It's Flowers #1 at CVC

Ok so it's the first of May and we are moving rapidly through Spring and hopefully soon into Summer and to keep us all in the outdoor mood the lovely Monika has chosen 'Flower Power' as our challenge theme this month at Country View Challenges.
To begin with I thought about making my own flowers but do you know what? I suck at it so I thought I would go back to the beautiful distress oxides and make some journal panels to add to my eagerly awaited HeARTfelt journal die designed by the amazing Eileen Hull.

1. Cut 2 sets of panels from white card measuring 11 x 21.7 cms. Take the front covers for both journals and on the first apply worn lipstick and iced spruce through Tim's floral stencil. When finished spritz the inks on the stencil with water and apply to the second cover. Repeat this process to fill the spaces which will give you quite a random design. You'll notice that the design of the second cover is the reverse of the first one.

2. Take the stencil and apply the same two inks randomly to the underneath of it. spritz with water and apply to cover #1. Then wash the stencil lay it over #2 lining up the design, drop watery washes of the two oxides into it the stencil spaces, some of it will seep a little, dry it and then take a small detail paint brush and paint in some more wash detail to create a watercolouring look. I think you'll see the differences between the two in the photograph below.

3. Repeat the same steps with the back covers and you'll end up with two sets to make two journals - great as presents especially if you make simple notebook inserts rather than the fussy junk journal style ones.

So I'm waiting for my journal die to arrive and when it does I'll finish the two journals and hopefully at least one will be ready for my next Flower Power installment on the 11th May.

We hope we will see you playing along this month.

Don't forget -

Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.

The earliest written version is that of Dr Thomas Fuller in 1732. But the argument has never been settled. Does it refer to the month of May? Should we not leave off an item of winter clothing until June arrives, or does it refer to the 'may flower' on the hawthorn which blooms along the 200,000 miles of English hedgerow from late April?

English Stack Exchange

Well I 'cast a clout' a couple of weeks ago when we had a couple of days of glorious weather here in the UK but it didn't last for long especially as some areas had snow this week and we're due rain today for our Bank Holiday Monday, but hey ho it gives me more crafting time lol.

Enjoy Your day.

hugs Brenda xxx

Eileen Hull HeARTfelt Journal When Rust and Nature Collide

How lovely it is to be back sharing another of the journals from the lovely Eileen Hull. If you missed my vintage mixed media one you can find it here. This one is still mixed media but more in the timeworn style I enjoy using.

The inspiration for this journal came about by sitting in the work room looking out over my back garden and thinking why don't I document the changes of the seasons in the garden and use this three sectioned journal to do it.  So the seeds were sown (pun intended lol).

I'm not sharing all the process steps with you today as I will be teaching this at Country View Crafts on the 11th May and at Let's Be Creative on the 24th May but suffice to say we will be covering some simple aging techniques using the DecorArt Media range of fluid acrylic paints and mediums .......

..... on several of the layering elements for the front cover.

Including this beautiful textured butterfly ......

.... and these very realistic looking bees.

I will go through how to paint and put the covers together ......

.... and making some crackle panels to create the background for the covers.

We will put all the elements together .....

.... and stain some seam binding ribbon for the ties.

The workshop time will be taken for making the journal and the decorative elements on the front cover, so there will not be enough time to make any inserts for it. If you sign up and attend either workshop and would like to bring papers the double pages need to be 81/2 inches across and 81/4 inches long with the 81/2 inch sided folded to make pages 41/4 x 81/4. We will have a long arm stapler ready to make your pages into signatures, or you could bring them ready sewn and we will have elastic ready for you to add your inserts when you have finished.

I have made three inserts for my one ......

... and will use them to record the changes in the garden over the the year. Insert 1 for Spring; insert 2 for Summer and insert 3 for Autumn and Winter combined.

Thank you Eileen for giving me this opportunity to create alongside your team and a huge thank you to the lovely Anne (Redanne) who sent me the journal covers to use. I should also say the journal die has a closure and a label to cut as well although I have not used them yet, I will cut some labels later to add to the three sections of the inserts.

