Art Journalling with Tim

Alison has set a new challenge at A Vintage Journey which incorporates art journalling with Tim Holtz, so that set me thinking. Wanting to use the found relatives photos and some dies I first set about making the background.

The layers included many of Tim's techniques and ideas for using distress products -

- distress paint resist using picket fence, mustard seed, pine needles and shabby shutters distress paints with the gothic stencil.

-  reverse monoprint using scattered straw, tattered rose, and shabby shutters distress inks with the harlequin stencil

- blended distress inks all over using scattered straw, tattered rose, and shabby shutters again

- a reverse monoprint using the shatter stencil and hickory smoke distress ink

- blended pine needles through the flourish stencil and spritzed it with water to do another reverse monoprint

- spritz and flick with water

For the die-cuts I took an A4 piece of card, rubbed on some matte medium randomly, dried it then sprayed with six orange, red and brown distress stains. 

Once I had die cut the pumpkins, acorns and leaves I blended and dipped them in more distress inks to create the added texture.

With the die-cuts coloured deep oranges and browns I felt I needed to bring some of those shades into the background too so I used ripe persimmon and vintage photo through the cargo mask and splattered some dried marigold distress paint and some mixed with vintage photo DI

 - now we're ready to assemble everything together.
The found relatives chopped and inked......

..... a couple of quotes typed and printed out ......

..... the die-cuts inked and positioned .....

... and the pages came together.

 I finished off with some photo tinting just a bit of rusty hinge on a few of the pumpkins.

This is my altered journal. In January I challenged myself to do a journal page a week. I haven't quite manged every single week, but I now have 35 double page spreads and the book is fat and almost full.

Art journalling with Tim? Yes I think so.

Thanks Alison for a great AVJ challenge, it made me think about what are Tim's influences in the journalling world and there are quite a few. Do pop over to see the amazing collection of journal pages from the Creative Guides.

Have a great weekend, I am off to the Swanage Blues Festival for the weekend and hopefully it will be good weather so we can have some walks along the beach.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Add some texture for CVC

Today sees the start of a new challenge at Country View Challenges.

Here are some experiments using brusho powders and distress paints and I so love the artsy effects on these chipboard Christmas baubles. Altogether I have made four of these and am showing you the two smaller ones in detail today and the larger ones will be later in the month.

I started by covering all four with gesso and to start the texturing whilst they were still wet I pushed some of them down on the craft mat so that the gesso texturised when I pulled them off again.

The second layer of texture is created with texture paste through a stencil and letting it dry.

This was my first and the most simplest bauble using the brushos over both dry (merry) and wet (christmas) paste. Both worked so it's good to know you don't have to dry the paste before adding the colours.  Would you believe I used three different greens to get this mix? Olive, moss and lime. You'd think I'd used yellow and blue as well but it just shows how the powders burst into colour.

To distress and vintage the bauble a bit I blended leaf green, olive green and potting soil archival inks round the edges and then replaced the stencil over the words to allow me to rub treasure gold through it - oh no what a mess - in fact I was soooo disappointed in it I started to add black pen around the letters to highlight them which looked abominable ....... and I got so into the moment wondering how I could salvage it I forgot to take a photo - but here's take 2 after I painted some chalk paint (just 'cos it was sitting on my desk) and then some gesso over it and used the brushos all over again.

This time I replaced the stencil and daubed some decoart media metallic gold over it - phew what a difference .... thank goodness.

For this next bauble I painted the holly leaves with distress paints, heat dried them and then added some patina stickles to give them some glitz. I wanted to see how the brushos laid over distress paints so I mixed some very watery colours on my craft mat and dipped the bauble in several times, heat drying between each layer.

Then I repeated with the brushos and they laid over fine but the leaves were disappearing into the background and the colours were deeper than I wanted so the next step was to mix some watery picket fence distress paint on my mat and dip the bauble in and dry it. I repeated this a couple of times dabbing the leaves to keep as much of the paint off as possible. To bring the leaves back to life I painted on some more green brushos and green grass dylusions ink.

By the time I had sanded and edged the bauble with potting soil and added some stickle berries it now looked aged and vintagey. That's better!!!

I haven't used stickles in a long while and had forgotten how difficult they make the photography.

So this is the start of my textures and as I got further into experimenting with media and the stencilling I became even happier with my results, but you'll have to come back for the next installment to see what I mean.

I hope we will see you over at Country View Challenges. Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx

Fall from Summer

It's my turn to post over at A Country View Crafts today

The foliage in the garden has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.... . September is dressing herself in showy dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes

I had a leftover tag with picket fence distress paint resist and what looks like picked raspberry, dried marigold and scattered straw distress inks or stains. It has a lovely summery feel to it and decided I wanted to create the feel of summer turning to autumn when the colours begin to change and the gardens and countryside are a wonderful blend of the pinks through to reds and orange and into autumnal gold and browns.

More details and photos are on the CVC project blog if you would like to pop over and see.

Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx

By all these lovely tokens 

September days are here, 

With summer's best of weather 

And autumn's best of cheer.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Find your style

I am still loving a return to some Wendy Vecchi style tags using die-cuts and wooden pieces in a similar way to Wendy's art parts.



I began with Wendy Vecchi's archival reinkers background using surgical spirit to help blend the colours on the tag adding a top stenciled border using dried marigold DI and I drew lines in using a fine pitt artist pen. For the bottom border I used wild honey and the central stenciling is a light layer of ground espresso. I also stamped an old wooden stamp to create more depth with the text.



I painted a wooden frame, stamped on it and blended ground espresso round the edges, the dress form was die cut from greyboard and Tim's papers and the sentiment is one of Wendy's.

I added two buttons on the dress form and there is a wooden star that was rubbed in ground espresso distress ink.

 
In true Wendy style my tag is shorter than normal at 5 1/2 inches long. It's a great size to create on.



I finished off with a few remnant rubs and a piece of distressed ribbon.

Thanks for stopping by today and a huge thank you to those of you who leave me a comment. I read and value each and every one of them.

Take care, have a great weekend and let your creativity fly.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #34

My first experiments with Brusho crystal colours.

At Ally Pally last weekend I sat at a make and take table to have a play with Brusho colours. I have used them in the past for simple watercolouring with 11 year olds but never really experimented and played for myself. In fact I had completely forgotten about them until they started becoming popular on the blogs. The colours are so vibrant, I love them.

Using pre-stamped and white embossed watercolour paper given to me and with two layers of brushos spritzed with water I was quite pleased with the effects so I've had a quick play in my visual altered journal and this time used black embossing powder and just a small range of colours that I bought to experiment with.

I prepared an A4 piece of  textured acrylic paper spritzing the brushos and then completing with a wrinkle free technique leaving some white space.The leaves are Tim's framelits stamped and die-cut.

When I saw these photos together the background colours reminded of blackberries - don't ask me why!!!!

I'm obviously still in that transition mode from summer to autumn with the greener colours behind the very autumnal leaves.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope your week is going well.

hugs Brenda xxx

Farewell to Summer

The evenings are drawing in and the mornings are damp and chillier which is a sure sign that summer is fading and autumn is upon us.



My tag today is called Farewell to Summer and whilst we are thinking of the changing colours from fresh greens to dusky oranges and browns I don't want to loose the lovely warmth of the sun.

I started with some of Wendy's re-inkers to make the background and added some stencilling and stamping



The cone flower is one of Wendy Vecchi's art parts painted with distress paints, some gold embossing paste rubbed on randomly and then distress inks to build up the layers.



The arts part border at the bottom was painted with mustard seed distress paint, dried and sunset orange, butterscotch and sandal alcohol ink dripped on and left to dry.



I finished off with some remnant rubs and a stamped and punched number that fitted over the tag hole perfectly.



Although we will miss the summer colours and long summer days I love to see the autumn hues appearing and already I have some of the gold and red leaves appearing on my flowering cherry tree. They are beautiful.

Have a fun filled week.


hugs Brenda xxx

Numbers (2) for Country View Crafts

Antique enamelled number plates

This is my second post for the September Country View Challenge and I am still focussing on number plates (see my previous post for rusty antique French number plaques here.) Also you can seeee the finished project that I used one of these plates on at the end of this post.

I had seen a set of metal number plates for sale on ebay and thought I would make myself a set to use as vintage/antique embellishments on future projects.

I die-cut rectangles of chipboard and added a hole in each side to take a split pin or brad. I then die cut a number several times using greyboard with my chosen die. I used the Tim Holtz wordplay die and it takes chipboard perfectly so I only had to do two of each. 

I painted the rectangles with picket fence distress paint leaving rough edges to create a distressed look when I was finished. 

I played around with different ways to get the effects but ended up adhering one (or more if you have chosen thinner card) of the numbers onto the chipboard rectangle and leaving the other one for later. Then I realised I needed to have the edges of the numbers painted as well so out came the paint again. 

When they were dry I pushed them into a distress embossing ink pad, covered them with white embossing powder and rubbed some of it off around the edges and heated it. When cool I blended in vintage photo distress ink to create a worn and rusted effect. This is a similar technique to Tim's rusted enamel technique which you can find here. Repeat the embossing steps on the chipboard numbers you put aside using black embossing powder and again rub over with vintage photo DI. I also used a gathered twigs distress pen to get into the nooks and crannies that the ink blender couldn't get into. 

Adhere them over the top of the ones on the rectangles and paint in some gathered twigs distress paint in random places around the number and spritz with water dabbing the excess off with kitchen roll. You can see in this photo how prominent the numbers are on the plates.

Hey presto you have yourself a set of antique enamelled number plates to use as embellishments on cards and canvases etc.

I wanted to use one straight away so I took some Tim Holtz ephemera and embellishments and a small canvas and set to work.

Firstly I stamped the canvas with one of Tim's new ledger script stamps and then added decoart white crackle paste through Tim's ruler stencil.

When that was dry I added some neutral distress colours using vintage photo, antique linen and hickory smoke DIs.

And once the embellishments had been added I had myself  a vintagey little piece to hang on the wall.

If you haven't yet seen the challenge do pop over to Country View Challenges and click on the September challenge in the side bar and it will take you straight there.

Thanks for stopping by to take a peek at my work and hopefully you can take yourself some time to be creative this weekend. I hope to get some designing done and some planning for next years workshops but I am also off to Ally Pally today and tomorrow, so maybe I will see you there.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx