Create inside a frame at AVJ

Wow it's the first Friday of the month and it just so happens that it's September - hey who stole the rest of the year away and especially the summer?
Anyway, it goes without saying that there's the most amazing post over at A Vintage Journey today with lots of inspiration to tempt you to join our new challenge called 'Create inside a frame'. Go read the details and hopefully you will join us.

I used a small 15 x 15 cm balsa wood type frame that is only £1 from the Range and although it is only little it took me days to get it to a point where I am now happy with it.

Process steps

1. Cut card to size to fit inside the frame.

2. Give the card a coat of gesso to seal it and when dry apply white modeling paste tinted with burnt umber through a stencil. Dry for a 30 secs to a minute (depending on thickness of paste) then spritz an embossing folder with water and press into it. Let it dry

3. Take a piece of card and emboss whth the same embossing folder. Scrape over some texture sand paste and dry. then give three separate layers - burnt umber, paynes grey and dripped raw umber. This will be cut up to form the frame.

4. I then played with lots of colours and layers both dry brushing and spritzing until I had something that looked quite Moroccan in style. To seal it and enhance the colours I gave it a coat of gloss varnish.

5. Take the frame, mix some black and white gesso and paint the frame with the grey that you've made. Then add washes of the same colours and some dry brushing that was used on the textured card.

6. Dry the frame and give it a coat of transparent crackle glaze.

7. Take the embossed card - drip titanium white and titan buff paints through the textures, dry and then dry brush with burnt umber.

8. Sand the edges, blend ground espresso distress inks around them and then spritz ground espresso on the mat with water and dip and dry the card. 

9. Take a couple of moulds, I used resin plaster for them, and paint with viridian, blue green light, transparent yellow iron oxide, titan buff, burnt umber and raw umber paints and also both paint and rub in champagne, iced espresso and lavish green metallic lustres.

10.  Collect together other embellishments and alter them using rusty and painty techniques so they fit in with the style you are creating.

11. Assemble and give everything a thin coat of matte varnish.

Rather different again for me isn't it but I love the way it turned out.

Have fun with the 'create inside a frame' challenge, I hope you will be able to join us over there and be in with a chance of winning a fabulous DecoArt prize.

Have a fabulous weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

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Travel theme at CVC challenges

How did it get to September so quickly? Really the 1st of September? Oh my gosh it's as if it's time that's travelling and so much faster than when I was younger!!!!

But anyway here is my DT project for the new challenge at Country View Challenges which is all about 'Travel'. This is a large 8 x 8 card and you can see I'm in light colours mode even though I have vintaged it with the browns and kraft paper.

Process steps

1. Swipe salty ocean, stormy sky and weathered wood distress inks on your craft mat and dip the card in several times drying between each dip.

2. Take the Tim Holtz thinlits globe die, cut it from card and dip it into broken china, tea dye and shabby shutters distress paints that have been swiped on your craft mat and spritzed with water. Heat dry.

3. Blend stormy sky and antique linen over and flick with water and dry. The dip in a little watery ground espresso and dry to create the mottled effects.

4. Create a backing for it using more distress inks and cut and glue together.

5. Take a piece of card and use faded jeans, forest moss and a very small touch of fossilized amber distress inks with the dip and dry technique, creating lots of inky layers and use as a panel.

6. Stamp and cut Tim's aeroplane dip into stormy sky, weathered wood and salty ocean distress inks and cut out. Also cut round the found relatives photo and ink the edges of both using a brown distress ink.

7. Take a background die, I used Sizzix card front arrows and a mop up tag and inked the edges.

8. The travel word is an elementary flash card and the world made from Tim's adventure block works dies.

9. Put the card together adding any other embellishments that help to balance the collage and composition.

I hope you will be able to join us whilst thinking about your Summer travels perhaps and of course if you join in you stand a chance of winning that £20 voucher from Susan at CVC.

Thanks for stopping by here at Bumblebees and Butterflies - I hope you have time to pop over and see what the rest of the team have been creating too.

Have a great month.

hugs Brenda xxx

Making Memories frame for DecoArt Mixed Media DT and Craft Stamper news

I have a project  on the DecoArt Mixed media Design Team blog today and it is my second piece for this amazing team. I have chosen to go all girly and create a mosaic frame with some rusted and timeworn trinkets. Here is a sneak peek of the colours and some crackle to entice you over to see all the details and photos..... click the link above to find it.

.... and this is one of the trinkets I added to the frame.

I hope you can find a minute or two to spare to pop over and take a look and I would be very grateful if you would leave a comment over there.

