Two Friends Blog Post with Marjie Kemper.

It was a little while ago now when I was contacted by the fabulous Marjie Kemper who asked if I would like to join her in a blog series she was planning calling it 

Two Friends’ Favorite Blog Posts

Firstly I was surprised to receive the email and felt very proud that she calls me a friend and secondly thrilled to be asked to join in. When I got the link and graphics for the post going live today I was even more excited to find I have been paired with another very lovely blogging friend Jenny Marples at 'Pushing the Right Buttons' so that both of us share the post together.

I would be very happy if you could pop on over to see Marjie's post and you can see what I chose for my project in the graphic below.

Thanks Marjie for choosing me and letting me share some space on your wonderful blog.

Hoping you all are having a great week and keep an eye open for some more very exciting news I have to share - coming soon.

hugs Brenda xxx

Winter Wonderland stand up card

It's Winter Wonderland over at A Vintage Journey with this being the theme for the December challenge.

My sample for the challenge is one of my Tando stand up cards.

Di at Tando Creative has cut me boards to the exact size I wanted to make these cards using the white backed greyboard. The grey side was painted with a thin coat of gesso and when dry dipped into watery decoart dazzling metallics crystal green and ice blue paints and dried, then stamped with archival cornflower blue using a stampendous vintage text stamp. As always I distressed and inked the edges.

The snowflake background and snowflake have been created the same as a card I made in 2015 which can be found HERE. You can see I added some shabby seam binding ribbon to it before adhering it to the background.

The stand is soooo easy to make out of two pieces of card.

 I added the Lin Brown sentiment from PaperArtsy which fitted perfectly across the board and when all was assembled I splattered with some titanium white media acrylic paint.

I hope we'll see you enjoying entering your winter projects with us at AVJ and now I need to get myself in full Christmas mode with getting cards made and out, decorations up and some traditional sweet treats made for my kids and grandchildren.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Fragile Winter Mixed Media Canvas

Last year I made a canvas for the Craft Stamper that I called 'Fragile Winter' and it was in the December issue. I am at last sharing it here and over on the Country View projects blog with the process steps I took to make the canvas background here and the snowflakes steps on CVC.

Step-by-step…

1.    Seal the canvas top and sides with a coat of gesso and dry, wipe over with a wash of magenta, then daub modelling paste in areas that you want to stamp the snowflakes.

2.    Heat dry the paste until a skin has formed, spritz the stamp with water and press it into the paste removing it straight away. 

3.    Paint layers of crackle paste all over the rest of the background and some on the sides and leave the whole canvas to dry naturally.

4.    Lay a darkish watery grey wash over the crackled areas dab off any excess with kitchen roll. 

5.    Layer light pink and grey layers of watery paints, let them drip and move around, drying between each layer. Then stamp snowflakes with watering can archival ink. 

6.    Brayer on white and cream paints, dry with a heat gun and then dribble and spritz white watery paint through the whole background. 

7.    Go back into a couple of the areas of the textured snowflakes with a very watery wash of magenta to create contrast and depth. 

8.    Finger paint thin white paint around the pink areas and lightly spritz the white shimmer mister to bring coherence to the overall design. 

9.    Dab watery colours into recesses if they need it and splatter a watery wash of titan buff and one of magenta dabbing off with a paper towel to further help unify the whole piece. 

To finish the project

·         Seal the background with a coat of Ultra Matte Varnish.

·         Add snowflakes using the same colours but deeper tones so that they stand out. Process steps to make these can be found at Country View Crafts project blog.

If you subscribe to Craft Stamper you may remember seeing it but it's that magical time of the year as Christmas approaches and as I was asked to teach the steps at 'Let's Be Creative' last week, I hope to be back soon to show you the new design I made to take with me.

Enjoy the lead up to December, it's only 26 days to Christmas.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tando Creative - Modeling Paste

It's texture paste week over on the Tando inspiration blog and I had fun creating a very grungy project.

To start I took one of the long Tando chipboard tags, gave it a coat of gesso and then a light coat of transparent iron oxide keeping it light and barely covering the whole of the tag.

To get some texture on the tag I took DecoArt modeling paste and mixed it with a little burnt umber media fluid acrylic and with a palette knife applied it through the long flourish stencil, turning it over to apply it at the bottom.

Next I took two different sizes of the grab bag circles and cut a little from each of them and gave them a coat of burnt umber. Before the tag dried I took the circles applied wet glue to the backs and and stuck them into the modeling paste....

.... then I added some texture sand paste around the edges of the circles and the tag itself then left it to fully dry.

Once dried I rubbed a candle over the texture paste parts and then stippled with dark grey, cobalt turquoise and cobalt blue and rubbed the colours off of the textured areas.

I repeated again this time adding in some transparent yellow iron oxide.

Next I focussed on the sand texture areas and the edges and stippled in burnt umber, burnt sienna and paynes grey followed by rust in a bottle - a coat of quinacridone gold spritzed with water and left to settle before drying.

I dribbled some watery TYIO through, dried it and repeated with cobalt turquoise to bring the patina colours back into play a little bit.

The seam binding ribbon took the paint washes beautifully.

The crown is a diecut and I glued two together to give it some dimension.

And finally I found a lost relative and painted a star to finish it off.

Thanks for stopping by today, my project can also be seen on the Tando blog. 

Products

Long Tags

Grab bag circles

Flourish Stencil

DecoArt 

Media Fluid Acrylics

Mediums

Mixed Media with France Papillon

I attended a workshop with France last Saturday at 'Let's Be Creative' and we spent a lovely morning using mini canvases to create this piece she called 'Intricate'. It included gold paint, weathered wood crackle, antiquing ........

and some lovely cambray fabric she brought over from Belgium (apparently it is original cotton bandage and you can only buy it there).

She loves rusty elements like I do and used a piece from a clothes peg.

We altered the little bottle by using media acrylics to 'rust' the lid and it has some tiny watch parts inside as well as a chit chat word adhered to a piece of wire to keep it upright.

This is how mine looked when I came home, I didn't quite get it finished ........

.....but I added a vintage photo as well as a rusty spring and a couple more washers from home to make it more personal to me.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope your week is going well.

hugs Brenda xxx

Dear Santa, I can explain ...

Hello from Santa

I made this stand up card as a sample for my demonstration session at Ministry of Mixology and I'm also using it for my project sample for Country View Crafts. Di at Tando Creative cut me the boards the exact size I wanted them and I'm hoping she will be able to make me some stands too.

I had decided to use decoart chalky finish for a change and for this technique I pulled out the brayer and had some fun layering the colours thickly so that I achieved alot of texture. Of course all the colours are opaque so we have to be careful where we brayer the colours as each one blocks out the one below, but by being careful and using less of the colours as we go we can achieve texture and colour. I finished this one with some subtle stippling using a natural sponge and then lightly brayered some white over the top.

I sanded the edges and inked them and dipped in some vintage photo DI before stamping with the chalky finish paints.

I brayered some white card with titanium white, titan buff, light grey and raw umber to achieve a light and slightly textured look for Santa's beard. This is the St Nick bigz die by Tim Holtz.

A shabby bow, stamped and cut out holly and some berries with a self generated sentiment and we're done.

I love the retro look to this card.

Thanks for popping in, how are your Christmas preparations going? We're still in the throws of decorating the bedrooms and have also done the dining room and changed it round as well, so I will get to Christmas preparations at some point!!!!

Take care and have a great week ahead.

hugs Brenda xxx

Products used -

DecoArt Chalky Finish paints

St Nick Bigx die

Seam Binding

.... the snowflakes fall .....

..... each one a gem .

This is my Tando DT sample for our theme of embossing this week, there have been some lovely projects with great ideas from my teamies. Di had kindly cut me some boards exactly the size I wanted to make stand up cards - you'll see some more coming up soon.

I prepared the greyboard with two coats of gesso and then stamped the snowflakes with versamark embossing ink and covered white embossing powder ......................

well I thought it was ordinary white embossing powder but it turned out I had picked up the sticky version instead ..... so my plan had to change!!!!

I decided to use gold foil on the snowflakes and had success with some of them but others didn't take much of the foil at all, but I didn't worry as I was seeing nice variations of the random touch - and I always look for the random interest in my work lol.

I then took a piece of blending foam and using the black side I blended over titan buff, raw umber and burnt umber decoart media acrylic paints, rubbing away at the snowflakes quickly with a piece of dry kitchen roll.

Inevitably some of areas of the snowflakes got covered whilst other bits still show some shine.

Next came some dips in brown .....

and splatters in white and of course drying them heated up the embossed snowflakes again so I rubbed more foil over them and got an even shinier coverage than I did before.

To finish off I diecut a snowflake painted it with gesso and ran it through the embossing folder and used pritt stick to foil it. I painted some Tando snowflakes with dazzling metallics champagne gold and punched a gold one too.

I had stamped some of the beautiful Winter quotes from the brilliant Alison Bomber's new collection of stamps and mounted this perfect one on gold card.

It really looks fabulous mounted again on some canvas type material daubed with white gesso and some rustic ribbon, string and a shabby bow at the bottom.

 So I layered up some snowflakes and added some champagne coloured gems.

You can see the stand I have added to support it, made very easily from 480 gm white card.

I've realised now it's all together and photographed I have been influenced by Alison's style too, I wonder if she would think so?

Well Christmas is well and truly fixed in my mind and I need to get some cards made. As I'm at the Ministry of Mixology retreat this weekend with Di, the inimitable Andy Skinner and Nikki Acton that will be my next job when I get home.

Do pop over to the Tando blog to see the other embossing creations this week and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx