Media board and colour theme for Tando

It's a colour theme over at Tando and I find they can really inspire me to create something different and out of the box for me. These are the colours to work with today.

I decided to use my much loved DecoArt media fluid acrylics and one of Di's media boards.

Process steps

1. Paint the media board with a thick coat of sap green, sprinkle with water droplets and leave it to sit for a minute. Start to heat the board but before the watery spots dry lay a piece of clean dry kitchen paper over it to absorb the water. It sucks up some of the paint that has mixed with the water and leaves these gorgeous splatter spots.

2. Repeat step one with a coat of cobalt teal hue. After you have lifted the paper and droplets sprinkle with water again and you get a variation of colour spots in the teal colour.

3. Now mix the lightest colour in the above palette using green gold and titanium white and repeat step 1 again. Here's where I hold my hand up and say I was so busy writing this post at the same time I forgot to heat the board (and take a photo) and laid the paper towel down lightly and pressed gently  and repeated with titanium white.

4. Take one of the Tando flowers with stems, soak it with water and when wet enough split it into three pieces. Rough up the flower petals and dry them again. Paint with acrylics, ink the tips of the petals with brown distress ink and flick with white.

I had the leaf die-cuts sitting on my desk and the flowers are from my supplies.

5. Cut a small piece of greyboard, paint it white and when dry add a remnant rub to create your focal title.

6. Sand the edges of the media board and blend the edges with brown distress ink and splatter some tiny drops of the colours used and dry.

Assemble everything together. 

The little flowers look amazing with so much texture and dimension.

I wouldn't normally use these colours for a project but I love the results.

Thanks for stopping by and .....

xxx

Happy Birthday 'A Vintage Journey'

Today we see AVJ celebrate its 5th Birthday. Can you believe we have been offering challenges for five years? It has been an amazing journey and adventure.

We are hoping that lots of readers will join the journey for our Birthday challenge. To do so we are asking that you include the word or any images that depict a 'journey' or even something that shows a creative journey you are on. Please tell us how your project fits the theme in your blog post and remember to create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

 

I created this shabby piece of home decor which is going to fit in beautifully in my dining room.

I haven't included any of the process steps as a description of how I put this together will be available on the AVJ blog on the 15th March.

There is though lots of inspiration from my very dedicated and talented friends on the challenge blog so please pop over to AVJ and leave us some love for our birthday and it would be wonderful if you could find time to add a project to the line up.

Have a great new month of March.

xxx

Supplies

Tim Holtz stamps - Mercantile, air travel, dapper, purely random, vintage auto

PaperArtsy stamps - HP1802EZ

Paper Doll
Tim Holtz wooden vignette box
My candlestick was from Ikea

Bee journal page

A page in my new 'inspired by nature' journal. The front cover and the first page are complete and this one adds to the story. As the name of my blog suggests bumblebees and butterflies are important to me so you are very likely to see more pages inspired by them but as a retired teacher who loves learning, books have also been a principal player in my life so I just had to use this quote when I found it.

Process steps

Stamp the page with a large crackle stamp and then layer some random texture with white gesso using a palette knife.

When dry stamp the numbers with black archival, make sure they are dry before covering with a gesso wash. If it looks too white knock back with a wetwipe before it dries.

Know roughly what elements you are going to use and where they will be placed ....

.... before building in a little more texture using a stencil and white gesso. When it's dry use watery acrylic paints, dry dabble, spritz and drip some quinacridone gold, heat dry and repeat until you are happy. Then repeat again with carbon black.

Use die-cuts to create a honeycomb (these pieces were in a bits box left over from cutting a frameworks die a long time ago).

Use water soluble wax pencils or distress crayons to edge the paper and create a grungy border by using a wet paintbrush to dissolve the crayon and let it disperse along the edges of the page.

Then assemble your pieces to create your design.

xxx

CAS card - Brenda style

If you've seen my work you'll know I don't do CAS style - I'm much more a vintage, shabby, grungy, industrial type artist but this came together with some salvage bits from leftover boxes plus a leaf die cut from the newly released Large Stems die from Sizzix and Tim Holtz

You'll probably recognise the latticework stencil design that I used on a piece of canvas paper and then cut the stitched circle, this helped to create the focal point.

The large leaf stem was covered with embossing ink and sprinkled with the new lime mixed media powder from Ranger.

To create a little more interest I added the garden greens leaves and some stamped and die-cut bugs ......

.... and finished off with a happy birthday sentiment.

Can you tell I love Tim Holtz products????? This is a sample I am sharing over on the Country View Crafts project blog today as well.

I know this is not true CAS style but it pleases me to get somewhere near it..

Thanks for looking ...... and 

xxx

Pitted Enamel Surfaces for DecoArt

Hi it's Brenda here with you today. Back in September I revamped a small panel I had made way back at the beginning of the year and used the 'pitted enamel surfaces' technique to age it a bit more and to seal the surface. I then used it for the front cover of a hand made / hand bound sketch book / journal. You can find that post at Bumblebees and Butterflies - here.

This technique is not brand new and has been around for a while but I have been honing it to use with my fluid media acrylics and mediums.

I got so into it I researched different metals and made a swatch for each one using different colours of media fluid acrylics, metallic paints and some texture sand paste. Let's take a look.

Pitting is a form of corrosion and Wikipedia states that pitting corrosion, or pitting, is an extremely localized corrosion that leads to the creation of small holes in a metal.

Pitted Transparent Enamel

(Enamel is a natural form of quartz. In simple terms, enamelling involves a glass paste being applied to metal and then heated to fuse it to the surface. The finish of the enamel can be translucent or opaque depending on the temperature used to melt the glass. Higher temperatures result in a more transparent and durable enamel while lower temperatures give a more opaque and fragile surface.)

Create a surface that you want to be covered in clear enamel. I chose a piece left over from a previous experiment to use - shown below.

Pitted Surfaces Method

1. Pounce an embossing ink pad all over and cover with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE).

2. Use a scrunched piece of dry paper towel and a small dry paintbrush to remove some of the UTEE to leave some holes or pit marks - tap off the excess.

3. Heat emboss.

4. When cool, rub some Raw Umber/Paynes Grey/Dark Grey/Black paint over and when it is almost dry wipe over with a babywipe to reveal the dark pits in the surface. 

5. When dry repeat step 4 again.

I used Dark Grey Value 3 for the pitting.

Pitted Coloured Enamel

(To give enamel a particular colour, a certain number of special coloured components (pigments and dyes) have to be added. With these, almost any colour can be achieved.)

To begin paint the substrate with any colour you like - with Christmas coming up I used Pyrrole Red.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

This would look great die-cut or stamped and cut out as a pillarbox methinks.

Pitted Gold 1 and 2

To start the first swatch paint the surface of the substrate with gold media acrylic paint.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used Raw Umber on the gold.

To start the second swatch paint the surface of the substrate with texture sand paste and dry it. Then give it a coat of gold media acrylic paint.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

Again I used Raw Umber on this one too.

You can see how the sand texture paste added a different texture in places. Variations will occur depending how much of the UTEE you remove before heating it. This next photo shows how much paint I spread on the surface and let almost dry.

Pitted Brass 

For step 1 paint the surface of the substrate with a mix of gold and raw umber media acrylic mixed together. 

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used raw umber on the brass.

Pitted Silver

For step 1 paint the surface of the substrate with silver media acrylic. 

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used Carbon Black on the silver.

If you have got any of the DecoArt metallic paints you can try any type of metal finish you want.

Pitted Pewter
Here's a swatch using the Extra Sheen metallic paint in Pewter with Paynes Grey pits.

Pitted Rose Gold
Here's a swatch using the Extra Sheen metallic paint in Rose Gold with Black pits.

I hope these help with any metal embellishments you want to alter or maybe even just create some backgrounds.

You can also find this post over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog where I also added a Christmas card with gold and silver pitted bells.

Thanks for stopping a while and .....

xx

Journal pages for Andy Skinner Team

I'm over at the Andy Skinner blog today with these journal pages as my Creative Team sample for January.

I decided to use my vintage journal which is an old book altered for the purpose of adding vintage/mixed media pages. I knew I wanted to create some mixed media layers with mediums and fluid acrylic paints and just went with the church window as my starting point. Little did I know at this point it would have a wedding theme by the end of it!!!

Process Steps

Begin by sealing the book pages with white gesso and leave some of the text/image showing through. Dry.

Apply black modeling paste through several stencils. Dry.

Take cobalt blue hue and medium grey separately on a palette and mix both with glazing medium. Paint them over the pages and then knock back with a damp baby wipe.

Take cerulean blue and white and mix with a brayer to blend over the raised areas and pages. Repeat with white on it's own.

Take a stamp and add some text using watering can archival ink. Scrape some thin gesso over both pages.

Stamp the church window with cobalt and black archival inks x 3, give them an acrylic watercolour wash using prussian blue and cobalt blue dry and cut out. Use vintage photo distress ink to blend around the edges.

To achieve the next layer of colour I did some colour mixing. Using tiny amounts of english red oxide, raw umber, burnt sienna, yellow oxide and burnt umber I got this lovely vintage brown oxide blend. I spritzed, dribble and dried it until I was happy with the effects.

Now assemble the focus elements and embellishments, ink the edges and adhere to the pages.

Also rub a stabilo water pencil round the edges of the die cuts and the stencilled word 'DREAMS' and finally around the edges of the pages and paint with a water brush to darken and create a frame.

Having stamped three windows ideas wandered to a church feel so I chose the happy couple as my vintage focus. That led me to remembering that Ken and I will celebrate a very special wedding anniversary in July and that's where the number came from and the little hearts. The words are remnant rubs.

I thought I'd play along at 'Try it on Tuesdays' where the theme is Romance. I rarely get to share on other blogs or enter challenges these days so this is a bit of a treat.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful weekend and

xxx

Supplies

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics-cobalt blue hue, prussian blue, medium grey value 6, cerulean blue, titanium white, english red oxide, raw umber, burnt sienna, yellow oxide and burnt umber

DecoArt Media mediums - black modeling paste, white gesso, heavy gel medium.

Andy Skinner stamps - Gothic Grunge, Techrauma

Andy Skinner stencils - Creativity, Time Warp, Halftone