Monday, 7 March 2016

Destination Inspiration - embarking at terminal 1

Welcome everyone - it is my turn to share a Destination Inspiration project over at A Vintage Journey.
In our travel bag this month we have packed -
Product - something metal
For the technique- rusting paint or powders
Colour - pale purple/lavender/violet
Substrate - board

I have made another board hanging using the weathered wood boards technique I taught at some DecoArt workshops last year and that I demoed at the Andy Skinner Mixology retreat in Coventry, so do pop over and take a look at my process steps that I am sharing today.



Industrial Butterfly
 I made one of these as part of my Curio box for our last challenge and promised a tutorial for how to get the very rusty looking finish so here we go.

Cover some card with foil tape and run it through your embossing machine using Tim's layered die and run the butterfly through in the embossing folder

Give it a thin coat of gesso, rub some of it away and dry it and then collect together 


Paint/dab on neat paynes grey, burnt umber and some quinacridone red ....


... then add some quinacridone gold, spritz with water and let it drip around a bit before drying.


Now layer watery washes of those colours adding in some red iron oxide until happy with the effects - dry.


Sand over the veins .....
 

.... and add more washes if needed.



Products I used

DecoArt media fluid acrylics -  titanium white, titan buff, burnt umber, transparent red iron oxide, paynes grey, quinacridone burnt orange.
DecoArt white gesso, manila card, metal foil.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you can manage a quick hop over to A Vintage Journey to see my DI post and the weathered Boards process steps and more details and photos of my project.

I hope you all enjoyed a happy Mother's Day yesterday in the UK, I am so very lucky to have two wonderful children, a gorgeous daughter-in-law and very special grandchildren who shared part of the day with me.

Have a great week and listen to your heART.

hugs Brenda xxx



Updated - post copied over from AVJ


Here we are alighting at terminal 1 for the month of March and as you will have seen on the birthday post last Friday we are using our travel bag and it's contents for the challenge theme. You may have seen my piece of wall art I made for Friday's post and I have re-created the background for a second piece. So let's undo the travel bag again to remind ourselves what is in there.

Product: Something Metal
Technique: Rust Effects (perhaps using rusting or embossing powders or rust coloured paints)
Colour: Lilac or Pale Purple
Substrate: Board (eg grey board, coaster board, cardboard)



Now let your imagination flow and follow me on a discrete track and find out how I made my weathered boards background using DecoArt medial fluid acrylics.

I began with a piece of greyboard and a piece of manila card both cut to the same size (4 1/2 x 8 ins) and took the card to work on.

Weathered Wooden Boards

If you don't have a purple in your colour range of acrylic paints and I don't, mix quinacridone magenta and prussian blue together to create this gorgeous mauve and paint the surface of your card with it and dry.


Use a stiff paint brush to ‘paint’ on Vaseline or petroleum jelly in the direction of the boards you will finish with ie for me that's longways. Then paint over with titanium white, keep gently swiping the brush in the same direction and slowly some of the paint will be rubbed away by the brush.
Gently heat and wipe with a dry paper towel (again in the same direction) to remove a little more of the paint.


Repeat the previous two steps using titan buff.



There is still lots of vaseline on the card so paint again with titanium white (without adding more vaseline) heat quickly and rub with the paper towel before the paint is dry.
 


Mix a very small amount of your mauve again and add to some titanium white and water to create a pastel lilac coloured wash. Paint again and spritz with some more water whilst it is still wet to create the mottled effects and rub gently with the kitchen towel before it is completely dry.
 

Use a distressing brush tool to scratch some marks into the ‘wood’ ....


... and score lines to create the ‘boards’, distress the lines with a sanding block and rub in a brown distress ink. Adhere to the backing board and distress and ink the edges.



Now gather all the elements to embellish your board - die-cut circles, rusty butterfly, small canvas to create height, a wordband and some natural fibres and foliage.


I promised a step out for the industrial butterfly I made for last months challenge and you can find that over on my blog today. It has a base of foil tape on card.



