a border and a mixed media piece from cream card.

The sentiment is a sizzix embossing folder run through the bigshot using coredinations paper and sanded ......

....and a collection of elements that I could see might fit the bill to complete the card. The metal embellishments I chose to use were daubed with picket fence distress paint. I chose the number three as it's the third month in the year March, which is Chrissie's birth month.

I took the butterfly and dipped it into picket fence, salty ocean and spun sugar distress paint, dried it and gave it a coat of rock candy crackle paint. When that was dry and the crackles were all showing I blended over with chipped sapphire distress ink and then edged it and daubed a couple of areas with gathered trigs distress stain and baked it in with the heat gun. Later, just before I added it to the card, I splattered it with white acrylic paint.

Now all I needed to do was assembly the card.

The pink shabby bow and charm ........

.... the hinge clip and pen nib .....

.... and the lovely painted butterfly.

I used the opportunity to make this my DT sample for the new challenge at Country View Crafts so I hope you will be able to pop over to see some wonderful inspiration in a variety of styles and also to note down the theme so you can enter this month.

Have a fabulous April.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim tag for March 2015

I love the mixed media feel to Tim's tag this month and especially the gold contrasted with the gorgeous paints, but I found the effects really difficult to achieve. My embossing powder stuck to the background as well as the texture paste no matter how long I heat dried it - I think I shall try it again but leave the tag to dry overnight.. 

So, as is me, I played around and decided to dry the embossing paste and then use an embossing pen to add the ink and the gold powder. This gave me a completely different look but one that I really quite like.

You can also see I added some gold EP to the dragonfly wings and some remnant tubs to finish it off.

Thanks Tim for another fabulous opportunity to try something different but also a peek into your very inspiring creative mind.

Have a great weekend everyone.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #13

Harmony and Symphony

Can you believe the thirteenth post for my Visual Journey means we are a quarter of the way through the year - it doesn't bear thinking about does it????

Today I have used black, white and kraft as my colour palette. It all came about when I decided to use some Tim stamps to create some extra large washi tape using a roll of sticky backed parcel tape. To provide some depth to it I painted in some of the shapes and parts of numbers with a white posca pen. I then stuck it across the pages adding a couple of words left from a project and workshop I did last year and some scraps of brown wrapping paper (there's a theme going on here isn't there?)

Over this I scraped some white acrylic paint using an old plastic card.

Next came some texture stamping using black archival ink so that it is permanent and wont react with any further layers I might add.

Using Wendy Vecchi's black texture paste and a stencil I added some writing and I used what was left on the stencil and palette knife with a babywipe to start adding black shadows. (I knew I could lighten this with white paint again later if I needed to).

I left these layers to thoroughly dry whilst I collected some collage scraps and embellishments for the next stage. Once I was away with gathering and gluing I forgot to take any more photos until it was finished. But I used scraps of designer papers, borders, snippets, washi tape etc and when it was all securely glued to the page I covered the gorgeous found relative photo and splattered some walnut crystal ink.

 I hope your week is going well and that you are getting some time to free journal.

If you are creating journal pages then please link them underneath this post and if you want to share everyone who links here with others around the world please collect this code and add to your post.

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hugs Brenda xxx

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My work shared

I am so excited that a dear blogging friend - Marjie Kemper - is sharing my altered clipboard on her blog today. My original post is here.

Thanks Marjie, I am so pleased and proud that you feel this worthy enough to be included in your wonderful Tuesday Texture feature series and if any of you have not visited Marjie's blog and her Tuesday posts I recommend you hop over to MK Designs to see her amazing work and that of others that get featured from around the world.

Have a wonderful week.

hugs brenda xxx

The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information.

Tim Berners-Lee

Correspondence 3 x 4s

Having made 3 x 4's using Tim's papers last week I am determined to use up more of these wonderful pieces which are exact replicas of the larger 6 x 6 and 12 x 12 papers so you get just the same amount of detail.

I cut stiff card to adhere the 3x4s onto and

 I have distressed the background paper using Stephanie Ackerman's technique found here.

I stamped the backgrounds with Andy Skinner's new texture stamps, finger painted some white acrylic paint lightly in places and added some tissue tapes.

I collected various pieces of ephemera and a die-cut together and again altered them with white acrylic paint and walnut stain distress ink and glued them to the backgrounds with glue n seal making sure I covered the tops of the pieces too.

After the cards were dry I took a gathered twigs distress marker and added shadow to the glued on elements .......

.... and I distressed and inked the edges.

These are just slightly larger than ATCs and I'm loving creating on this size.

