Things with wings - Fairy Girls

It's the 1st of July and time for another challenge over at Country View Challenges. The theme is 'Things with Wings' and as I am in a very vintage mode at the moment I decided to use the paper dolls and make my own wings to add to these two cute girls.

Wings

Paint a piece of thin card with white tinting base to seal it.

Dip in watery washes of titan buff and medium grey v6.

Sponge over some white tinting base and gently shake some vintage glitter powder over it and heat set it.

Take the butterfly die-cuts, spritz them with water and with a tiny paint brush gently pull quinacridone gold and raw umber round the edges of the wings and drip the most tiniest amount in a couple of random places and heat dry.

Take your chosen vintage photo and add the wings. I also added a small amount of quin gold to the girls as well.

For the background
Stamp dictionary text onto brown card, create a collage over it and scrape some white tinting base over with a palette knife.

Paint over with ultra matte varnish or matte medium to seal it before then dribbling raw umber, quinacridone red and paynes grey around the edges of the collage pieces, spritzing with water and drying to create the aged look.

Gather together some embellishments, dip them, paint them and age them.

The shadowbox is made of light wood so I sanded it roughly all over and then gave it a coat of raw umber and titanium white antiquing cream, keeping them separate colours to put onto the wood and blended them on there so I got light and dark contrasts as well as the blended hues between. I used my finger to rub the colours onto the front of the frame and then used a wet paint brush to colour the outside. I took a damp babywipe and gently knocked it back a little and left it to fully dry. Then I sanded where I wanted to see some wear and tear and used a blending tool and ground espresso distress ink. To finish off I used a small piece of kitchen scourer sponge and using the scouring side I lightly rubbed some more of the white antiquing cream over the top to create a more shabby look. I realised as I was doing it I could quite as easily used the tinting base or titanium white media acrylic which would have been more permanent - but after it dried a light coat of matte medium sealed it beautifully.

Assemble.

I always try to ground people when they are standing upright so they don't look as though they are floating in mid air, today I used a quote chip for that purpose.

All paints and mediums are from the DecoArt Media range.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to seeing you enter a project over the next four weeks.

hugs Brenda xxx

Inspired by Dee - shabby dress form

Welcome to an AVJ Tag Friday post where we create a tag with no boundaries, it's just for fun. I was supposed to be in Boston for 10 days recently on holiday but my broken ankle curtailed that so I asked the lovely Di Oliver at Tando Creative if I could go along to the Dare2Create retreat in Coventry to catch up with everyone and give me some 'out of the house' time. Kindly she said yes and surprisingly a space opened up on Andy's workshop on the Saturday and I was able to jump in and take part. I also sat in on the lovely Dee Adams demonstration in the evening and came home so inspired I set to on Monday and this was the result.

Tag

- paint a coat of white gesso - dry

- paint with three chosen colours (quinacridone magenta, blue/green light, phthalo turquoise) and tinting base to keep it pale and shabby

- randomly apply weathered wood in a few areas and leave to dry

- give a random coat of white crackle paint around the edges and over the weathered wood areas. Leave to dry
- seal with matte varnish

- dribble a wash of prussian blue - dry
- repeat with a wash of transparent yellow iron oxide
- dabble on watery white, spritz and dry.

- take raw umber and titanium white antiquing cream and rub them together over the surface (I used 4 white to 1 brown),

 - leave for a minute or two and then rub back very lightly with a damp babywipe

- with a palette knife apply some white modelling paste again random areas around the edges and sprinkle with chunky embossing enamel and heat set, let it completely dry

- dribble through some quinacridone gold and raw umber to give it a worn rusted look

- stamp clouterie label on tissue paper, tear around it and adhere it to the background
- stamp some small text

- triple emboss a piece of card with frantage embossing enamels using chunky clear for the middle layer then stamp the dress form (using coffee archival ink) into it whilst it's hot, let it cool and cut it out

- stamp, emboss and alter other elements to build a collage

- stain some seam binding ribbon with quinacridone and raw umber watery paints

- and assemble

The label was heat embossed with gold onto brown card and a little bottle with some seed beads glued on.

The close up of the dress form shows some of the texture created by stamping into the molten embossing enamels.

I have some altered gems that look downright rusty and added them to give more of the timeworn effect and feel to it.

You can see the postmark stamped with embossing powder and given some watery washes of paint. The lace was just painted with the media acrylics to get the aged effects to it.

True to Dee's style the edges were textured with modeling paste and sprinkled with frantage aged gold embossing enamel and heated to get those lovely effects. This technique fits with her grungy style and this more shabby one. Thanks Dee for the inspiration.

All paints and mediums are from the DecoArt Media line.


Do pop over to A Vintage Journey to see who which of the Creative Guides have joined in with the fun today, there's always a fabulous collection to whet your appetite.

So my mojo seems to have returned and I'm fully inspired to get going on some more projects. I need to get on quickly to be able to catch up with myself though. I am now back in my workroom to create so I know that will help me as well having all my supplies around me.

To finish here's a couple of pics from last weekend.

 Andy in full flow - you can just see me on the table to the right.

Here we are - Susan, me and Sian. I met both of these lovely ladies on the day and because I wasn't expecting to take part they shared their supplies with me which enabled me to fully join in. Aren't crafting buddies just the best?

Of course it was fabulous to meet up with the gorgeous Tracy Weinzafel again - I was just sorry I couldn't do her class on the Sunday. I had arranged for Ken to come and pick me up, but we grabbed a coupe of minutes for this photo.

And here are the two that kept me going (Suz and Dee) with lots of laughs, lots of help and plenty of alcohol lol. (I was good actually as I didn't want to be drunk in charge of crutches!!!!!!). Suz very kindly gave me a lift to Coventry on the Friday too, it was lovely to spend more time with her. This is a photo of them both in Asda trying on sparkly dresses together - what are they like? They didn't buy them even though they were only £3 each.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm off out shopping tomorrow to help Ella spend her birthday money.

Have a great weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Oxides background for cards #3

Do you remember the background masterboards I made as my first outing using the new Distress Oxides (here if you missed it) and then the two cards I made using some of it? (Again here and here if you missed those too). But waste not, want not I wasn't going to let the pieces left over go into the bit box yet and I needed a couple of cards to send to to lovely friends who had sent me happy parcels in the post, so I put them to good use. I'm using these as my project for the Country View Crafts project blog today, so please pop over there to see more details and photos.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Crafting from the sofa #8 - Retro circles

Well I'm having to schedule some posts quite ahead of myself as I seem to have been so prolific with the panels for my lovely Eileen Hull HeArtfelt Journal, but in keeping with the previous panel - Retro Garden - we now have some Retro Circles.

I still used the same 12 x 12 paper stack and similar colours and a doxide background created along the way with mop ups from different projects. I didn't add and stencilling or stamping as I just love the depth the oxides create with layers of dipping in different colours.

 I gathered some simple bits from the few supplies I have beside the sofa .....

...... and even found the ticket to add after I had taken the photo above ......

....... and it all came together and into the journal quite quickly.

No real techniques at the moment - but I'm loving just having time to collage bits and pieces together.

I have to say the midori style booklet I made for these is filling up quite fast now.

Thanks for taking some time to pop by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Hearts #2 for CVC

Welcome everyone - I have an altered mdf heart to share today and one which had the background painted on quite a while ago and got put away in a box for ages, but it serves my purpose well for this month's challenge at Country View Crafts as the substrate on which to create a summer garden. It reminds me of one of those darker corners where it's lush and green but very has very little colour mainly due to the lack of light.

Here's the background, I believe it was originally created using household paints.

I used DecoArt media acrylic paints using sap green, prussian blue hue, titanium white and titan buff to mix blends as well as adding the two darker colours neat with blending foam ........

.....  and Tim's mini stencil to blend and bump the flower images

I had lots of the wildflowers die-cuts in a bag and chose these to go together and gave the whole background a coat of matte medium as I was adhering them on.

When it was dry I dribbled some of the paints inbetween the flowers to create more depth and then splattered a little white to create more interest.

Her you can see the layers in more detail.

I have a small box of butterflies either free digital downloads or cut from designer paper pads and chose three to flutter around my garden.

So that's my second heart project for the month. Have you had a chance to join in the challenge yet? We'd love to see you.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Scrapcosy Radishes

I have another card made with the gorgeous vintage stamps from Scrapcosy and if you's like to see the details they are over on the Country View Crafts Project Blog today.

These are fabulous summer images and this time I have combined them with infusions. If you would like to see the process steps and more photos please pop over to the CVC project blog where I explain how I designed this.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Crafting from the sofa #7 - Retro garden

Welcome to another of the 'sofa' series. As I write this I am coming up to the end of the third week in plaster and waiting to see what the Consultant says about my progress in a couple of days time. So you maybe ahead of this information when you read this post as that was still in May.

For this panel I took a completely different turn - I had bought down some paper pads and decided to look for some images to cut up and use rather than chop the paper for panels and covers. It resulted in quite a bit of fussy cutting .....

........ - that's a funny phrase isn't it? I looked it up and it does mean just what I did; cutting images and designs from patterned paper and stamped images.

I also used one of my doxide backgrounds adding a couple of strips and fussy cut flowers, leaves and butterfly. I rather like the retro feel to it.

Just a quick post for today, thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx