Give Away winner and mixed media ATC #1

Hi Everyone

As promised I am sharing the winner of my 6th blogaversary give away prize and at the same time want to say a huge thank you to all my family, craft friends and facebook friends for their wonderful birthday wishes for my birthday today. I am overwhelmed to have so many lovely people who are such a big part of my life in the craft world.

So the winner is .......

 No 16 - and that is

Rachel from Fisher's Cards and Crafts.

Thank you everyone for commenting and congrats Rachel if you email me your address I will get your goodies in the post next week.

So onto my ATC and after teaching my DecoArt Texture Board workshop I had a number of little demonstration boards left over with the different techniques on so I decided to use them to make little ATCs. Actually they are half an inch bigger on width and length but a lovely little size to play with and of course I didn't want to waste them. They had all been left at different stages so I gathered them together and started collecting little bits I could use with them and put them all in separate envelopes to come back to. As you can see from the photo below I gathered vintage photos from the Tim Holtz photo booth collection as well as his papers and even had a character for them.

So this is the top hat scientist, he loves nothing more to be in his lab cooking up new experiments but when he's out on the town Boy George doesn't stand a look in!

And this is the background, layers of papers and then daubs of DecoArt media paints and spritzes of water.

Just a few embellishments were needed to pull this one together .....

.... with a sentiment found on the internet by Frank Sinatra.

And attitudes are everything aren't they?

Have a great weekend. I am off to Portsmouth today with Ken to do a little retail therapy shopping and we have a table booked at Jamie Oliver's to eat later. Couldn't be better.

Thanks for sharing in my creative journey and for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Dandelion inspiration

I promised to show you how my muse took me off onto a completely different path after covering Beckah Krahula's Wanderlust lesson. If you missed my tangled journalling post you can see it here.

 I have been saving photos, paintings and drawings of dandelions, aliums and seed heads to a Pinterest board for quite some time and the shapes of these natural beauties intrigue me.

So I used my new found motivation and interest to doodle draw some of these shapes on small pieces of card ....

and made a new folder for them. 

As you can see there is no zentangling but that's where the inspiration came from to sit and have fun with pens, line, shape and perspective.

I even made my own reference drawings and notes on the back for future use.

I had made the cover from some paper that I had dipped and sprayed with bisters so I did the same to some good quality card that take the washes well and cut them up into the same size as my little learning cards and I am now playing with my designs over the top of the colour wash backgrounds ....

.... and I have plenty cut ready to pick up this little folder when I am sitting quiet and wanting something non-messy to do.

Who knows, you might see some of these turn up on my journal pages sometime.

If you are inspired to have a go at doodle drawing do let me know here or on facebook as I would love to see what you create.

See you tomorrow to find out who is the winner of my little give-away.

hugs Brenda xxx

Wanderlust Tangled Journaling

Part of the Wanderlust journey is to look at zentangles, a perspective from Beckah Krahula and although I don't consider myself to be a zentangler in any way, shape or form I was very interested in her processes and ways of keeping her zentangle experiments and ideas together. She uses what she calls decks and going through the videos I was totally taken in by her love of line, colour and experimentation creating little 'packs' of cards that remind her of a time, place or feeling in her life as well as the practice she puts in to create her wonderful work. She is a teacher and author and her work can be found on the internet. If you like doodling I recommend you go find out about her.

 

I've made several of her folders and added a cover to mine ....

 ... it fits right round the folder and allows me to put a belly band over it to keep it closed.

I've been playing with Beckah's ideas making a little pen guide and experimenting with a study in line to begin with .......

 I got so involved I ended making a whole deck of cards from her teaching.

... even adding my own notes on the reverse so I can just pick up the little folder and have  a way to remind myself of the learning.

 I think these study cards and practices will be useful when I want to pick up some pattern making and doodling again.

 And here is the little folder, closed up and ready to keep in a folder for another day.

Now as I said I am not a zentangler but I love little drawings and this work inspired me to go off in my own direction of creating another little folder with some simple designs I could use on journal pages. Pop back on Friday to see what I have been playing at....... oh and don't forget Friday is the last day to enter my give-away - see the details on my side bar.

Thanks for reading and sharing something different for me.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Collection of 3 and CVC Workshop

Good morning from a bright and sunny Surrey - what a beautiful few days we have had - such a lovely change to the grey skies and rain.

Today I am sharing my reverse canvas here and doing a 'show and tell' at Country View Crafts project Blog of all the wonderful canvases made at my workshop on Saturday.

 This was a rework of a canvas I made last year but transposed to a different size and with some modifications.

 I still love making these flowers that Tim Holtz produced back in the Compendium of Curiosities Book 1. It's great to revisit some of these oldies which are still very effective.

And I love new discoveries too. Whilst playing with ways to create these butterflies I re-discovered another oldie but goody, the TH distress embossing powders. They are not made any more so if you want to grab some before they have all gone then pop over to the CVC shop where Susan is doing 10 for £20 - that's less than half of the original price.

If you would like to see the wonderful interpretations of my canvas then please pop over to the project blog post today they really are all beautiful.

I would also like to share this at Frilly and Funkie's latest challenge which is called 'Let's make it a Trio', where hopefully my collection of three butterflies will fit in well.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Mixed media canvas board - Dress form card

Here is another of my canvas board cards. I love the 5 x 7 inch size and with Tim's easel on the back they make a great card for someone special. The first one can be seen here if you missed it. It's a little more shabby and fussy in style. This one is more mixed media but kept simpler.

For this one I began with some gesso scraped on, dried and then texture paste  added through a stencil.

Then some paper pieces adhered over the top and I gave them two coats of gesso.

Using peacock feathers, mermaid lagoon and picket fence distress crayons I added small marks, spritzed with water and rubbed the colours to achieve a watery wash and flicked on some peacock feathers and white ink.

I added some more paper pieces giving them only one coat of gesso and edged them lightly with ground espresso and frayed burlap distress markers. Searching through one of my bits boxes I found all the embellishments and glued them on lifting the dress form to create added dimension and allow me to slip pieces underneath.

 Here you can see the easel on the back of the card which means my friends can keep their card as a small personal work of art from me.

 

 You can see I used the same dress form that I used on my AVJ wall art last week (see it here if you missed it), this one got discarded for that project but I didn't want to see it go to waste and am pleased how it fits with the lighter colour background.

 Now I wonder which friend will receive this for their birthday?

Having seen the challenge at Craft Stamper I thought I would enter this as the theme is 'Take A Stamp' Anything Goes as there is some stamping somewhere on the project. Stamp sets I have used are Wendy Vecchi - a form of art (the cut out dress form), Tim Holtz - purely random (the Paris ticket) and Tim Holtz - ledger script (stamped onto the heart and border at the bottom).

I hope you are having a good week, we are catching glimpses of Spring arriving in the garden which is wonderful to watch.

Take care and don't forget my give-away which is available till next week. Details are on my side bar.

hugs Brenda xxx

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