Tim tag for June

Tim has a fabulous tag this month (as always) but here in the UK we don’t have the sizzlits stamps and dies he used (hopefully next month) but that hasn’t stopped me playing with the stencil monoprint technique that he has used. In fact I played with various stencils and different types of paper to see what effects I could achieve before making my tag.

This is the background I used for my tag and the print is on smooth cartridge paper.

Canvas textured acrylic paper.

Card bought from Ally Pally in my last visit.

Oil sketching pad ……

… and the second generation stamp of the previous one on the same paper.

Bockingford watercolour paper 140 lb.

Direct to a tag.

I used the Merchantile stamp set ….. stamping several of the stamps twice, painting the image with distress inks and adhering over the stamped image on the tag.

I used the alphabet stamp for some background interest ….

covering the inked and painted bottle in glossy accents and adding a vintage pen nib,

Tim shows how to tie this lovely bow on the tag.

Tim shows all the details of how to do the techniques on his blog and I will be entering this into his monthly collection..

It's a busy week for me this week now, visiting my sister today, doing the Dylusions and journalling workshop for Country View Crafts tomorrow and then Friday morning off to the Isle of Wight Festival for the weekend, Biffy Clyro, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Kings of Leon here I come. Weather looks promising too, mind you the forecast changes every day.

Have a great week yourself and see you Friday with the new challenge starting at A Vintage Journey.

hugs Brenda xx

Field Notes tag - Country View Crafts

Happy Monday I hope everyone had a good weekend.

I have been out in the garden when I can getting bedding plants potted up and clearing up, weeding etc and it's now looking lovely for the summer again, in fact we were able to have a BBQ yesterday and eat outside which was lovely.

This is just a sneak peek of my tag today, so if you'd like to see more please pop over to the Country View Crafts Project Blog to see how I put this one together.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the week ahead.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tag You're It–Crafty Individuals

Jean has launched the new challenge at Crafty Individuals with this opening -

Yes its Challenge time again everyone, and this time the June Challenge is in the very capable hands of Helen Chilton, who has chosen the theme for us, which is (drum roll) 'Tag You're It'.  Based loosely on a children's playground game this theme gives you mountains of scope to do your own thing - as long as something within your entry vaguely resembles a tag!!  So keep it simple or make it complicated the choice is yours, but we will be truly delighted if you could play along.

There are some rules to abide by which are to make the usual links that all challenges seem to look for and to use a minimum of one Crafty Individuals products. There will be five lucky winners at the end of the month, each of whom will win a CI rubber stamp of their choice, and don't forget that as per usual, once you have linked in your creation, you can also claim a lovely 25% discount code to use on anything you purchase from the CI Website, which will be valid until the 10th of July.

So here is a tag made for this challenge using a brand new stamp called ‘A garden of flowers’. I used distress inks and distress paints for the background starting with the DP resist technique and layering, different colours of DIs and then stamping the focal image.

I used a water brush to remove some of the ink from the flowers and then painted them back in with ripe persimmon, picked raspberry and mustard seed. To get the white petals I painted with picket fence DP and used pens to highlight areas.

I stamped the butterfly, dragonfly and bee from another brand new set called ‘Butterfly Mornings and Wildflower Afternoons’ using various backgrounds before cutting them out and adhering to the tag. I finally stamped the tag with a ‘French Script’ stamp and ‘Large Elegant Swirl’ using black archival. The sentiment is computer generated.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xx

Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey

We had a great opportunity to add some inspirational tags to the Winner’s post at AVJ today and this is my contribution.

This is Tim inspiration through and through but also a bit from Alison (Words and Pictures) who did a great Destination Inspiration post using distress paints and distress inks and the paint resist technique. I have used that on this tag as well as lots of other layers as demonstrated by Tim – Here.

Two layers of paint resist, lots of distress ink colours and some stamping with black archival creates a fabulous mixed media look.

Do pop over to AVJ to see some other beautiful tags and the winner and Pinworthies from Anne’s fabulous ‘All About Him’ challenge.

Have a great weekend and hopefully enjoy some creative time.

hugs Brenda xxx

Turtle Treasures–Crafty Individuals

Many of my friends know that I had 16 amazing days touring three of the Hawaiian islands recently with my husband Ken and two American friends, Joni and Leo (who was born on Oahu). We saw many beautiful places, stunning scenery and amazing natural and wildlife including six turtles resting on a beach.

When I got home I found all the new releases from Crafty Individuals, four fabulous stamps including this one of a turtle (CI-413) and although I had lots to catch up on I just couldn’t stop myself creating a journalling/scrapbook page.

I began with water colour paper and used dylusions inks and some stencils to create the background using the blues I had seen in the Hawaiian seas, then I stamped this fabulous creature off the edge twice. Using the faux bleach technique I used my water brush and removed lots of the colours from the images and re-painted them with vintage photo and black soot distress inks.

I made masks for the two turtles, covered them up and splashed watered-down white acrylic paint to give more of a watery effect and dried it off. Next came one of my photos of a tired turtle on the beach, framing him in Photoshop Elements and using another CI stamp set (CI 272) to stamp and cut out the starfish for some little embellishing. The quote was computer generated.

Happy Memories…..

I hope your week is going well.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Only Men Allowed 1 - Country View Crafts

One of the very special men in my life was my (step) Dad, I had known him through my teens but my Mum and he married the same year as Ken and I did and he gave me away at our wedding. Sadly we lost him 4 years ago, but I think of him often and have made this special little tribute to him for Father’s day.

I began by die-cutting and stamping and gathering most of the pieces that I thought I would use and then beginning to make up each individual part of the triptych.

The main part of each section was cut in chipboard using the cameo frame die and leaving off one of the rounded edges and I also cut the pediments to adhere to the top.

