A Bright Future – Crafty Individuals

I just fell in love with this turtle stamp when I found him tucked inside an envelope on my return from holiday at the end of May, what a lovely surprise especially as I had only just seen real live turtles on a beach in Hawaii a few days before. 

A week later I made this tag for Crafty Individuals and I am a bit late posting it. I think this ought to go in my Positivity Journal don't you?

The background is broken china distress paint brushed onto the tag and flicked with water, I added some bubbles and sea greenery (using the bump technique) to give the effect of being underwater.

The turtle was stamped onto watercolour paper and I coloured him in with my new watercolours.

The small sentiment is part of the stamp set and the larger one is computer generated.

The leaves were inked through a Dylusions mask.

I'm off on holiday to Lanzarote soon with all the family and am looking forward to some quality time with them all. This time it's a pool and beach holiday so no turtles to find here.

I hope your week is going well.

hugs Brenda

4 more altered playing cards

Hello Everyone, it's been a fabulous week here at the Brown household with Ken's birthday Thursday and our 40th wedding anniversary on the same day. Last night we celebrated with the children and grand children having a lovely meal out together and tonight we celebrate with a few friends and neighbours by having a summer garden BBQ. We just hope it doesn't rain after all the wonderful hot sunny weather we had in July.


 Today I thought I would share four altered playing cards that I have been making (you can seer the previous 4 here that I made in March if you haven’t caught up with them yet)

Although I followed the ideas and techniques from Stephanie Ackerman, I am using images and collage pieces of my own. 

I save quotes and make my own sheets and print out to use in albums, on cards and mixed media projects.

I won’t share the process steps in respect for Stephanie and her online class, but suffice to say I am enjoying making these and having fun exploring some mixed media techniques.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

hugs {brenda} xx

Scrapping in my Journal

Hi Everyone I am really pleased to guesting again at PaperArtsy tonight. When Darcy asked me a few weeks ago what I was making I told her it would be something around ‘scrapping in my journal’ as I wanted to use the really zingy colours in the Fresco Finish paints range with photographs. This is not quite how I imagined it then, but I am pleased with the fabulous bright background mixed with my more normal vintage style. I think it has worked really well. Before anyone asks lol, the photo on the left is me (looks as though I was about 3-4) and the photo on the right is my Mum holding me.

Please be warned this is a long post, but I hope you will stay with me to the end.

So to start off cut two pieces of card and using low tack tape secured them together. Cover both pages with a layer of gesso to seal the card.

Rub London Bus, Tango and Zesty Zing Fresco Finish paints over the page with a few mists of water and a wet babywipe to help blend them. Heat dry.

Then spray with Goosebumps to create some texture and again heat dry. I then  used two of my spare spray bottles and mixed a watery London Bus in one and the other with Zesty Zing and sprayed over the pages heat drying between each colour. Lastly I finishes with a couple of sprays of White Linen Dylusions ink spray.

To add some interest to the pages I stamped with the Hot Picks 1301EZ set using three different brown archival inks.

I began to collect together some strips of hessian, canvas, card, and lace to create some textures and I also die-cut some of the PaperArtsy Chatsworth paper using the Tim Holtz Courtyard frameworks die. I used the Fresco Finish paints again but this time I watered them down in little mister bottles and sprayed them over to blend the colours.

And so the pages started to take shape.

I painted and sprayed the die cuts and pieces of card to make the sentiments.

I cut out some butterflies that I have ready downloaded in a small box and I pulled out some rusted elements to see how they would fit in.

I also sprayed some strips of embossed canvas and gathered some other pieces and a snippet of hessian together..

The colour of the frameworks didn’t fit in the way I thought they would so I sprayed them with watered down FF chocolate paint as well.

Next came the assembling and I started with some tissue tapes before gluing the strips down and adding the photos.

For the penultimate stage I added some dylusions ink to the London Bus spray to deepen it a bit more and covered the photos, spraying in three areas and heat drying. I then added some splatters of walnut crystal ink. Of course I got carried away here and forgot to take any more photos till nearly the end.

Lastly I cut the pages apart, cropodiled the holes at the right places and finished with some chatty words that I make up myself and print out.

The pages are now inserted into my growing ‘scrapping’ journal.

I love how the vintage meets journal style, it’s a bright and busy background but the vintage seems to be right at home too.

Thanks for staying with me through a long post.

I thought I would also share with you tonight that it is Ken's birthday today and I want to wish him many happy returns of the day, but it is also a very special day in that we got married 40 years ago on his birthday in 1974 and I am just wondering where have all those years gone???? Needless to say we are looking forward to many more happy years together creating memories.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xx

Tim Tag for July

I love seahorses and the summer so this tag was a delight to make and I followed Tim’s guidelines almost to a T.
You can find Tim's instructions on his blog with a list of supplies he used and a photo step by step - I am linking this up to his July post.

So we have the beautiful crackled seahorse and the fabulous watery and bubbly background ........

...... the distressed jute ribbon, the spring greenery with a completely new lease of life …….

…. and the textured sand to hold the sand dollar and starfish.

Another of my favourites – well I think they all are actually, not sure how you would choose a bestie, just depends on the moment in time doesn’t it?

It’s going to be a great week this week in the Brown household, Thursday will be the special day, with things happening Friday and Saturday …… ooh tease I know, oh and I’m guesting as well on Thursday at PaperArtsy, so keep an eye out for another post from me then.

In the meantime have a great week yourself and hopefully some creative fun too.

hugs brenda xxxx

What if? Tag using Tim Holtz products

Happy Monday everyone, I hope you have had a great weekend.

Over at the Country View Crafts Project Blog I have a tag today for you using some stamps and paper from Tim Holtz.

Here are some of the elements I gathered together to use on my tag.

I'd love it if you have the time to pop over to the Project Blog to see more details and the finished tag 

Have a great week ahead and enjoy whatever you have planned to do.

hugs Brenda xx

Just Stain It at A Vintage Journey

Wow another trip finished and time to start the next leg of the journey and Jenny is challenging us to Stain It. her brief is – ‘Distress Stains are the best way of getting your favourite Distress Ink colours in liquid form. That makes them ideal for staining flat surfaces/edges and crackled surfaces, painting, dripping, splatting, and so much more. Show us what you can do with your Distress Stains’.

I love the versatility of the distress stains and had fun making another masterboard background for this project and it's the second journal cover from me this week.

This is a sketchbook journal, you know the ones you can buy for around £2.99 in The Works or The Range.

I covered a long piece of greyboard with gesso and when dry I rubbed over the distress stains, wiping them away and blending them with a wet babywipe. This gave me a light coloured base on which to do the next step.

The wrinkle free technique. I sprayed water, dipped and dried several layers until I was happy with the overall effects.

I had covered a spare piece of greyboard with the gesso and mopped up the inks left on my mat before die-cutting the Artful Arrows. I dipped these in walnut stain and gathered twigs distress stains and dried them before adding a layer of clear distress crackle paint.

Whilst the arrows were drying I added some crackle paste through Tim's chevron and arrows layering stencils and heat dried it, which produced some crackles but I had kept it quite thin so they don’t show up as much as I thought they would.

Once the crackle paint was dry on the arrows I dabbed some distress stains in a few areas and wiped them off again bringing some colour back into them.

I added a few pieces of tissue tape and the arrows then splattered, sprayed with water and dripped stains onto the board until I was happy with the result. I finished off with die-cut letters for my saying, a spray of sealer and a chit chat sticker under the filmstrip.

Thanks Jenny for the challenge and I have only used distress stains for all the colouring. I think the bit I like most are the arrows with the shattered stains effects on them.

I hope you will have time to join us at A Vintage Journey before the challenge finishes and please pop over to see the amazing projects designed and created by the talented Creative Guides, there is just so much inspiration to see.

Have a happy Friday, a wonderful weekend and some creative fun.

hugs Brenda xxx

Journal cover using a masterboard.

Today it’s my turn to present a piece of work for the Country View Project Blog.

Do you remember the masterboard I made for the challenge blog at the beginning of the month? Well I decided to use part of it to make a cover for a small journal. You can see the full tutorial of how to make the board HERE.

Here are a couple of sneak peeks of the journal cover.

The fun in making your own covers is knowing that no-one will ever have one exactly the same (even me lol). This one though went to a friend for her birthday.

If you haven’t joined in the challenge yet, perhaps you'd like to get out your stencils and have a go at making a journal or notebook cover for yourself and then show it to us on the challenge blog.

Have fun with whatever you are making this week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Stencil It (2) for Country View Crafts

My second sample for the Stencil It challenge at CVC is a tag with stencil stamping.

It also has some texture and collage elements.

It would be great if you have time to pop over to see my post today at Country View Challenges to see further details and to enter the challenge if you haven’t already. There is still plenty of time, so pop over to the Challenge post as well to check out the details.

I hope you are having a creative week.

hugs Brenda xxx