Destination Inspiration Route 2 for AVJ - A collection of three

If you haven't caught up with the new Destination Inspiration posts at A Vintage Journey I fully recommend them for ideas, techniques, and of course inspirational projects.

It's my turn to post today and I have a project that includes our four components for the month of April those being -

substrate - canvas

product - distress paints

colour - picket fence

technique - Tim's grunge paper flowers

This is a reverse canvas, mixed media style with lots os distress paints iuncluding picket fence and those fabulous grunge paper flowers that Tim shows us how to make in A Compendium of Curiosities 1.

I hope you will pop over to AVJ to see the full details of how I made this project, I would love to see you there.

Have a wonderful week and let's hope we some more of that gorgeous sunshine we saw over the weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Always my collections are made of different influences.

Jean Paul Gaultier


Update - copied over from AVJ

Distress Paint

Substrate - Canvas

Technique - Grungepaper flowers (Vol 1 of Tim's CC3C Book, page 65)

Colour  -  Picket Fence

I have chosen to reverse my canvas and work on the back of it as it is more like a shadowbox and I love the depth it creates.

My canvas is 25 x 30 cms and I cut a piece of prepared canvas material (to fit in the reverse side) on which to create my background. (I buy canvas pads to do this). 

Sand over the surface of the canvas mat with a sanding block to distress the background area. 

Apply distress paints to your craft mat – dried marigold, victorian velvet & evergreen bough and spritz with water. Also spritz your piece of canvas and dip it into the paints to create a marbled effect.  Heat dry. 

Take picket fence distress paint, apply it to your craft mat and again spritz with water, dip the canvas in to create some mottled patches and dry. Later you will see the lovely mottled effects that are created by starting with a base layer of the paints first.

Use light modelling paste and apply through a stencil to create a design. Leave to dry. 

Spritz with distress spays – tea dye, evergreen bough & tattered rose. Heat dry. You can see the mottled white showing through as the picket fence paint has acted as a resist. 

Place the stencil over the design again and dab picket fence distress paint over some of the texture paste pattern to bring it back to pure white again and leaving some with the colour absorbed. This gives another great mottled effect on the texture. 

Take the canvas and paint the wood that is showing with white gesso and then cover the edges with Tim’s tissue wrap. 

Layered Butterfly 

Die-cut and emboss Tim’s layered butterfly. Take your colour of choice from a set of oil pastels and colour all the embossed (raised) parts. (I even got into blending colours using a cotton bud). 

Dip it into a wash of dried marigold distress paint, blot and dry it and then spray with tea dye distress spray. When dry take the evergreen bough and spray a small amount onto your craft mat and spritze it quite heavily with water to get a more watery tone, then dip the wings into it and dry it. 

Finish by inking the edges lightly with walnut stain and then spraying with a gloss sealer to give the colours more pop and shine.

Cut two smaller butterflies from Tim's butterfly duo die and give them the same treatment, strange how the darker one looks so different in style.

Grungepaper Flowers 

I followed Tim’s instructions on P.65 of the CoC 1 to make the petals and then of course I followed my own route. 

When you have made up the flowers dip the petals in spritzed picket fence distress paint and dry. 

To get some colour on them I dipped them in both mustard seed and evergreen bough stains that had been spritzed with water and left them to dry. Next I dipped them in dried marigold distress paint – again spritzed with water on my craft mat. 

Then sand the edges and blend in walnut stain distress ink. 

Put the petal layers together with Tim brads or metal flowers with distress paints daubed over them. 

18. Dab picket fence distress paint onto a word band and gently wipe the paint off with your fingers leaving the colour to remain in the recessed letters. Dab the edges with potting soil archival ink pad.

19. Now start to assemble the canvas – dab picket fence distress paint over the tissue wrapped frame, spritz it and wipe some away from the words and adhere the background into the recess.

20. Gather some elements together to create some interest and dimension on the background collage and adhere these to the back. I added some shapes from die-cuts of the trellis frameworks die and I took a metal number 3 painted it with gesso and when dry gave it a thick coat of picket fence distress crackle paint. I don't think I made the gesso coat thick enough as the crackle began to flake away but I added some evergreen bough distress paint and then some gathered twigs distress stain, spritzed it with water and dried it off, then gave it two coats of thick clear embossing powder. This has sealed it and will now prevent the crackle paint coming off any more. I rather like the distressed fell to the finish.

21. I took a small wooden bird and a chipboard frame from my box, painted them with white gesso and blended tea dye and walnut stain distress ink over them and I also stamped some text onto them. 

The frame is going to help hold the flowers. (I wired it so the flowers can sit over it easily).

Some rafia .......

.....  the die-cut shapes .....

.... add some remnant rubs ..... 

.... and some wired paper to the flower collection.

.... and the reverse canvas has come together.

Look how neat the flowers sit over the corner raised up on the frame I added.