I cut six pieces of PaperArtsy paper to adhere to the front and back of the frames having painted the edges first with walnut stain distress paint.

I also covered the pediments with walnut stain distress paint and when dry I dipped them in pumice stone and black to give them a grungy feel. They even look a bit rusty too. I also cut three pediments in more PaperArtsy paper to adhere to the back of them.

I edited my photos in photoshop elements 12 and then started putting it all together. You can see I added some other bits that weren’t in my original line up, but Dad loved birds, when he left school he was sent to secretarial school by his mother and learnt to type, he was in the police force for most of his life hence the evidence word band and the pen and ink as he had to write his own reports, the arrow and the chevron diecut behind his photo, it just reminded me of his sergeant stripes for some reason, the compass represents him being in the Navy during the war. I added one small photo of Mum and Dad together at their favourite holiday destination – Swanage in Dorset.

I used hessian at the back to secure the three parts together and tied it up with some hessian ribbon which gives it rather a nice rustic feel to it and I added Tim’s ‘missing you’ sentiment as a tribute to this special man in my life for Father’s Day.

Stamps I used were from Mercantile, Nature Walk and Thankful Silhouettes.

Thanks for stopping by today and welcome to my new followers, it’s lovely to have you join me on my creative journey. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim’s tag for May

Oh my gosh, talk about cutting it fine again for getting my tag completed, but it’s just been manic this week after getting back off holiday last Friday and then we are off early in the morning to Ramsgate and Margate for a wedding and catching up with lots of family.

But here it is, my completed tag, true to Tim’s one, but a little bit me too.

I painted the muse token with picket fence distress paint and rubbed over the highlights with copper treasure gold (note to self get a black one).

I was really pleased the way the ShadowPress folder worked with the black archival ink, I thought it was going to go everywhere, but the raised areas are prominent enough to take the ink without it going over the rest of the plastic.

Love the butterfly over the frame, great idea. I used the Wallflower stash papers for all the elements except the butterfly which came from another Tim set, but this was a small left over piece I could use up.

Thanks Tim for another great tag this month and one I loved doing as I often work with small elements.

All the details can be found on Tim’s blog if you haven’t yet seen them but you only have till Saturday to enter so time to get your skates on and follow in my footsteps.

I had a great class with a group of lovely ladies on Wednesday and we played with (sorry I taught) Ranger Dylusions ink sprays all day, learning new techniques and finishing a double page spread in their new journals before they went home. Thanks for a great day Joan, Judith, Jane and Christine, I will try and blog some pictures next week, but I must go and pack for this early start in the morning.

Have a great weekend and I will be back on Sunday with a project for the new challenge at Country View Crafts. See you then. Oh and don't forget a new challenge also starts at A Vintage Journey tomorrow, the lovely Jenny will be hosting and what a great theme for the next fortnight, you'll love it.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Nautical Blueprint for Country View Crafts

This is my latest project for Country View Crafts using my new Nautical Blueprints stamps. I made this card before I went away on holiday and gave it to the friends we stayed with as a thank you card, we certainly did have some good times together.

I would love it if you could pop over to Country View Crafts Updates blog to see how I made it. These stamps are fabulous.

As this is a sea themed card I thought I would share some of the wonderful coastal photos we took while we were in Hawaii. The islands are all volcanic but they have a variety of white and black sand beaches and much of the coastline is rugged and steep. The colours are vivid and piercing especially when the sun is shining through the water.

A huge thank you to everyone who continued to comment on my scheduled posts while I was away. I am very aware that I have some catching up to do and will be out visiting blogs this week.

Thanks for dropping by and taking a peek at my card and my photos.

Maybe I will also see you at Country View Crafts Update blog as well.

hugs Brenda

More Finn Journal pages

My pages today show eldest granddaughter Becca, so I thought I would do a quick catch-up for those who supported Becca and I when she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and was in hospital for most of the autumn 2012 up until the beginning of December. Thank you to you all who sent cards and good wishes, you know who you are and Becca and I were so pleased to to have that support.  She had two six hour operations and some of her intestines taken out at that time and had to wait a year to see what the next steps would be. Since then she has had another operation and has made a remarkable recovery and we are so pleased with the progress she has made. She is now at 6th form college and doing well with her studies and will hopefully be learning to drive soon. Oh my gosh where do the years go?

So onto the project.

The base of the pages are kraft card, covered with text paper and gesso.

Cut and torn strips of card, canvas and tissue tape etc. were added and then gesso through some masks.

Next I added lace, tapes and trims and glued in the photos.

I added staples, gems and embellishments …..

….. and cut more small pieces and scraps and tucked into places.

I stamped with archival and then splattered with tea …..

… and walnut crystal ink.

I used a soft pencil to add lines around the photos etc. and added chit-chat stickers and some of my own journaling words.

Although this is a scheduled post I will be home today from my holiday, I will let you know what we did and saw sometime soon.

Have a great weekend.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Using re-inkers for a journal page background

Just a short post from me today.

When I did the journalling workshop in Wales I taught this technique to the group. I think it creates a gorgeous background.

I used watercolour paper and then stuck the finished piece into my large Dylusions Journal.

Draw some blobs and circles using distress re-inkers, I used wild honey, tumbled glass and aged mahogany and the end of a paintbrush. Spray with water and let the colours run and merge together then blot off.

Spray Dylusions white linen through a mask and heat dry immediately as the white absorbs the colours of the inks underneath. Mine did but you can just see a part of the pattern to the left of the word ‘dressform’.

Draw black circles on the background with a drawing pen.

Stamp an image on card and paint with distress inks then adhere it to the background.

Add your journalling around the circle.

(I saw this on the web sometime ago and didn’t keep a link – if you know who I can credit for the technique please let me know and I will update this).

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xx