I also want to share my first Craft Stamper project which is on the front cover of this month's issue - woo hoo how exciting is that? It's such a surreal feeling to see your own art work displayed like this and I am one very proud and excited lady right now. Just waiting for my copy to arrive which hopefully should be today so I can see what it looks like on the inside too. There's a tutorial for the background using DecoArt mediums and media paints and I was specifically asked by the DecoArt team to be their representative for this edition, so a double whammy for me. If you get a copy of the magazine please let me know what you think.

I hope your week is going well. I am catching up from the most wonderful and amazing California holiday shared with all the family for 17 days staying with friends and catching up with some of their family too.

Maddie, Tom, Ken, me, Ben, Bev with Ella and Maddison in the front.

Thanks for stopping by. 

hugs Brenda xxx

Altering embellishments

I made the background for this tag at Dare to Create with Andy Skinner at the same time as making my altered box (if you missed it you can find it here). That was grungy and this is much more shabby and feminine.

So I had the idea I would add something to it (it is far too pretty and textured to just discard) and to give the post more interest (because I can't share the process steps for the background as it was part of the workshop) I thought I would create a collage with embellishments and give you some ideas for altering them using DecoArt products.

Tinting photos.

The media paints have a number of translucent colours that I used to colour just some parts of this photo, not all of it.

Wikipedia says -

Typically, watercolours, oils, crayons or pastels, and other paints or dyes are applied to the image surface using brushes, fingers, cotton swabs or airbrushes. Hand-coloured photographs were most popular in the mid- to late-19th century before the invention of colour photography and some firms specialized in producing hand-coloured photographs

Coloured gems.

Glass stars and clear gems look fabulous with translucent media paints, like cobalt teal, and some white gesso over them.

Metal embellishment with a shabby appeal.

A light coat of gesso with some gently dabbed off using kitchen roll. When dry spritz with water and drop some quinacridone magenta and titan buff onto it, the colours mix on the embellishment itself creating tones of different pinks. Finish with metallic lustres rubbed gently over - I used  orange flicker and champagne ice.

Chipboard pieces with metallic effects.

(I left out rust ones as I have covered these on numerous occasions)

Give a light dry brush of gesso over the surface (note you are not looking to seal the wood). Spritz with water and dab on paynes grey and silver with your finger, again this produces an uneven coverage rather than a painted one. When dry ink the edges with ground espresso distress ink.

Plastic number.
This is not my technique it belongs to Tim Holtz, he uses distress paint but the process and results can be achieved with the media acrylics. You can find the steps on P.45 of Compendium of Curiosities 3.

Coloured shabby seam binding.

Spritz, dip and dry using the media acrylics. If you are using more than one colour dry between each of them. 

Textured background
Here you can see the colours and textures on the tag and because I kept to the lighter, brighter colours it has more of a shabby feel to it.

When putting it together I added some florals to give that feminine touch.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Travel Journal for CVC

It's my turn to post in the Country View Crafts Project Blog today and I am sharing a travel journal cum album that I made. Until I get it completely filled I'm only showing the covers but in very patriotic colours.

All the details of how these covers came together are over at CVC if you manage to find a minute to pop over.

I also wanted to share these two creations made by my granddaughters inspired by my make.

Ella is just 10 ......

.... and Maddison is just 8.

I thought they did rather well as they made them all on their own with a little advice and a lot of encouragement from me.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Lighthouse media board

Where else would you rather be than near the water, and especially the sea, if it's in the high 20's or more? I love the sun and the hotter weather and wish I lived nearer the sea so I could walk the beaches when the day is long and stretches into warm, sultry evenings. I made a small media board using DecoArt products to create this crackle background to remind me of the beautiful colours and sights of a coastal walk.

Process steps

Paint the media board with a coat of white gesso .... at the same time dry brush the chipboard lighthouse with gesso too. Notice the different effects you get.

Apply modeling paste through a stencil for texture and to begin background layers. When dry paint over with cobalt teal hue and titan buff. Dry that and then apply transparent crackle glaze over it and leave to crackle naturally. When dry rub over with prussian blue.

Take the lighthouse and add watery washes of cobalt teal, prussian blue, paynes grey and transparent yellow iron oxide and give it a coat of antique decoupage (my new fund vintage product from DecoArt).

Some cheesecloth dipped in transparent yellow iron oxide, some thread dipped in raw umber and paynes grey and some little die-cuts of birds, shells and starfish finish off the design.

Hope you have had some nice sunny weather recently and hopefully not tooooo hot but warm enough to walk by the river, sit by the lake or be by the sea.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx