Shabby Vintage canvas for CVC

The lovely Astrid has chosen 'shabby chic' as the theme for this months challenge at Country View Crafts and I have created a canvas as my second DT project for the month. These are the same process steps as I used on my summer canvas for the Pickwell Farm workshop.

Process steps

Apply gesso with a palette knife and press some torn dictionary paper into it whilst it is still wet and heat dry.

Adhere some die-cuts to add both contrast and texture to the background. Again heat dry.

Stamp numbers randomly using black archival ink.

Use chosen distress paints and smear colours one at a time randomly on the canvas using a babywipe rub them in gently. Heat dry between each colour. I used frayed burlap, pumice stone and antique linen.

Using gesso, a piece of cut and dry foam and a stencil, add texture onto the canvas (woops sorry missed the photo for this stage). Then using texture paste, a different stencil and a palette knife add further texture randomly over the background - I used the Tim Holtz flourish. 

Daub some stains onto the background and spritz them with water, let the colours drip around the textured areas. It doesn't matter if your colours are getting a bit too dark or intense at this point. Heat dry. Daub small amounts of your chosen colours in distress inks on the craft mat, spritz with water and dip the edges in them to provide continuity of colour around the whole canvas.

With a small piece of credit card drag a thin layer of light modelling paste over the raised areas and quickly dry. Then drag white gesso over the same areas and again dry them off quickly. (The gesso absorbs the water based colours underneath and needs a white base to stay whiter).

Daub some picket fence distress paint on the heat mat, spritz it with water and dip the canvas in it quickly drying it - repeat if required. Drip some spots of paint in random areas.

At this point I didn't want to cover up the background I like the texture and colours so much.

I gathered some elements together that I thought would look good for a shabby vintage collage and I never know if I am going to end up using all the pieces or not.

I ended up using the Tim Holtz film strip and leaves which were painted with some gesso and picket fence distress stain mixed. The hessian flower was one I bought on my recent trip to California.

A lovely group of found relatives with the backing peeled off and used as part of the collage with some ideology elements; the pen nib was given the rusted treatment.......

.... as was the lock and the beautiful lace was given a very light spritz of antique linen distress spray.

I love the contrast of the collage elements over the textured background.

It's not often I use the shabby style these days, but I thoroughly enjoyed creating this canvas.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope we will see you over at the Country View Challenge where there is a £20 voucher to the Country View web shop for the lucky winner.

Have a wonderful Sunday

hugs Brenda xxxx

Celebrations at A Vintage Journey

We have lots to celebrate in our lives and the lovely Sandy is giving us the opportunity to think about what these occasions are. Her brief is -

'Share your celebrations with us. It can be the end of the school year, a birthday, Father's Day, a wedding or a special anniversary. Use any of Tim's products or techniques'.

So what are you looking forward to celebrating soon. I have various family birthdays coming up, our wedding anniversary, our son and daughter-in-laws wedding anniversary, the fact that my 6 and 8 year old grandchildren have won parts in a production of Annie at a local theatre and summer is on it's way. I think we should celebrate something every day and be thankful for all the good things in our lives. But focusing on the challenge I decided to make an artsy cards for Ben and Bev's 11th anniversary in August (they don't look on here so I think I am pretty safe letting you see it now lol).

Process steps

1. Take a piece of [patterned paper, I used one of the 6x6 pieces from Tim's Correspondence pack, and paint it with clear gesso.

Scrape some white gesso over the card .....

... then adhere some contrasting papers, overlapping them with some torn pieces of tissue tape. (I have a box of remnants and off cuts from Tim's papers that I use for projects like this).

Use black archival ink to stamp randomly over the edges of the papers and gesso.

Wash over with a very watery wash of white gesso and layer die-cuts and flowers to build some dimension ....

... finish with  some light sprays of your own made-up perfect pearls (or any other mica sprays you might have) and some white gesso splatters .....

... and of course a sentiment - Tim's thinlits dies are perfect for this.

The shabby butterfly was one I had made for an earlier project and not used so I scraped gesso over it and added some distress stains to recolour it.

I hope you will be able to join us in our celebration challenge and don't forget you have a whole month to join in.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your weekend and if you have any celebrations happening, celebrate in style and have fun.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #23

Welcome to the first Thursday in June and a Visual Journal page inspired by one I saw on Pinterest which originated from Flickr, I am linking to it as I want to give credit to the original artist.

I began by chopping up some oddments of patterned papers I keep in a box and creating a collage of Spring green colours.

I sprayed some home made ink mixes and let them drip around the page and dried each one before layering the next.

I used a couple of Stampotique stamps and found some bottle tops to make the rings. I also splattered some ink and watered down gesso over.

The quote also came from my Pinterest board and seemed very apt with the words on the paper strip.

"Creativity is not a competition."

I sometimes feel that for some people it is but then that's why I am sharing my journal, my private space to make and create without feeling I have to be the best.

I thought the bees would complement the butterflies that are evident on many of my previous journal pages - bumblebees and butterflies.

Thanks for staying with me and sharing your pages with me and each other.

As always if you would like to share the visual journey collection you will find the code to add to you post here -

get the InLinkz code

... and I look forward to sharing in your pages through the linky below.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Shabby Card for CVC

It's the 1st June and a new challenge starts at Country View Challenges and it's the lovely Astrid who has chosen Shabby Chic as the theme for this month. Once upon a time I used to love making shabby cards but the vintage in me took over and shabby seems to have been on the back burner, but preparing my DT samples has got me inspired again and I just loved creating this. I now want to do more lol.

