Mail Train

My friends at FSC have a great challenge going on which is ‘Mail Time’ which is anything to do with postage, so I went off at a bit of a tangent and produced this tag.

The background started with dips into left over inks from my current give-away book and then I blended some milled lavender, victorian velvet and dusty concord distress inks through it. The background stamp is from the Tim Holtz Classic #3 set and has the word ‘Letters’ across the middle so I thought that would be very appropriate and as I was looking through my TH stamp sets I saw the train from the Travel Ways set and my brain made the connection – letters and trains = the Mail Train.

I had a small piece of glassine paper on my desk so I stamped it on, heated it to embed the ink into the paper and used distress markers to colour it up. I used pumice stone, antique linen and picket fence. At first the white was far too vibrant so painted water over it and dabbed it off with kitchen roll and it dried a lighter tone, much better this way.

Some tissue tape, the postage stamp from Tim’s Tiny Things set and some other embellishments to add design interest.

The attachment to the ribbon is a small button I picked up at a car boot sale some time ago. I was told by the stall holder it was a railway badge possibly given to the driver or staff. It was bright yellow so it’s been altered with distress paints and onyxite treasure gold – as was the metal number 8.

So no longer being a DT member at FSC means I can now enter their challenges. Thanks for this one girls.

Well the weather is just wonderful here in the UK, gorgeous sunshine, hot temperatures, at last a real summer and set to last for a few days. I hope it lasts past next weekend as our friends Joni and Leo from California are over and they are going down to Cornwall for a few days tomorrow. We are having a big BBQ for them on Sunday before they go off on a cruise.

Have a wonderful week wherever you are.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Choose a decade or era

The new challenges at ‘Crafts-Too Challenge You’ starts today and they are going to be a lot of fun. The theme for the month is ‘Choose your Decade or Era’ but for the first two weeks there is a twist, but because it’s a brand new challenge blog the twist is ‘Anything Goes’. So we are looking forward to seeing lots of lovely projects that link to some time in history.

I am showcasing a canvas depicting images from the 1950’s and used some stamps from Marianne Designs.

I started by sealing the canvas with gesso then stamped some vintage dressmaking pattern paper and glued it all over. When dry I added distress paints and spritzed over them causing them to bleed and blend together and heat dried.

I glued on the embellishments with tissue tape and stencilled numbers using walnut stain distress ink. When dry I washed over some white gesso making it thicker over the added elements, when this was dry I let some of the watery wash dribble down the canvas.

I stamped the ladies and child onto cream card and again on Marianne Designs patterned paper and paper-pieced the dresses. After cutting them out I inked the edges with walnut stain and glued them to the canvas.

To finish off added some more stencilling, the flowers, sentiment and the butterfly ….

I also watercoloured some vintage photo distress ink around the images to make them stand out a little more.

So if you are doing a project over the next two weeks that links to another era or decade we would love to see it over at ‘Crafts-Too Challenge You’.

Take care and have fun.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Challenges to have fun with -
Bloggers Challenge - create your own background
Crafts 4 eternity - sewing room
Crafts and Me - anything goes
Stampotique - recycle (dressmaking pattern and the sew letters are scrabble pieces)
Creative Card Crew - no designer paper
Try It On Tuesday - metal (scissors, hanger)
Cheerful Stamp Pad - from the past
Imagination Crafts - anything goes
Simon Says Stamp and Show - anything goes

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