Thanks for stopping by today. 

hugs Brenda xxxx

DecoArt Heritage Board

Heritage Board – Vintage Shabby

Ooooh squeal of excitement, I just had to let you know that I have been accepted as a member of the DecoArt Helping Artist Program.



Susan at Country View Crafts will soon be stocking some of the DecoArt range of paints and mediums and I will be incorporating them into my workshops. I am particularly excited about using the media range, but I also love the chalk paints and want to experiment more with these too.
My Heritage board today uses a number of DecoArt products.

If you know me you know how much I love using Vintage photos in my creations, I have some of my own family on my Mum’s side, I have a collection of free images on my computer and I love the Tim Holtz found ancestors and photo booth ranges.

I have begun making a series of Heritage Boards using some of these fabulous images that are available to us and using DecoArt products to create the back grounds and layers.

This board began by cutting a piece of greyboard (chipboard) to 14 x 22½ cms and giving it two coats of white gesso. When it was dry I stamped one of Tim’s distress damask stamps in Versamark and heat embossed using clear embossing powder – I wanted the white of the pattern to show through my next layer.

I then set about using phthalo green-blue and transparent yellow iron oxide fluid acrylics with lots of water to create this mottled/distressed background. I used brushes, wet wipes and my fingers as tools and I brushed, rubbed, daubed and splattered the paints until I was happy with the effects.

I couldn’t really use the heat gun here to dry my background as I would have re-melted the embossing powder and lost the definition of the design, so I left it for about 20 minutes and came back to it with a wet wipe and rubbed very, very gently over some of the embossed design to take the paint off of it and make it pop again. You can see the colours have blended into the background more. It’s important that you don’t rub the board itself or you could rub away the paints and spoil the watery effects.

I die-cut Tim’s ornate frame twice using thin greyboard and glued them together, gave it two coats of thin gesso and when dry I used a palette knife to scrape on some texture fierro which gives an iron like texture and colour. 

I left it for about 45 mins until dry and then gave it a coat of the media white crackle paint, however I really like the fierro showing through so I applied it quite thinly and therefore did not expect any crackles to appear. Fifteen minutes later and look what was happening, gorgeous fine cracks were appearing so I just left it to completely air dry.

I text stamped the background using potting soil archival ink and gave it all a coat of matte medium and let it dry.

I took my chosen photograph and adhered it to the backing panel that was cut from the frame die-cut and also let that dry before sanding and inking the edges. I then gave it a coat of decou-page to seal it.

Inbetween drying times I began adding charms, wooden and metal embellishments and some flowers to the board and left them to dry as well.

At this point I came back to the ornate frame and used a tiny amount of raw umber fluid acrylic to add touches to the outside and inside edges to vintage them just slightly.

Next up was to paint over the embellishments using white gesso.

Once the gesso was dry I sprayed on mustard seed, picked raspberry and gathered twigs distress spray stains and some water and let the inks run up and down the board. (Can't wait to get my hands on the coloured media misters). I started off the drying with the heat gun but only for a short while to get the board warm and then left it to dry on its own.

When dry I spent some time dry brushing the elements with gesso and different mediums like titan buff acrylic, black gesso, white crackle paint and brown fierro. All the lighter colours absorbed the colours of the inks so I also sprayed with the media white shimmer mister and added a very small amount of snowtex over the embellishments and I am quite please with the overall effects now it’s finished.

To finish off the board I altered some more embellishments, I just play with the paints, gesso and texture mediums to achieve a look I am happy with ......

.... a metal label pull and a metal number ......

.... a metal key .......

.... and a metal decorative bow for the top of the frame.

I love the brighter colours on the background compared to the very shabby vintage effects of the frame.

Thanks for taking a look today. Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #12

Reach for the STARS

Following last weeks pages that reminded me of the on-line 52 card pickup workshop, I decided to find out more about Stephanie Ackerman and found a 'Documented Life' video she made. I enjoyed watching her creative process and although I didn't follow all of her 18 layers but took alot from the recipe and made it my own. The background is similar to Tim's February tag and the two tags I have made recently here and here.

The stamped circles were all one stamp originally but I cut them into individual ones so I could use them singly. They are now far more versatile and great for projects like this.

I added some washi tapes and hand wrote three quotes around the pages.

I used Tim's faded dots stencil to add some texture .........

..... and die-cut some stars in blue card but finger painted them using DecoArt phthalo blue, cerulean blue and white acrylic paints.

Finally I typed and printed the main quote, cut it up and inked the edges before adding it to the page but also created shadows with a distress marker.

I'm loving coming round to your linked blogs and looking at what you are creating. I often come away with an idea or two stored to use another day. Thanks for sharing with me and each other. Please collect this code and add to your post if you want to share too.

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hugs Brenda xxx

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