The mini canvas was changed from an original stamped effect I had on it which was far too busy for underneath the butterfly so I gessoed it all over a couple of times then made up some of the lilac watery wash using the quinacridone magenta, prussian blue and titanium white paints. After a few dips and dries it was just what I needed.



Now to put it together ....

 .... with some natural fibres and foliage ....


.... some remnant rubs ....



 .... an altered wordband ....


.... the rusty butterfly alighted on the mini canvas ....


.... and a rusty wire hanger for displaying.



We have completed our time at Terminal 1, I hope you have enjoyed the stop and the project I made with the contents of our travel bag. We are looking forward to seeing what you make with them - don't forget there are no restrictions on what products you use, just jump aboard the travel bag challenge and have fun.

We will see you again on Friday with the winner and pinworthies from last months challenge.

Enjoy the week.

hugs Brenda xxx



Friday, 4 March 2016

Specimen 2b - AVJ March Challenge and Give Away

Today sees a 're-launch' of A Vintage Journey challenge blog. By re-launch we mean that there have been some significant changes to the focus of the challenges and additions to the genres acceptable for entry. Although we still love Tim Holtz the challenges are no longer restricted to his inspiration, we have opened it up to include all artists and products and within vintage –shabby – mixed-media – art journaling – industrial and steampunk genres and through making tags, cards, canvas, 3D projects, ATCs, journals, assemblages, layouts and any altered art.

So onto my project for the new look.


We thought it would be great fun to get everyone working with the contents of our Destination Inspiration travel bag and these are -
Product - something metal
For the technique- rusting paint or powders
Colour - pale purple/lavender/violet
Substrate - board

I began by mixing quinacridone magenta with some prussian blue to create a gorgeous mauve and painted it over my card substrate. I went on to create a weathered wooden board effect using more media paints and vaseline and a technique I taught at some of my DecoArt workshops last year and demonstrated at Mixology 2015 last October. (Come back Monday to learn more).

This shows the painted layers .....


... on Monday I will be sharing the full steps at AVJ if you want to learn how I created the effects

As always I gathered together some elements that I wanted to collage together ....


... the dress form and stand have been stamped and cut out using vintage photo distress embossing powder which immediately brigs in my rust element. You'll also see I swapped out the lifetime word for the specimen 2b title which got the same treatment except I used vintage photo distress ink rather than embossing ink, this gave it a much deeper look as you can see from the two examples below.


The bow on the dress form is a metal charm that has been painted and I also added a paperclip and rusty wire to hang the board up with completing all the elements required.


I added some cheesecloth dipped slightly in vintage photo distress ink behind the dress form to create more depth and interest and collaged the ephemera behind it all.


General products used -
DecoArt media fluid acrylics - quinacridone magenta, prussian blue, titanium white, titan buff
DecoArt mediums - matte medium, ultra matte varnish
Greyboard, manilla card, Tim Holtz ephemera and papers, Stampers Anonymous Haberdashery (Tim Holtz) and A Form of Art (Wendy Vecchi) stamps
vaseline, vintage photo distress embossing powder.



I hope you can pop over to A Vintage Journey to see the wonderful inspiration from the team and also find out about the changes we have made. The sponsor this month is Andy Skinner so some new goodies to be won if you are lucky.

I will be back on Monday with a Destination Inspiration post using exactly the same contents of the travel bag but a different project and there will be two tutorials one on my blog here and another over at AVJ.

And just before you go I have a give-away to celebrate both the birthday challenge and my 6th blogaversary which was back in January. If you would like to be part of the draw then please leave a comment below and I will add your name when I add the numbers to Random Org which will be on the 18th March and I will announce the winner here on another special birthday on the 19th March.


Thanks for being part of my creative journey.
Have a great weekend and listen to your heART.

hugs Brenda xxx



Tuesday, 1 March 2016

Through the lens of time

Country View Challenges has an 'Industrial' theme this month and it took me a while to get myself going on this. I had chosen the clip board as the substrate weeks ago and I covered it with the embossed foil tape but then it just lay around my craft room waiting for inspiration to hit me. I had a couple of ideas but as I went searching for things another idea popped into my head and with the help of Pinterest I ended up with this very quirky aged, industrial style camera lens with clocks in it - hence the title today. Although nothing like my finished article THIS CAMERA (click to be transported) became my visual inspiration.


Firstly I wanted to re-create the ridges around the inner part of the lens and some corrugated card came to my rescue. I cut four pieces each 1 cm wide and 14 cm long and carefully curved them round the outside edge of the greyboard smaller circle (bought as a wreath). When it was dry I gave it a coat of black gesso, dried it and carefully went round dry brushing the ridges and the centre piece with media metallic silver when that was dry I brushed on treasure pewter. Over the lower area I added washes of paynes grey, black and raw umber and finished with a media gloss varnish to give it a more shiny plastic effect. The numbers are remnant rubs aiming to imitate the exposure range of the lens - but I had to take on artistic license here.
 

On the larger circle I chose to use my camouflage chippy paint technique creating the outer part of the lens finishing off with several washes of prussian blue, titan buff, quinacridone gold and paynes grey and a touch of transparent yellow iron oxide. I glued on rusty circular pieces for the screw heads gave it a coat of media ultra matte varnish ....


.... but later I came back to it again and added some ransom patches of transparent crackle glaze and patina antiquing cream. I love the close-up detail of this.


The centre of the lens has been built up with a circular piece of foamboard again given the crackle and patina antiquing cream treatment ...



.... a die-cut picture wheel - coated with sand texture paste and given rusty washes of paint ...


.... and metal clocks and clock part also rusted up ....



 .... when put together have a very industrial feel to them.


There are two boards here with different sized circles cut out and when layered give the perspective of looking into the lens aperture ....


 ... and a few more pieces to add as embellishments - all altered in one way or another.


Thanks for stopping by to take a look and see how this came together. Something a bit unusual for me but I still had fun with all the DecoArt paints and mediums getting different finishes.


There's lots more inspiration from the design team over at Country View Challenges. I do hope you will join us and maybe you will be lucky and win the birthday voucher.

Have a great week, be creative and and listen to your heART.

hugs Brenda xxx


Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
Yousuf Karsh

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Stitches 2016 catch up

I got back from a weekend in Birmingham last night, tired and full of cold but was so fired up with ideas from being at the Stitches show I ended getting up in the middle of the night and getting on with project work. My sample for the next AVJ challenge starting on the 4th March is almost finished and this morning I wanted to have a very quick play with my new distress crayons so there's a 'Checking Out' blog post coming a bit later - but before we get there let me share some photos. I didn't get many (so busy chatting and catching up with people), but I know others have got some so I will try and scrounge some more later.

I felt very privileged to get a space on Tim's workshop on Saturday afternoon ....


.. and we had a great time learning how some of his new products work ...


... particularly the new distress crayons and the crazing collage medium.


 Having time to play with them whilst learning about their properties and how they work with each other was amazing ...


 ... and coming home with a beautiful framed vintage collage and our left over goodies, including the pack of crayons we were using, was the icing on the cake.

 It was lovely to catch up with old friends O:), meet friends from Face Book and make completely new friends especially Marie and Ilona from Sweden.
A quick dash to Starbucks with Anne, Julia, Nikki (in the background) and Cathryn and it was great fun having lunch with Kath, Enfys and Hina on Sunday.


 A little time to catch up with Mario ....


 ... and of course great fun with the prankster Andy Skinner on the DecoArt stand. He's always full of fun as well as being super talented with all his grungy, artistic makes. L to R me, Cathryn, Julia, Nikki, Andy and Anne.


 It was also good to catch up with Jenny Marples, Di Oliver, Elizabeth Robinson and Katie Leitch, but sadly no photos of them.

Thanks everyone for a great weekend - looking forward to the next get together.

hugs Brenda xxx