Give-Away

Before I get to the nitty gritty of this post I am so excited and would love to know who else is going to the Tim Holtz workshop at Coventry in August. I got a morning place (woo hoo) – so an early start for me unless anyone else is travelling Wednesday and staying over Wednesday night? In which case I might do the same.

So to the real focus of this post. I just can’t believe I have tipped over the 500 Followers mark and written 750 posts, that’s in just over three years of blogging.

So to celebrate and to say a huge ‘Thank You’ to those of you who follow my creative journey, here's a little Give-Away and this time it’s something I have made especially for the occasion. Not much I know, but I actually really like this little hand bound book and wished I had thought of something different to give lol. No doubt I will find something else to add to it before it gets sent out. I would also like to enter this into the Simon Says Stamp and Show 'Anything Goes' challenge,

I am calling it a Bundle Book, you’ll see why in a few photos time.

As I undo the tie to reveal the style of inking it includes.

With odd size pages inked and stamped and a piece of inked and crumpled glassine at the front.

It includes various types of light cream card and watercolour paper with some kraft included as well bundled together – hence the name.

Each page inked and stamped with a different design but all the same style.

Even a mask included at one point.

The stamps are a Rubber Stampede bee seal and the text is Penny Black letter background.

I brushed, dipped, dribbled and splattered the inks to achieve the looks I wanted.

The colours used are tea dye, vintage photo and walnut stain.

The inside of the covers are reinforced with some wood that has been sanded, dipped in inks and stamped to fit in with the overall design.

One on the inside front and one on the inside back covers. These prevent the tie from damaging the covers and cutting into them.

So it’s available to whoever Random Org picks from the people who might like to leave a link below. The linky will close on Wed 24th July and only those who follow will be eligible for the draw. Thank you again for your support, your encouragement, your inspiration and your continued companionship and friendship, who would have thought three years ago I would have ‘met’ so many new people and made so many new friends. You really are the most kind, considerate and caring people there are in the world.

God bless.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Summer Sizzler at Country View Crafts

What is summer to you? To me it is hot summer days,  paddling in the sea, a BBQ in the garden, a glass of wine in the garden at twilight on a balmy evening. Trouble is they don’t seem to exist any more so for my Country View Crafts DT piece inspiration I took myself of to Lanzarote in August where it is a real sizzler.

The background is the wrinkle free distress technique using mustard seed, festive berries and broken china DIs and some Jofy stamps.

To me this feels like a scorcher of a summer where the plants are drying out and loosing their vibrancy.

I cut the tag using a corrugated box and Tim’s die, pulling some of the paper away to reveal the corrugations and then dabbed it round with picket fence and antique linen distress paint before inking the edges with walnut stain DI. You can see I am still in the corrugated mode.

After tearing the background card to size and distressing the edges I stamped using coffee archival and again on some of the spare card. The flower pods were coloured up using distress markers and a water brush then cut and adhered to the main part of the tag. I found various Jofy leaf designs and did the same to them.

The final touch was to add the attached base with the word summer which was hand written.

Hope we will see you over at Country View Challenges with your summer sizzler projects and hopefully we will get a summer in July. – I did say hopefully lol.

Take care.

hugs {brenda} x0x

I've woken up this morning to find my Blogger Reading List is still in tact and showing me my followers feeds and my Followers are still there on my sidebar, so I shall not be using any other reader and will remain with Blogger and Google Plus.

Have a great week everyone.

Corrugated butterfly tag

I seem to be in a brown and cream mode with corrugated and kraft card at the moment and I am enjoying using gesso, paints and inks together on the same project. I also used brown and white pens on this too.

I made this tag for the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge this week. I stamped the butterflies on kraft card using the Tim Holtz Papillon set in brown archival but decided they would look better outlined in white, so with a posca pen I went round each one, then pained and detailed using distress paints, distress inks the white posca and a brown pen until I was happy with them.

The theme is stripes – and it is the corrugations that have created mine. Scraped with a layer of white acrylic paint they really show up and covered with distress ink on the butterfly, you can see where they are.

Having made the butterfly up and collected the pleated ribbon (this gives a kinds striped effect too don't you think?), flowers, film strip (more stripes?) and sentiment, I assembled it using the tiny attacher and wood glue.

I made antennae using thin florist wire, look how the stripes show up on the butterfly wing too  …..

and added a pearl gem covered in butterscotch alcohol ink.

The larger flower is from Prima with two small paper flowers and kraft covered florist wire tendrils.

I am off to my granddaughter's sports day Friday afternoon and am doing a workshop with my lovely ladies on Saturday.

Have a great weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Update - my lovely friend Julia just left me a comment on my Tim tag for June telling me she had seen it pinned on one of Tim's own boards on Pinterest. No she must have dreamed it (she suggested she might have done), but I go to check out Tim's boards and I find THREE of my tags on his Stamper's Anonymous board. Oh wow, thanks Tim, I feel very honoured to see my work in with some very famous crafters and artists. 

Tim’s tag for June 2013

I've had a play today and used Tim's June tag as my inspiration. I had already painted the dragonfly a couple of weeks ago and although I like the effects, my response to it wasn't enough to fire me up and take me on a journey with it. But today was different. If you haven’t played along yet you can find all the details on Tim’s blog. Not only will you get Tim’s fabulous make, you can see all the other amazing entrants too.

I decided to use the dress form from the sewing blueprint set and followed Tim's guidance with regard to painting and aging it. I used a size 10 tag to fit it on.

The background - the same - by changing the colours, following Tim's processes but then adding a couple of other colours, I achieved a look I love.

The dress form painted up nicely and I kept it fairly light and so pleased I did as I think it contrasts well with the background.

I also played with the piece of watercolour paper I had left over after I had torn it off.

Here’s the bottom of the tag before I added it.

I used one of the small cotton reels that my dear friend Terry gave me when I went to California in May, aged it with walnut stain and wound it with some thread that had also been rubbed past the blender with ws on.

Supplies

Distress Markers – aged mahogany, victorian velvet. worn lipstick, crushed olive, pumice stone, vintage photo, walnut stain

Distress Paint – peeled paint, antique linen, barn door

Distress Stain – tumbled glass

Distress Inks – brushed corduroy, walnut stain

Water brush, chain, pin, reel, thread, ribbon

Here’s the dragonfly I did before.

Have a fabulous week and remember ….

‘Art is the only way to run away without leaving home’ – Twyla Tharp

Not that we really want to leave home – just escape sometimes???

hugs {brenda} x0x

Kraft away.

Welcome to Sunday in a cold and chilly UK, please can we have summer?

I have been so busy with the new challenge blog I haven’t had much time to create and make this week, but I wanted to do something for the  Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge where they want to see us use kraft in our projects.

I started with a piece of kraft card and some die-cuts glued on then scraped gesso across.

Next came some black paint, some white gesso through a mask and some dribbled white gesso.

Using corrugated card I die-cut one of Tim’s beautiful butterflies and distressed with gesso, black enamel accents and walnut stain DI.

I used more movers and shapers to create the little arch and a corrugated fleur de lis.

Having used walnut stain, antique linen, picket fence and a touch of rusty hinge distress paints on kraft card I die-cut using the tattered flower garland, painting white gesso round the edges of the petals and text stamped each one with black archival.

I also used one of Tim’s metal book plates to create the focal sentiment, again shabbying it with white gesso and using remnant rubs for the words.

Then with hessian, lace and some more remnant rubs I created the collage.

Oh and nearly forgot I added some little flicks of watered walnut stain DI.

Have a wonderful day whatever you have planned and a fabulous week ahead.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Sun, Sea and Beach for Crafty Individuals

This is my DT sample for the ‘Sun, Sea and Beach’ theme this month. Don’t forget if you have used a CI product and enter the challenge you will receive a whopping 25% off any order you make before the end of June. Everyone’s a winner then eh?

This is one of those paper machie frames from the Range with four spaces, so I have created ….

… the inside of a beach hut showing the wall and a shelf ..

.. the beach with the girls going for a paddle …..

.. the dunes with the beach huts all ready for the summer and a light house in the background …..

… and under the sea …..

I used Fresco Finish paints in Snowflake, Pumpkin Soup, Butternut, Guacamole, Smoked Paprika, Toad Hall, Inky Pool and London Night. There was also a touch of Claudine Hellmuth Modern Red and texture paste through stencils.

My artistic learning started with drawing and then went onto painting before moving into papercrafts and altered art. Here I have dabbled a bit with a paint brush.

I have added a range of embellishments both bought and natural found on the beach .

I also added a skeleton leaf and wooden items.

I was going to add loads of shell die-cuts to this as well, but changed my mind and kept it quite minimalistic. Not sure if I did the right thing or not.

Let’s hope we get some more sunny weather to enjoy being able to go to the coast.

It's Friday and the weekend starts here - yay, have a good one.

hugs {brenda} x0x