Aged riveted metal tag - DecoArt technique - Board 4

I am pleased to show you this riveted tag which looks as though it's been lost and left outside for years. It has that decayed, aged and weathered look to it and would you believe there is no metal on it at all - it's just greyboard (chipboard). This is the fourth sample plaque I have made for my next Country View Crafts workshop and although we won't be making these boards I will be teaching six techniques for different corroded metal effects and workshop participants will use some of those techniques to alter a box in which they can keep their sample cards. I am also showed this on the Country View Crafts Project Blog on Monday.

 I made the riveted metal effect on a piece of greyboard before running it through the bigshot with Tim's small tabs and tags die.

I got so involved in the processes I forgot to take any more photos then till the end but the ATC has a three colour distress paint technique on it which many of you will know as it uses candle wax to create that chipped paint look.

The cabinet card has layers of gesso, cerulean and turquoise hue paint and washes with a splattering of the white shimmer mister before layering white crackle paste through a stencil and when dry applying a wash of raw sienna.

The background has been dipped in chipped sapphire and scattered straw distress inks and edged with walnut stain.

There are still two more techniques and boards to come in the series, so I hope you like what you see.

Have a great long weekend in England and the US.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #21

Well it's so lovely to be home and back at my craft desk. We had a fabulous holiday visiting friends in California and catching up with my very dear friend Terry but this time we were waylaid by a few problems particularly a touch of food poisoning which we both had and I also got phlebitis in my right leg which was quite tender and sore as well as a bit worrying. But we're home safely and now catching up with the washing and shopping etc and I've now got to meet some vital deadlines for projects.

This was one of them. I had done the background before I went away using decoart media paints to create a very grungy and rusty effect .......

.....  but I had no idea how I was going to finish them - until today (wednesday) when putting things away I had bought back from America and clearing my desk again I found some butterflies I had been playing with a few weeks ago and some lovely white wings cut through the middle.

'Out of the shadows' was part of the original book page which I had left peering out of the background

As you can see I chose a found relative and isn't she the most cutest little girl and so suits a pair of angel wings .... and really only needed something to ground her on the page.

The other side I just added some collaged ephemera around the book words and stamped a quote.

Some simple pages although I love the white pigment ink stamping over the dark background - it makes for a very different deign and effect.....

.... and another double spread added to the altered book.

Before I go I thought you might like to see what I came back from America with -------

It's not quite everything I bought, there were some other bits as well that didn't make it into the photos but this is quite a large tote I bought in Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon, it measures 30 x 20 cms and is 18 cms deep.

You can see I packed it with new goodies .......

.... and loved getting a bargain or two lol.

As always if you would like to share the visual journey collection you will find the code to add to you post here -

get the InLinkz code

... and I look forward to sharing in your pages through the linky below.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

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Cards for Crafty Individuals

The monthly theme of 'Music to my ears' continues over at Crafty Individuals and I have made some cards for my DT samples linking with the music theme.

My 'Thanks' card uses stamp sets CI-377 where I cut out the silhouette dancers and CI-194 for the music background. The music stave is a memory box die and the sentiment is Tim Holtz, although it's difficult to see the black background actually has music notation on it.

On my second card I have used the CI-366 stamp set and created layers with border dies and snippets from my scrap box. 

Now I am sure you can see the musical link to the previous two cards, but this next one it is more obtuse. Can you guess what it is?

I couldn't resist creating a card using this beautiful collaged stamp of the pretty girl advertising perfume (CI-148 and CI-335), but take a closer look at the name of the shop. Is that a big enough clue?

This card uses the beautiful Floradora girl stamp and the Woman's World tag set. I haven't added any overt references to music but as soon as I saw the stamp it resonated with me and I immediately saw a link to the challenge as the name of the shop where this perfume is sold is called Adele. I love Adele's music and have both her albums, so it fitted nicely in my brain lol.

Jean as always is very generous with her prizes and offers so do pop over to the challenge post to see more amazing samples from the DT and find the details of how you can enter.

A big welcome to all the new followers who have joined me recently, it's wonderful to have you aboard and to all my commenting and silent readers who stop by to see what I am up to, thanks for sharing in my creative journey.

Take care, have a great weekend. I will be travelling back from my holidays today so I will update with some photos on my return.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #20

"I want to be improbable and beautiful afraid of nothing as if I had wings".

This is another foray into bright colours and colouring in - in fact painting with DecoArt media acrylics.

I began with the stamping using PaperArtsy Eclectica stamps by Darcy and black archival ink. To create the background I used cobalt blue hue, dairylide yellow and a touch of phthalo green-blue with lots of water and a babywipe.

Using an old credit card and white gesso I dragged the white down the pages to create more interest and added some small text stamping in random places.

Out came the very small brushes and a palette of cadmium red hue, titan buff, cadmium orange hue and diarylide yellow to paint in all the flower shapes.

The ones on the left page were painted with quinacridone magenta. I also painted in some more grasses in different browns to make it look a little more realistic.

After using a black pen to bring back some of the outline and sharpen the edges  I used the credit card and white gesso again and then I splattered some watery titan buff over it.

At this point I did think about using a white pen and adding highlights and maybe a border around the pages and even splashes of brown paint but I have learnt that I can go too far sometimes and overdo things so I decided to leave it right here. I'm happy.

I hope you have been able to journal this week and hopefully add your creations to my Visual Journey link below.

If you would like to share the collection you will find the code to add to you post here -

get the InLinkz code

... and I look forward to sharing in your pages through the linky below.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake

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Rusty Clock - DecoArt techniques - Board 3

This is board three in a series showing a brand new technique - flat rust, devised by myself, which can be used on both large substrates (ie card, chipboard etc) and on smaller pieces like this die-cut clock.  I am having such great fun experimenting with the decoart media range to create ways of making backgrounds and ideas for using in mixed media art work.

This flat rust technique could be applied to any die-cut you wanted and you can see the metallic effect and rusty areas on it.

The ATC base technique I am calling 'weathered painted relief' and I think this looks a bit like a chipped and rusty circuit board, but that's because I used one of the new Andy Skinner stamps. I want to try it out with different stamps and colours to see what other effects it gives me.

On the cabinet card I used layers of the acrylic paints and the transparent crackle glaze bit I must have done something wrong somewhere because it wasn't very successful, but that didn't stop me using it.

I forgot to take more photos as I was waiting for layers to dry, but I gave it a wash of titan buff to reveal what cracks did appear (and most of those have been covered up by the ATC) and I gave it a wash of quinacridone gold and then baked it with the heat gun to create little bubbles. So I still got some texture on it.

I am really looking forward to teaching these techniques next month for Country View Crafts - the details are on my side bar.

Thanks for stopping by and for the lovely comments both here on my blog and on face Book with these techniques.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Tag for Crafty Individuals

It's May, a new challenge has started at Crafty Individuals and the theme is about music.

I have interpreted this in my own way (as I do ....) and taken a play on the word 'song' in the caption used on my tag.

Process steps -

Blend distress inks old paper, evergreen bough and weathered wood with a blending tool and mist with stormy sky and peeled paint mix in a mister. Blend the edges with frayed burlap - spritz and flick with water and heat dry.

Stamp CI 430 with stormy sky and frayed burlap and heat dry. I love the distressed pattern and collage effects of this stamp, it's perfect for creating backgrounds.

Stamp various stamps from the collection CI 329 and also add some stamped card collage pieces.

I also added some drawn lines between the mini tag and the birds to make it look as though they are holding it between them. Add a bow ........

..... and sentiment or quote to finish it off.

I hope you can join us in the challenge this month. Jean is always very generous with her prizes and discounts so pop over to the Crafty Individuals blog to see what Jean has in store for this challenge.

hugs Brenda xxx

Visual Journey #19

These pages were inspired somehow by song lyrics - and I don't even like this song but it got stuck in my head during the making process.

I have been using oil pastels quite a bit recently and they live in a drawer full of other tins of artists colour supplies - for some reason I picked up my aquatone solid watercolor sticks and decided to have a play. I also had on my desk a wooden board with nine holes in so I used it as a stencil and coloured in the circles with the watercolours. When they were complete I 'painted' each one with matt medium and left them to dry overnight.

Step 2 was to create  wash background using stormy sky and weathered wood distress stains, spritzing them with water and letting then blend over the pages. The circles remained untouched by the colours as I was able to wipe the stains away easily.

I gathered some stencils with holes in and used some white acrylic paint to get a variety of sizes over the page. In many ways I wish I had used gesso as this acrylic doesn't have much pigment and blended into the page more than I wanted.

As I had the drawer open with tins of colour in I picked up my Inktense pencils and crayoned in different coloured auras around each circle and used a Paintbrush and water to blend and deepen them.

The white came in next with the posca pen .....

 ... and I added some stencilling ........

.... and some black and white stamping and stencilling to the circles .......

.... before finishing off with handwritten lyrics and a printed line from the song.

I hope it doesn't leave you with the tune spinning around in your head lol.

Thank you to everyone who leaves a comment and to those who join me in this amazing journey, I just love popping round and seeing how you are expressing yourself and sharing in your journals.

Here is the code for sharing the May collection on your blog, should you wish to ......

get the InLinkz code

.... and I look forward to seeing pages from your visual journey over the next month. The link for you to join me is below.

Have a great end to the week .

hugs Brenda xxxx

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