I had a sort of design in my head and collected the embellishments I wanted to include .....

..... and papers for the background, cutting them to size and distressing the edges.

Once I had got everything to fit together in a composition/layout I liked all I had to do was put it together.

The only thing I added was the little butterfly which provided a nice pop of colour.

I have already cut the papers and gathered the same elements together to make a couple more of these for my very diminished card box.

I hope we will see you over at the new challenge, I am so looking forward to seeing what you come up with and as always there is lots of inspiration from my gorgeous teamies, not only today but throughout the month and I will be back on Sunday with a shabby vintage canvas for you.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great month of June.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Tag Friday at AVJ

Moments Noted

There's five Fridays this month so we have a special Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey with tags galore from the Creative Guides.

I wanted to remind myself of the techniques Tim has been using on his monthly tags and have pinned all the ones for 2014 and so far for 2015 on Pinterest. I have to say it is now really easy to find the correct post quickly for reference and go back over the process steps. 

For this tag I knew I wanted to use some of the new things I had brought back from California particularly the distress marker spritzer so I was able to find a background and Tim's tutorial to get me started.

I began with the tissue tape and distress paint background, Tim shows this on his tag in April 2014 .

I used some new tissue tapes with vintage photo and pumice stone distress paints followed with walnut stain distress ink.

I began designing,making and gathering embellishments to use ......

... with stained courtyard frameworks to add to the background. To finish it off I used my new distress marker spritzer with gathered twigs and splattered some antique linen distress paint over it.

I didn't use the memo pin and token embellishment from Tim's tag this month so I tried it out here and added aged mahogany distress paint to the word.

I finished off with some extra tissue tape and a couple of remnant rubs.

Thanks for stopping by, I can't believe it's Friday again but yay it's the weekend. Hopefully I will be going shopping with the girls - that will be five of us over three generations. The girls' birthdays are coming up soon and Ella wants some new clothes and shoes.

I hope you have a lovely weekend and don't forget to note those special moments.

hugs brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #22

Welcome to week 22 of my Visual Journey where I am exploring techniques, products and ideas but more importantly I am just freeing myself up to create whatever comes to me rather than be channelled by themes and other peoples' ideas. Even in the middle of long hours trying to meet deadlines (like this week) I am determined to give myself that space once a week and so far so good.

When I took out my journal today I had no idea where I was going to go. I opened the pages to find I had gessoed and textured the next double spread before I went away on holiday - but what to do? Aha I spotted bits on my desk.

You know when something sits on your desk long enough you'll eventually get round to using them? Well I knew if these birds sat on my desk long enough they'd eventually come out to play. Do you ever do that? Leave things lying around because you're not sure where to put them and then all of sudden you know exactly what you want them for.

These die-cut circle frames were on my desk - left overs from this mornings prepping for a workshop, so I glued one on each page to get me going.

The distress paints - why? - because again I had been using them earlier when making my tag for Fridays AVJ post - not these particular colours mind you. But I sploldged them on, spritzed them heavily with water and yay suddenly I could see where I was going.

The birds would sit perfectly, one in each frame. I took different coloured distress paints - daubed them on the birds, spritzed them with water and just like the backgrounds they came together, but when I heat dried them they looked rather pale.

So I took a cotton bud and 'painted' some more of the colours over the top.

They sat perfectly on the pages in their frames facing each other.

 I looked up a quote on the internet, found one I liked and wrote it in. For a moment I was going to type it out, print it and stick it in, but time is just not on my side this week, so hey ho handwritten it is.

 

Sorry if I have not been round to see what you are up to at the moment, but I promise I will soon.

As always if you would like to share the visual journey collection you will find the code to add to you post here -

get the InLinkz code

... and I look forward to sharing in your pages through the linky below.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Tim's May tag

Tim's tag this month is right up my street, vintage, ephemera and collage with hessian and some texture paste - a match made in heaven methinks.

Here's our little starlet, Nancy, who has travelled from England to the good ole US of A to find stardom. 

She arrived in New York but the small part she had in a short running play didn't lead to any further opportunities so she has decided to travel by train across to the west coast and to Los Angeles to see if she can get her name up in Hollywood lights. This is my good luck tag, hoping she will find the fame and fortune she is seeking.

I don't have Tim's adhesive backed canvas so I used watered down pva and adhered some to kraft card and then cut the tag using his tag and bookplates die. (I merged two photos together here).

The bookplate was cut at the same time as the tag from kraft card and sat calling me to use it, so I slathered over some rock candy crackle paint and when dry I dipped it in walnut stain distress stain, spritzed it with water and heat dried it. It now looks a bit like worn leather. As you can see I got the sewing machine out too. As I don't have the new thinlits mini flowers die I used my good old faithful tattered flower garland strip die.

Before I go I would like to share a couple of photos from our recent trip to California. One of our visits was to a wolf sanctuary out in the wilds of the desert. Here they have rescued a number of wolves over the years which are cared for and looked after and live happily away from man's harm. These were the wolves that were filmed and appeared in the movie and the series of Twilight. One particular one is very friendly and loves to be out of his pen, he is very happy to be rubbed and fussed and will lie down by your feet. Here are Ken and I enjoying some time with him with our friends Joni and Leo.

I also wanted to share a photo of my dear friend Terry and I. We were able to meet up again and go shopping together for crafty things and as we take our hubbies with us too we all had lunch together. It was such a special day with time to chat and catch up as well as spend some of those dollars I had taken with me lol.

Well I hope your day is going to be full of possibilities.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxxx