Through the Looking Glasss

There's a new challenge at AVJ today from our fabulous Julia and oh boy I think you are gonna love this one. I certainly did, it sparked lots of ideas of things I wanted to use or incorporate in my project like cracked glass using embossing powders and altering a hand mirror but whilst collecting bits and pieces I found a frame that didn't have the back on it, only the glass was in place and I could see right through it. I love the work of an artist called Kristin Mcfarlane who uses glass to layer images but I couldn't find anywhere an explanation of how she does it but it still set me to thinking how I could use this frame for my project.

Having been playing with Tim's 3 x 4 snippets at the back of his newest paper stashes an idea began to emerge.

Having found the frame that had glass in it but no back to it (one of those keep for a rainy day items lol) I gave it a light coat of gesso leaving some of the wood exposed.

I added a piece from one of Wendy Vecchi's art parts set, gave that a coat of gesso and added walnut stain distress ink to it and the frame.

I then set about making an A34 again using Tim's smaller snippets of papers from various paper stacks, collecting some other ephemera to add to it or to the frame.

Once the A34 had been completed I went out and bought some transparent film to adhere it to the glass. I didn't want to use glue as I thought it would show too much even though it dries clear.

The arrow with the parcel post label was glued with glossy accents onto the outside of the glass.

Using a small text stamp from Tim's shabby french set I  stamped it randomly over the glass using black stazon.

I decided the ephemera I had collected for the frame wasn't working for me so I sorted out some other bits and being rusty they felt right at home. I played with some distress paints and alcohol ink on the wordband and taking Paula Cheney's idea from her Guest post last week, I suspended it across the bottom of the glass.

Lastly I was going to add some remnant rubs but decided they weren't actually needed, instead I added a rusty wire hanger so I can put it on the wall.

I'm really pleased with my interpretation of Julie's brilliant challenge theme title

Do you know the thinking and creating in my head time was probably two weeks but if I were to put another of these together I could do it in less than a day. It just shows that ideas and designing is a long slow process for me, but I hope you like the outcome.

I also hope you will pop over to A Vintage Journey to see all the amazing inspiration from our very talented team and hopefully it will give you the inspiration you need to join in. Don't forget you now have a whole month to get a project made and to take part and there is a £20 voucher for the winner.

Have a wonderful weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #14

As these pages began to emerge the one word that kept popping into my head was 'Contrasts', so thats what these pages have been called.

 

Using more of my scraps I glued strips of papers to the pages, stamped using black archival ink and then scraped white acrylic paint over making it quite thick in places. I left this to dry overnight.

The next morning I painted with babywipes adding phthalo blue and transparent yellow iron oxide DecoArt media fluid acrylics to give me my colour base.

I decided what images I wanted to use and this was where the contrasts seemed to come in with the lovely warm colours contrasted to the quite austere lady in the photograph and the very shabby butterfly.

I really do seem to have a theme of butterflies developing in this journal.

I still don't seem to be building any particular mixed media/collage style. I think my pages are all so very different.

Thanks for popping by today and if you are following my weekly Visual Journal posts I hope you are enjoying seeing my pages as much as I am enjoying making them.

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 

An InLinkz Link-up

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.

get the InLinkz code

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

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