Memories Box at Pickwell Farm

Saturday saw me teaching a memories box at Pickwell Farm and what a fabulous day we had. Eight lovely ladies attended and who worked so hard to create a book style box from scratch, they did so well with the measuring and construction that we actually finished a bit early. They were pleased as it gave them more time to shop for crafty goods.

This is my latest version of the box starting with the front when it is closed.

The inside with the secret box and a pouch for adding other memorabilia.

Inside again with the flaps of the secret box open to reveal the photos or treasures being stored inside it. I found some copies of old photos of some of the family but I will dedicate this box to my Mum and Dad and put bits in I have of theirs.

The outside showing front, back, sides and front flap. I used Tim Holtz dies and papers to provide the embellishing

Standing slightly open.

Now for some of the workshop photos.

Helena and Maggie.

The long table with Di and Becky this end.

 Denice, Pam and Di along the left side .....

... and this time you can see Val too.

Becky. Maggie, Helena and Jackie along the other side .....

... and a close up of Jackie totally involved in her papers and getting them the right size.

And Val too.

Di has got her book box made and is embellishing now.

Here are the finished projects with their names on. They each had a bag of the stamped images and diecuts I had used and they had choices to make regards the papers and other embellishments available in the workroom.

Wow aren't they amazingly different and reflect each of their individual styles. Well done everyone.

Update Di has just sent me a photo of hers now finished.

And somehow Helena's got missed off so here is that one too.

My thanks to Carolyn for the invitation and also to this fabulous group, Jackie, Helena, Maggie, Becky, Di, Pam, Denice and Val for such a great day.

My next workshop at this venue will be in January 2016 - yikes another new year.

Thanks for staying to the end.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #35

A season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Continuing some experimentation with brusho crystal colours I have another autumnal double page in my Visual Journal using Tim stamps.

Both the background and the stamped papers were made using the powder spritzed with water technique and the wrinkle free technique together layering and blending colours and heat drying in between each layer.

I love the intensity of the colours and although they fade a bit when heat drying they really do hold the vibrancy and depth of the pigment producing some stunning results.

What I have found though that too much water with the spritzing creates very diluted colour that I am not so keen on.

I was going to paint some of the areas of the stamping in with a waterbrush bit I think it might well have spoiled it so I resisted (I must be learning when to say enough is enough before overdoing it).

I put the pages together collage style ......

... adding printed autumnal sayings ....

 

... and creating a riot of colour that I love.

The leaves on the trees in the garden have just suddenly deepened and remind me of the tones on these pages.

Thanks for stopping and taking a peek at my ongoing visual journey.

hugs Brenda xxx

Art Journalling with Tim

Alison has set a new challenge at A Vintage Journey which incorporates art journalling with Tim Holtz, so that set me thinking. Wanting to use the found relatives photos and some dies I first set about making the background.

The layers included many of Tim's techniques and ideas for using distress products -

- distress paint resist using picket fence, mustard seed, pine needles and shabby shutters distress paints with the gothic stencil.

-  reverse monoprint using scattered straw, tattered rose, and shabby shutters distress inks with the harlequin stencil

- blended distress inks all over using scattered straw, tattered rose, and shabby shutters again

- a reverse monoprint using the shatter stencil and hickory smoke distress ink

- blended pine needles through the flourish stencil and spritzed it with water to do another reverse monoprint

- spritz and flick with water

For the die-cuts I took an A4 piece of card, rubbed on some matte medium randomly, dried it then sprayed with six orange, red and brown distress stains. 

Once I had die cut the pumpkins, acorns and leaves I blended and dipped them in more distress inks to create the added texture.

With the die-cuts coloured deep oranges and browns I felt I needed to bring some of those shades into the background too so I used ripe persimmon and vintage photo through the cargo mask and splattered some dried marigold distress paint and some mixed with vintage photo DI

 - now we're ready to assemble everything together.
The found relatives chopped and inked......

..... a couple of quotes typed and printed out ......

..... the die-cuts inked and positioned .....

... and the pages came together.

 I finished off with some photo tinting just a bit of rusty hinge on a few of the pumpkins.

This is my altered journal. In January I challenged myself to do a journal page a week. I haven't quite manged every single week, but I now have 35 double page spreads and the book is fat and almost full.

Art journalling with Tim? Yes I think so.

Thanks Alison for a great AVJ challenge, it made me think about what are Tim's influences in the journalling world and there are quite a few. Do pop over to see the amazing collection of journal pages from the Creative Guides.

Have a great weekend, I am off to the Swanage Blues Festival for the weekend and hopefully it will be good weather so we can have some walks along the beach.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Add some texture for CVC

Today sees the start of a new challenge at Country View Challenges.

Here are some experiments using brusho powders and distress paints and I so love the artsy effects on these chipboard Christmas baubles. Altogether I have made four of these and am showing you the two smaller ones in detail today and the larger ones will be later in the month.

I started by covering all four with gesso and to start the texturing whilst they were still wet I pushed some of them down on the craft mat so that the gesso texturised when I pulled them off again.

The second layer of texture is created with texture paste through a stencil and letting it dry.

This was my first and the most simplest bauble using the brushos over both dry (merry) and wet (christmas) paste. Both worked so it's good to know you don't have to dry the paste before adding the colours.  Would you believe I used three different greens to get this mix? Olive, moss and lime. You'd think I'd used yellow and blue as well but it just shows how the powders burst into colour.

To distress and vintage the bauble a bit I blended leaf green, olive green and potting soil archival inks round the edges and then replaced the stencil over the words to allow me to rub treasure gold through it - oh no what a mess - in fact I was soooo disappointed in it I started to add black pen around the letters to highlight them which looked abominable ....... and I got so into the moment wondering how I could salvage it I forgot to take a photo - but here's take 2 after I painted some chalk paint (just 'cos it was sitting on my desk) and then some gesso over it and used the brushos all over again.

This time I replaced the stencil and daubed some decoart media metallic gold over it - phew what a difference .... thank goodness.

For this next bauble I painted the holly leaves with distress paints, heat dried them and then added some patina stickles to give them some glitz. I wanted to see how the brushos laid over distress paints so I mixed some very watery colours on my craft mat and dipped the bauble in several times, heat drying between each layer.

Then I repeated with the brushos and they laid over fine but the leaves were disappearing into the background and the colours were deeper than I wanted so the next step was to mix some watery picket fence distress paint on my mat and dip the bauble in and dry it. I repeated this a couple of times dabbing the leaves to keep as much of the paint off as possible. To bring the leaves back to life I painted on some more green brushos and green grass dylusions ink.

By the time I had sanded and edged the bauble with potting soil and added some stickle berries it now looked aged and vintagey. That's better!!!

I haven't used stickles in a long while and had forgotten how difficult they make the photography.

So this is the start of my textures and as I got further into experimenting with media and the stencilling I became even happier with my results, but you'll have to come back for the next installment to see what I mean.

I hope we will see you over at Country View Challenges. Thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx