Non traditional Valentine card

I thought I'd take the non traditional colours for this card having already made an all red one for my hubby.

Using Tim’s bundled sage, broken china and walnut stain distress paints, gently pounce them through  his hearts stencil using a mini blender. Heat dry.

Blend the same colours in distress inks over the whole piece.  

Spritz and flick water over and dry with a heat gun. Blend walnut stain around the edges. 

Stamp the hearts from the Valentine Silhouettes stamp set, I used faded jeans and blend broken china over them. Cut them out then edge with walnut stain.

Gather some more elements together – a frame, a border, a pennant and a text word – put them together to form your layout. 

Glue them down and your card is made. Add some chit chat stickers, glue it all to a piece of patterned paper and you have an 8 x 8 card to give to your loved one.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Thank you for stopping by and don't forget I have a giveaway open to all followers to celebrate my 5 year blogaversary and 1000 posts, I would love you to enter.

Listen to your heART and have a great day.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #7

When I got back from London Sunday night there was a box of new goodies waiting for me that I had ordered from Country View Crafts and inside were Tim's new stencils, so I decided to use a couple of these on my pages this week. There were also some re-inkers I had ordered and I love using these to make up my own colours for misting and spraying.

These two pages use the brand new CHA release Flourish and Blossom stencils, the flourish one worked really well on the textured pages, but the blossom one is more delicate and I think will work better with blending inks.

The green colour is a mix of 3 drops of Stormy Sky to 1 drop of peeled Paint and the pink colour is equal parts of  Worn Lipstick and Dried Marigold. I use Crafts Too misters but you could use Tim's mini misters if you have some.

Here you can see the textures on the pages - this is such an easy technique - paint gesso on both pages and close them together. When you pull them apart you get this wonderful ridged effect.

I have an A4 box of vintage images and when I saw this one I loved the retro feel, and made a couple of very feminine pages to go with it. To create some shadowing effects I edged the image and the diecuts with walnut stain mixed with matte medium and just painted it on, rubbing it thinly over the page where necessary.

Lots of fabric textures including lace and hessian which also bring the colours in to blend with the background and the image.

I made these little butterflies from left over pieces from a card I was making, they are scraps from one of Tim's new mixed media dies.

The patterned edges are a clear stamp I keep in a box to use as fill-ins and stamped in potting soil archival ink.

The little pin and the measuring tape just add further interest.

Thanks to all of you who have already linked for February, what a lovely surprise to see so many fabulous pages on Monday.

here is the Linky code for you to use.

get the InLinkz code


Always listen to the heART.

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Drips and drops #2 at CVC

You can tell I'm definitely looking forward to Spring can't you. Fresh green colours. tiny blossoms, bunnies and butterflies - can't wait.

This is my second contribution for the Drips and Drops challenge at Country View Crafts and I've used drips, drops and puddles on just about everything here.

I began by making the background using layers of bundled sage distress paint and stormy sky distress stain, spritzing them with water and allowing them to drip and run. When dry I blended over shabby shutters and evergreen bough distress inks and dripped water droplets over it and heat dried. I distressed and inked the edges with walnut stain.

All the die cuts were created by using left over pieces of card from previous projects and all had paints and/or inks on them

The rabbit was covered with vintage photo distress glitter.

The feathers were inked with gathered twigs and vintage photos and water dripped onto them before being dried.

The blossoms were die cut from a painty background left over.

The leaves cut from a piece left over from playing with Dylusions sprays. I then dipped them in some stormy sky dostress stain and picket fence distress paint and when dry a dripped some mustard seed and crushed olive stains onto them.

Te label was another piece of card where I had been playing with thw wrinkle free technique.

I stamped some small text onto the background with leaf green archival ink.

Thanks Sue for a great challenge title, I really enjoyed using my distress products on this one.

If you haven't seen the DT inspiration pieces then pop over to the challenge blog you get everyone's first project on challenge day 1 and then more inspiration from everyone as the month unfolds.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Blogaversary and 1000th post Giveaway

I have a double celebration to share with you. The 29th January was my FIVE year blogaversary and yesterday saw me publish my 1000th post. I never ever dreamed I would get this far when I started in 2010 and when I look back at what I was making then I cringe. It's been a fantastic five years, I have learnt sooooo much and more or less found my niche in the crafting world, although I still love experimenting with new styles and products, I feel now that I am at home with my art and that's a lovely feeling.

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all you lovely people who have been following me over the years both as Blogger and Google followers and those of you who follow by email too. I am very proud that my blogger stats show that I get 10,000+ page views a month, that just blows my mind to think that so many people visit to see what I am making and creating.

So if you would like to join my celebration and you are a *'follower'* please leave a comment below and I will use Random Org on the 24th February to choose the winner.

(A Follower is anyone who has subscribed to my blog through the Blogger Followers list, Google Followers and those who subscribe through the Follow by Email widget).

If you are unable to leave a comment on the blog as an email subscriber, please do email me and I will add you to the list.

Thank you again for being part of my life.

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“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time”.

 ~Thomas Merton

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Always listen to the heART.

hugs Brenda xxx

Treescape for Crafty Individuals

Crafty Individuals have a new set of tree stamps out - CI-429  and called Trees Galore. 

These are much wider than others they have designed and give great scope for using them to create landscapes, much like I have done on my collage piece below. 

I started with a piece of linen card and the wrinkle free technique using some green and blue distress inks (sorry forgot exactly which ones). Over that, using Potting Soil archival ink, I stamped the trees one and a half times to elongate the landscape further

It left a tiny gap between the two stamped images so I used a brown drawing pen to join them up.

Using a second stamp from the set and Tree Branch archival ink I did a second generation stamp across the tree line to create an ethereal woodland background. 

I gathered stamped ephemera (also CI stamps) and other elements to begin building a collage.

Using papers and oddments the background started to come together.

I knew this small portion of a tag would be ideal to use and just stamped lightly over it using a CI text stamp.

Some scraps of papers, borders and hessian and a portion of Tim's film strip die with the ephemera filling the spaces gave me some shape to the layout and provided additional dimension and texture. 

This is now in my large collage journal.

Before I go I thought I would share a few photos from our weekend trip to London. The children had given us tickets to see 'Memphis' for Christmas and we decided to stay overnight.

It is currently on at the Shaftesbury Theatre and starring Beverley Knight - she was amazing as were the whole cast. Their voices reverberated around the theatre and filled every corner.

Our hotel overlooked Hyde park, so it was lovely to have a walk round on both days.

The Italian Fountains.

Statue of Peter Pan.

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.

On Sunday we went to the Eight Lives, Eight Stories exhibition at The British Museum where new technology has uncovered some secrets of eight mummies from the Thebes area of Egypt.

We finished off with a glass of wine at Covent Garden taking in the atmosphere and for a while listening to an operatic singer.

I hope you had a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

PS I have just discovered this is my 1000th post, so come back again tomorrow as I will be offering a blog candy to celebrate.

Tic-Tac-Toe for AVJ

What is tic-tac-toe?

Wikipediea says -

Tic-tac-toe, or Noughts and crosses, is a paper-and-pencil game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game. So this is how this challenge title came about.

Annie is our lovely hostess this week at A Vintage Journey and she has described your challenge thus-

With so many Tim Holtz/Ranger and any other similar products we would like you to choose at least three items from the grid below and incorporate them in your projects. You can choose items horizontally/vertically or diagonally, it's your decision. Please, please include the name of the items you are using within your post, not just in the link to the challenge.

Idea-ology or any metal embellishment	Sprays	Ribbon/twine
Paint	Ephemera	Die cuts
Foil tape	Texture fades	Stains

For my Creative Guide sample I have taken the diagonal line from top right to bottom left. My Idea-Ology component is the ‘Found Relative’ photo, to embellish the collage I used Tim's Expedition ephemera pack and I used distress stains on the background (see below process steps).

Get yourself a cuppa and have a wander through the post, be warned there are quite a few photos.

Process steps – I dipped into Tim’s background technique as demonstrated on his July tag of 2014

To bring the piece together and add details -

 Alter the bookplate, this simply has some antique linen distress paint dabbed on it. Simple but lovely effects.

Ink the edges of chosen ephemera pieces ....

... and know exactly where you are putting them on the collage.

 Add some sewing and die-cuts......

..... and make charmed embellishments.

As this is such a large collage I built the lower with the large layers first and put it to flatten under a heavy box. When it was dry and flatter I added the next level of smaller elements and flattened it again. 

Finally I adhered the bulky elements to finish it off.

The altered clip board was made quite quickly -

I covered it completely with tissue wrap - this paper is so forgiving

I again used distress paints to alter the look of the clip (which was bright silver to start with).

Finally I glued the collage to the board - I couldn't resist taking a picture of the other bulldog clips all round it.

 The little charm was added to the clip.

Finished.

I've just noticed I haven't shown you how to get the exra mile out of your Found Relatives cards. Can you see the gorgeous patterned piece that looks like a playing card. Well carefully peel the back off your relative card and you too can have an additional element to add to your projects.

I am really happy with the way this turned out and have bought several more clipboards so that I can experiment with other designs.

I hope you will pop over to the AVJ blog to see all the amazing creations from the Creative guides and hopefully find some time to join in the challenge.

Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend, I am off to London tomorrow to see 'Memphis' at the Shaftesbury Theatre and we are going to stay overnight, this is our Christmas present from our gorgeous kids Ben, Bev and Maddie.

hugs Brenda xxx