You can find some of Anne's gorgeous journals HERE and HERE.

Susan at CVC has the journal die on pre-order at the most amazing price which you can find on her website so if you are interested I would get in quick so she can pack you one off as soon as it arrives, oh and I should tell you the price is fantastically affordable for this xl scoreboards die.

Thanks for taking some time out to stop by my blog today. If you have any questions please ask them in the comments section below or email me - the address is on the sidebar. I look forward to hopefully seeing some of you at my workshop if you can make it.

Have a wonderful weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Watercolour powders and oxide butterflies

I have a card to share today over on the Country View Project Blog, in fact I did two very similar ones where I've matched up some left over watercolor powder backgrounds with stamped butterflies using the wonderful oxides again.

So I would love to see you over at CVC if you can make it.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

DecoArt DT project

Hi I am over on the DecoArt Mixed Media blog today with my latest project which is one of the etcetera tags sent me by my lovely friend Anne to play with. I would love it if you could pop over and see the tag in all it's glory and as you can see it's shabby vintage in style with a rusty collage.

Thanks for looking.

hugs Brenda xxx


Updated from DecoArt blog

Instructions :

Start with some DecoArt chalky finish paints and a brayer. Four layers drying between each one I began with Relic.

Repeat with Primitive...

then Restore...

and finally with Lace.

I wanted to keep some of the peeled paint look but also wanted it to be brighter and shabbier so I grabbed a 12 x 12 stencil, painted it with white tinting base...

and laid it over the tag rubbing it down with some kitchen towel...

so that when I pulled it away it revealed random mottled dots with a white fill in.

Look at the texture the white tinting base has to it just because it was sandwiched between the tag and the stencil.

Stamp into the spots using a text stamp, mine was an old one with French script on it. The two photos below show the technique and how it looked when I took the stencil away.

Start collecting together the ephemera and embellishments for this large tag. What I begin with isn’t always what I finish with...

Ink and alter them ready to use and layer up. I started with the metal pieces to make the attachment for the word band and these pieces were altered with Iced Espresso Metallic Lustre.

I put together the collage layer by layer...

layer two...

layer three with a grounding strip (where the feet will go) and brush the surface of all the papers with matte Decou-Page.

Give all these pieces a wash of tinting base to bring about overall cohesion.

Then add some Burnt Umber, Raw Umber and Quinacridone Gold around the edges to give a slight rust effect to it. Use the water spritzer and watery colours with a small brush adding and drying until you are happy with it.

To finish I added the film strip, metal number, focal photo and butterfly. Then add a button with some rusty wire in the hole at the top.

Lost and Found - rust effects for CVC

This is my second rust project for the challenge at Country View Challenges and I think this sort of ended up how I imagined yet it is so different for me. All the time as I kept adding more colours I was imagining Lucy Mabel Attwell pictures. Many of them had similar tones of strong colours in them.

Process Steps
Use modelling paste and create lots of texture with stencils and leave it to fully dry.

Add embellishments with matte medium and leave to fully dry, preferably overnight.

Give it a coat of white gesso prime everything to take the next layers of colour.

I mixed all my own colours for this piece as I wanted to create a vintage palette something like this as found on Pinterest

Start to mix the colours in a pallette .....

Then use the colours to paint over the embellishments one colour at a time.

Dribble the paints, spritz them with water, dab with kitchen towel if required and dry each layer before adding the next.

On to the next colour .......

.... and the next ......

..... then return to all the colours and repeat the technique again till you're happy with the result.

When everything is dry take raw umber, burnt umber, paynes grey with a water spritzer .......

and quinacridone gold to add in some rusty areas.

Here are some close ups of the effects. I'm sorry about the photos but whether they were taken inside or out of a light tent didn't seem to matter, they all look a little odd to me.

Thanks for reading through the post. I hope you are able to gain a little inspiration from it even if it's not totally your style either.



Enjoy the rest of the week.

hugs Brenda xxx