Late Mother's day easel card

I'm sharing a late Mother's Day easel card I made for the Packhouse. Unfortunately it didn't sell but I can easily remove the sentiment and add a birthday one lol. It's the same design as the one I made for a workshop here.

The gorgeous image in the centre is from the Graphics Fairy and how I created the layers can be found in the linked post above.

I was so happy playing with the new distress oxides again when I found a way to create these beautiful delicate butterflies. I am sharing a quick post on Wednesday to show you how I made them.

The colours of the flowers in the image and the butterflies blend perfectly.

I am really going to have to check out some of my friend Jennie's tutorials on how to make beautiful handmade flowers, her's are incredible but at the moment I have lots of these bought ones I need to use up first.

I hope your week is going well. See you on Wednesday with the quick tutorial.

hugs Brenda xxx

Rusted butterflies and dragonfly.

It's the start of a new challenge today at Country View Challenges and the lovely Evelyn has chosen the theme of rust. I wanted to use the idea of rusty elements in a different way and having had such a fabulous response to my abstract art a few weeks ago I decided I would go in that direction to create the background.

I cut a piece of card 8 x 8 inches and brayered layers of cameo, primitive, lace and eternal chalky finish paints.

I then took a palette of titan buff, paynes grey, burnt umber, raw umber, prussian blue and yellow oxide media fluid acrylics and with a babywipe blended and very lightly dabbed on the colours in random areas.

Next came black gesso spread with a palette knife and spritzed with water to get some contrast into the background.

I wanted to be a bit more random with visual texture than just using a stencil so I took some kitchen cling film and daubed on white tinting base randomly adding some medium grey and burnt umber to it.

Some white crackle paint in random places but mostly round the edges and left to dry before colourising with some watery quinacridone gold paint. To give it just a little more interest I added the tiniest amount of text stamping.

The dragonfly was cut from some card I had been brayering off onto, run through the embossing folder .....

.....  and then coloured with layers of burnt umber, yellow oxide, paynes grey, tinting base and quinacridone gold - some of the paint was neat and some was watery washes. I dragged the coffee archival ink over before I glued him on.

I love how the veins show up more with the archival ink swiped over.

The small tag was randomly wiped with tinting base and dried and then dipped into walnut stain distress oxide and some left over quinacridone gold and raw umber watery paints. When dry it was stamped with the Tim Holtz butterflies which were also stamped again on cream card and the wings cut out and edged with black archival ink, bent on the thorax edge and adhered to the background images.

From the side you can see the wings fluttering giving additional dimension.

I had intended to add more collage pieces but when I got to this point I rather liked the simplicity, so it stayed as it was.

Here is the finished project. I made it to go inside a shadowbox. I'm very tempted to colour the frame but still not quite sure.

April????? Where did that come from???? Another year speeding past so quickly, but let's take time to watch the butterflies as they emerge.

Enjoy your weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

watercolour tag with oxides

It's Friday #5 for March and when that happens over at AVJ we have a Tag Friday post (there are usually about 5 of them a year so are something that's just a little bit special).

Of course we get to create whatever we like so I had to have a vintage playtime. 

Don't you think the background looks a bit like an old very distressed wall paper?

I cut my own tag from a piece of heavy watercolour paper and stamped it using picket fence distress paint.

I dipped it several times in iced spruce and walnut stain oxides, drying inbetween dips, until I was happy with the background and then just blended a little of each colour around the edges. I also wiped over with a damp baby wipe which helped bring the pattern back to life.

To create the collage I gathered some ephemera from the new Tim Holtz collector layers set and from previous collections of his as well as some small paper offcuts and also I took one of Tim's paper dolls (kindly sent by a lovely friend I caught up with in Birmingham last month). I bought some of the gorgeous quote chips with the ephemera and chose one of them too.

Here you can see more of that background poking through around the girls' feet and the fabulous dimensional word chip.

I wanted that shabby vintage feel to this project so I added a  dyed seam binding bow and just glued it to the top.

I have to say I was really quite please with the effects.

I had dyed a piece of lace and gathered a couple of other bits to use but in the end I opted to keep it less cluttered as I really wanted that background to show through.

I'm so happy to have had this vintage playtime and use the oxides again, they really do have a wonderful chalky finish to them. For more amazing inspiration do pop over to the AVJ challenge blog to see what all the other amazing Creative Guides have made - you are sure to find something you like.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim Holtz inspired background card #2

This is my second card using a Distress Oxide background made a little while ago for the challenge over at CVC. I made my first quite a feminine card that can be seen here and this one is definitely for a man and in my vintage collage style that I love to use. I just love the rusty patina colours.

If you have a moment please pop over to the CVC project blog to see more photos and to see how it came together.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Canvas Board - teaching simple mixed media layers

Happy Mother's Day
........... to all you Mums, grandmothers, friends and aunties out there. I hope you have a wonderful day and hopefully receive some extra love from your precious ones. I have a Mother's Day project right at the end of this post, but first here's one I did for a workshop.

I often get asked to do a session for one of the local church groups and this time they wanted me to do something 'different' (ie not card making or gift bags, paper folding etc) so I suggested using paint and making a mixed media shabby canvas board - you know how I like these - so this is what I came up with. Bearing in mind we only had two hours there was a lot to do but I die-cut and prepped a bag for each of them so everything was at hand.

Using 5 x 7 canvas board

1. Paint canvas with gesso.

2. With palette knife randomly drag thin layer of acrylic paint and spritz with water, move the colour around a little bit - dry.

3. Repeat step 2 with another colour.

4. Repeat step 2 again with a third colour.

5. Lightly blend/daub over gesso with a distress tool and sponge.

6. Stencil over some coloured gesso and gently heat dry.

7. Add a little stamping for interest.

8. Dry brush a little of two of the other colours (not used with the gesso for stenciling) over the raised textures (I used white and yellow).

9. Adhere a small piece of scrunched cheesecloth.

10. Collect together papers, images, die-cuts, flowers etc......

11. ........ and assemble them onto the board. Note the vintage picture of the hare and chicks - I downloaded this from the internet as a free image and sized it to fit inside Tim's clock.

And do you like the butterfly? I loved stamping these, I used Tim's new Oxides - worn lipstick, peeked paint and iced spruce - and a little ordinary vintage photo distress.

So there we have it a pretty mixed media board for Easter.

And here's the one I made for Mother's day too.

Creating the same background (and keeping exactly the same colours) I then gathered different embellishments (mostly Tim Holtz products) -

For a complete change I edged everything with pumice stone rather than ground espresso or another of the brown DIs. - it's more subtle.

You can see where I slotted in the butterfly ..........

On this photo you can see I used a white pen to highlight the flowers a little. They had been stamped and cut from card dipped in worn lipstick  and spiced marmalade oxides with some fossilized amber DI added to it.

I lifted them using foam pads to create height and dimension .......

... and added some wildflowers 2 die-cuts as well as some shop bought mini blooms.

I added an easel and put it in the Packhouse.

It's lovely to have you stop by, thanks so much for the interest you show in my work, I really appreciate it.

Enjoy your day.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tim Holtz inspired background card #1

If you follow the Country View Crafts challenge blog you will know that the theme this month is 'Inspired by Tim Holtz'. I played with the new distress oxides a little while ago and had fun making some backgrounds (you can see them here if you missed them) and I said I would use two of them to make a project, so I have made cards that could be used for Mother's day and Father's day. 

Although the background looked quite masculine I have made it into a shabby, more feminine card.

Please hop on over to the CVC Project Blog if you have a moment to see it in it's full glory.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Inspired by Tim Holtz and Distress Oxides

As soon as my Oxides arrived I wanted to play - I only ordered three to start with but having seen some of the videos and demos from Tim when he was at Creativation I just had to see what they were like before ordering more.

So I began with broken china, peeled paint and walnut stain oxides and ......

....  just by dipping and drying from the spritzed colours on my craft mat I produced these three.

 I really like the first and third ones but the second one needed something else, so with a clean craft mat I added the same three colours again and more layers to it. You can see the chalky pigment finish but also the strength of the dye inks

I carried on with what was left of the oxides on my craft mat, but this time  I added vintage photo and tea dye distress inks to the mix....

..... and used the rest of what was left on these small bits but adding more tea dye and also some weathered wood distress ink ....

.... and watching the colours get lighter and lighter as I spritzed with more water without adding any more inks.

So there we have my experiments for a whole morning - now what to do with them? Keep a close eye to see how they get used, I shall be using a couple of them for projects going live on the CVC Project Blog next week and the week after. I shall definitely be ordering more Oxides as I just adore the chalky finish you get from using them and the colours they produce - which are completely different to the colour in the distress range because of the added pigment to them.

If you haven't yet see the challenge inspiration posts on the Country View Challenges blog from the 1st March you might want to pop over to take a look and maybe you have already taken part in the challenge? Have fun, there is so much inspiration from Tim on his blog, his FaceBook page and You Tube and I'm sure you'll have some of his products somewhere in your supplies.

hugs Brenda xxx