Well done if you've managed to read this far .....

.... I hope you have enjoyed seeing my interpretation of the four chosen components coming together.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Wonder and Promise

It's my turn to post a project over at Country View Crafts Project Blog today.

Inspired by Tim's March tag I used his technique of adding gold textured embossing to the background and layered other elements over it.

When finished I added this to my collage and mixed media album.

The colours and dreams of dragonflies in the garden gives me the promise of some warm lazy days near a pond or our local canal and perhaps a picnic with the grandchildren. We are very lucky to have a very large park which we call The Lodge near us which backs onto the Basingstoke Canal and is perfect for walks on a lovely summer day.

There are more details at the CVC project blog if you would like to see them.

Have a wonderful weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Aaah, summer - that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It's a time to hunt for insects, master handstands, practice swimming strokes, conquer trees, explore nooks and crannies, and make new friends.

Darell Hammond

Visual Journey #15

Welcome to the 15th edition of my Visual Journey and another collage spread using some of my favourite products and techniques. As always I wasn't too sure of where I was going but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

The pages were painted with gesso and left to dry. Strips of papers were adhered across both pages. A marker was placed for the photo so as not to get texture underneath it.

Next gesso was applied through Tim's lattice stencil - NOTE TO SELF gesso can be too thin so although the first pass was ok, subsequent passes meant the gesso seeped underneath the stencil.. Let it dry and smear some matte medium in various places,

Using gathered twigs paint dabber with antique linen spray stain and a couple of pinkish glimmer mists, spray and let drip. Leave to dry then add some drops of Victorian velvet mister (home made). Place waxed paper between the pages and leave it to flatten and dry out under a box.

Gather some elements together for your collage, I used one of Tim's photo booth images, love these.

Ephemera, tissue tape and chit-chat stickers .........

... and a few more drips at the top of the page then out came the matte medium and a brush to go round all the areas that I wanted to create shadow. When dried I was able to use my distress markers  to outline shapes and create more depth.

Thanks to everyone who is joining me in this journey and to those of you who pop in regularly to see what I am creating and making.

I hope you will join me in this visual journey with any journal pages you make. Anything goes with whatever journal/sketchbook/ type activity is right for you. My Pinterest page explains it like this -
'Keeping a visual journal is a journey of experimentation; giving time to be free in expressing yourself and not constrained by others expectations. Practicing design, layouts, composition, colour mixing, techniques, materials, mixed media. Creating your own exercises, titles, mood boards, taking yourself out of the box, finding yourself. Bring new ideas to life, to spark you off in new directions, to allow your own imagination and creativity to develop in complete freedom'.

Thanks for joining me today

hugs Brenda xxx

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Photobooth and Butterfly

I hope you have had a wonderful Easter weekend so far, just one more day left of the long weekend, enjoy.

I have been experimenting with the Wendy Vecchi archival reinkers and blending solution to be able to roller them onto plain card-stock. It works really well, but a little flat. So I rollered some white gesso lightly over the top. When that was dry I dipped the card into some watery distress stains. At this point I was happy with the background.

The butterfly is from Tim's Butterfly Duo which is a die with an embossing folder to create the texture. I swiped it with some white acrylic paint before misting it and adding distress stains.

I used a small brown tag and dragged some gesso over it and dried it before using crackle paste through Tim's doily stencil. When that was dry I splodge on a little vintage photo distress stain and spritzed it with water so that it ran in all the nooks and crannies.

Gathering some other elements, I set about creating a collage with one of the new gorgeous photobooth photos.

The archival inks used are hydrangea, forget-me-not, cornflower archival blue reinkers and also played with adding some orange blossom, dandelion and carnation red straight from the pad onto the craft mat.

hugs Brenda xxx

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, 

because it is his natural characteristic, 

so the artist works.

Alma Gluck

Through the Looking Glasss

There's a new challenge at AVJ today from our fabulous Julia and oh boy I think you are gonna love this one. I certainly did, it sparked lots of ideas of things I wanted to use or incorporate in my project like cracked glass using embossing powders and altering a hand mirror but whilst collecting bits and pieces I found a frame that didn't have the back on it, only the glass was in place and I could see right through it. I love the work of an artist called Kristin Mcfarlane who uses glass to layer images but I couldn't find anywhere an explanation of how she does it but it still set me to thinking how I could use this frame for my project.

Having been playing with Tim's 3 x 4 snippets at the back of his newest paper stashes an idea began to emerge.

Having found the frame that had glass in it but no back to it (one of those keep for a rainy day items lol) I gave it a light coat of gesso leaving some of the wood exposed.

I added a piece from one of Wendy Vecchi's art parts set, gave that a coat of gesso and added walnut stain distress ink to it and the frame.

I then set about making an A34 again using Tim's smaller snippets of papers from various paper stacks, collecting some other ephemera to add to it or to the frame.

Once the A34 had been completed I went out and bought some transparent film to adhere it to the glass. I didn't want to use glue as I thought it would show too much even though it dries clear.

The arrow with the parcel post label was glued with glossy accents onto the outside of the glass.

Using a small text stamp from Tim's shabby french set I  stamped it randomly over the glass using black stazon.

I decided the ephemera I had collected for the frame wasn't working for me so I sorted out some other bits and being rusty they felt right at home. I played with some distress paints and alcohol ink on the wordband and taking Paula Cheney's idea from her Guest post last week, I suspended it across the bottom of the glass.

Lastly I was going to add some remnant rubs but decided they weren't actually needed, instead I added a rusty wire hanger so I can put it on the wall.

I'm really pleased with my interpretation of Julie's brilliant challenge theme title

Do you know the thinking and creating in my head time was probably two weeks but if I were to put another of these together I could do it in less than a day. It just shows that ideas and designing is a long slow process for me, but I hope you like the outcome.

I also hope you will pop over to A Vintage Journey to see all the amazing inspiration from our very talented team and hopefully it will give you the inspiration you need to join in. Don't forget you now have a whole month to get a project made and to take part and there is a £20 voucher for the winner.

Have a wonderful weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #14

As these pages began to emerge the one word that kept popping into my head was 'Contrasts', so thats what these pages have been called.

 

Using more of my scraps I glued strips of papers to the pages, stamped using black archival ink and then scraped white acrylic paint over making it quite thick in places. I left this to dry overnight.

The next morning I painted with babywipes adding phthalo blue and transparent yellow iron oxide DecoArt media fluid acrylics to give me my colour base.

I decided what images I wanted to use and this was where the contrasts seemed to come in with the lovely warm colours contrasted to the quite austere lady in the photograph and the very shabby butterfly.

I really do seem to have a theme of butterflies developing in this journal.

I still don't seem to be building any particular mixed media/collage style. I think my pages are all so very different.

Thanks for popping by today and if you are following my weekly Visual Journal posts I hope you are enjoying seeing my pages as much as I am enjoying making them.

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hugs Brenda 

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Layered butterfly birthday card - use kraft card at CVC

I don't seem to make too many cards these day but there is always that special one needed at some point and this is one of those. My dear sister Chris had her birthday a couple of days ago and this is the card I made for her.

I started with a piece of Tim's correspondence papers cut to fit an 8 x 8 kraft card. I had just bought a tub of clear gesso for the first time and decided to experiment with it. (I am waiting to get my DecoArt products and want to try theirs too). This one is rather runny so I couldn't paste it through a mask with a palette knife so I daubed it through using a small piece of cut and dry to prevent seepage - it worked yay. I heat dried it and then lightly blended chipped sapphire distress ink over it and wipoed it over with a babywipe to clean the ink off of the gesso and heat dried it again. In fact I did this three times to get the depth of dark blue in the middle of the area and lighter tones at the edges.

I used the fabulous layered butterfly and embossing folder with kraft card .....

.... and die-cut a border and a mixed media piece from cream card.

The sentiment is a sizzix embossing folder run through the bigshot using coredinations paper and sanded ......

....and a collection of elements that I could see might fit the bill to complete the card. The metal embellishments I chose to use were daubed with picket fence distress paint. I chose the number three as it's the third month in the year March, which is Chrissie's birth month.

I took the butterfly and dipped it into picket fence, salty ocean and spun sugar distress paint, dried it and gave it a coat of rock candy crackle paint. When that was dry and the crackles were all showing I blended over with chipped sapphire distress ink and then edged it and daubed a couple of areas with gathered trigs distress stain and baked it in with the heat gun. Later, just before I added it to the card, I splattered it with white acrylic paint.

Now all I needed to do was assembly the card.

The pink shabby bow and charm ........

.... the hinge clip and pen nib .....

.... and the lovely painted butterfly.

I used the opportunity to make this my DT sample for the new challenge at Country View Crafts so I hope you will be able to pop over to see some wonderful inspiration in a variety of styles and also to note down the theme so you can enter this month.

Have a fabulous April.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim tag for March 2015

I love the mixed media feel to Tim's tag this month and especially the gold contrasted with the gorgeous paints, but I found the effects really difficult to achieve. My embossing powder stuck to the background as well as the texture paste no matter how long I heat dried it - I think I shall try it again but leave the tag to dry overnight.. 

So, as is me, I played around and decided to dry the embossing paste and then use an embossing pen to add the ink and the gold powder. This gave me a completely different look but one that I really quite like.

You can also see I added some gold EP to the dragonfly wings and some remnant tubs to finish it off.

Thanks Tim for another fabulous opportunity to try something different but also a peek into your very inspiring creative mind.

Have a great weekend everyone.

hugs Brenda xxx