12 cards of Christmas - #1a and a happy day

Hi All. For some reason the other day I decided I would do 12 different card designs for my Christmas box and for my Packhouse selling space. I have already done quite a few and bagged them up and put them in to sell but I need to go check to see if any have gone.

Anyway I wanted some fairly quick designs to get the production line going - here's the first ones using Tim's fabulous vintage Santa stamp from the yuletide set.

I've recreated the same design in other colour ways and you'll see them over the next week.

For the background I rubbed distress oxides and distress inks over the star embossing folder, spritzed it with water before running it through the big shot.

Santa was stamped and coloured with promarkers and cut out and I mounted him on paper cut with the stitched ovals dies, sanded and splattered with white acrylic paint.

A stamped greeting on a paper mount and some coloured ribbon finish it off.

********************

The weekend before last was my beautiful daughter's wedding so I thought I'd share a few photos. We all drove down to Cornwall where they had found the perfect venue called the Cow Shed, a beautifully rustic farm house with a barn and old outhouses that form the wedding venue.
This is the barn where the wedding ceremony was held. There was a small group of people in attendance, just immediate family and their closest friends.

This the old milking parlour where we had the reception and you can see it was all decorated with pretty lights and beautiful flowers.

 

Maddie and Tom make the most perfect couple and are so happy together.

 

Their bridesmaids were our granddaughters Ella and Maddison ......

 .... and Tom's brother and nephews were the best man and pageboys. They wore tweed and jeans which fitted the rustic theme perfectly.

 

 The tables for the reception were laid out ....

 

.... and decorated beautifully ....

 

.... and we had the most amazing caterers who made the most wonderful steak and chicken pies, with potatoes and vegetables, just what the bride and groom wanted.

 

It was the most relaxed and happy day for everyone ...

  

.. and you can see how happy they are together.

 

This is Maddie with Lincoln, our grandson, who was so good all day and mesmerized by all the lights and loved all the attention.

My son Ben, his wife Bev and our granddaughters Becca, Ella and Maddison together ...

... and Ken and I.
I think you can see how proud and happy we are of all of them.

Thanks for stopping by and taking an interest in my art and my family today.

hugs Brenda xxx

Colour Theme for Tando Creative

Welcome to a new week and the run up to Christmas. We have a colour theme over on the Tando blog this week and I chose to use one of the mini albums to alter but I also decided to do some colour mixing to get the colour tones I needed. 

I'm starting the week but there will be other projects appearing during the week.

I used the DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics and decided the cerulean blue was more or less spot on for the mid blue and titan buff also good for the creamy colour. For the other three - here is my colour swatch, I add a little at a time when mixing a new shade until I get the desired tones - not bad eh?

First seal both sides of the album with a good coat of gesso. After mixing your colours use a natural sponge to daub the colours onto the surface front ......

 

...... and back. 

 

Next scrape some gesso over using a palette knife.

Paint some of the Tando snowflakes with the cerulean blue and when dry blend a little prussian blue over the top using your finger. Do the same with some decoupage and then dip them in some distress glitter to add some sparkle.

Blend some brown distress ink around all the edges.

Mix tiny, tiny amounts of quinacridone gold and paynes grey with some matte medium and seal the whole album. The colour gives a light vintage/grungy effect.

Make yourself some pages - I used watercolour paper and sewed them onto the spine. 

Add a ribbon around the outside gluing it to the back so you can tie it up, finish with the snowflakes and words.

Voila a fabulous mini sketchbook for the winter.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your week and .....

xxx

Tag Friday - Christmas Tag

It's another Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey and I am really starting to get into Christmas mode.
Here's my sample for today.

Process steps

1. Lightly paint tag with white gesso leaving some of the card showing through.

2. Using decoart media fluid acrylics mix a couple of watery colours and then dip and dry to create your first layer of colour. (I used raw umber and quinacridone red).

3. Repeat step 2 using titanium white to achieve a mottled effect.

4. Tear some tissue tape strips and add and lightly dry brush some gesso over them.

5. Machine stitch around the edges.

6. Mix some white modeling paste and white gesso together (approx half and half) and with a palette knife scrape it through a stencil, add some coloured distress glitter and leave to dry. (See Tim Holtz Holiday Hacks videos for a do it yourself hack). I used a coloured glitter that really didn't look right so out came the raw umber painted and they got painted.

7. Dribble a watery wash of a darker colour around the textures and dry.

8. Gather together collage elements including ephemera, metal embellishments, some die-cuts, words and paper doll.

9. Put the background layers of the collage together and glue them to each other. Add some machine stitching and then some foil to the edges. (I used versamark, sticky embossing powder and foil sheets).

10. Adhere the collage to the background, add the paper doll, embellishments and words.

Sometimes I plan out my steps before I start and have an idea of where the collage is going to go but as I make up my designs I will often change them as I go along.

When adding collage layers sometimes I will just layer and glue straight away, other times I might make up the collage as a separate element before I then add it (which is what I did on this one). It gave me the opportunity to add more stitching before I glued it down.

I made sure I knew where the collage was going on this design before adding the stencilled texture so that I only added it in the gaps that needed something extra.

So if you are looking for some tag inspiration please pop over to the AVJ post today to see the wonderful creations the team have come up with. You won't be disappointed.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend and .....

 

xxx

November DecoArt Mixed Media Team project

I have a project up on the DecoArt Mixed Media blog showing how to create a pitted surface using paints, mediums and UTEE. I made swatches for faux metals and faux enamelling and linked it back to a fossil panel post back in September where I grunged up the surface and promised this technique would come later in the year. So here it is. 

All the main steps for the technique can be found on the DMM blog here.

But I also made a Christmas card to show how the technique could be used for other projects and this one shows the gold and silver samples used for the bells.

 Process steps for the Christmas card

1. Take a piece of good cardstock and dry brush a layer of gesso over it. I use a brush with very little on at a time so that parts of the card still show through.

2. Dip the card in some watery titan buff and dry.

3. Rub pumice stone distress ink pad over the whole surface, spritz with water. Rub the excess off and heat dry to watch the random patches of the card soak up the ink.

4. Paint the Nordic stencil (by Tim Holtz) with gesso, lay over the card gesso side down and rub over. 5. When you peel back the stencil you have the design imprinted on the surface.
6. Dry the gesso and rub an iced spruce distress ink pad over it, spritz with water and dry. If necessary add some more puddles of blue with stormy sky - dry again.
7. Add some touches of tissue/washi tapes.
8. Spritz with water and flick some splatters of a watery wash of quinacridone gold, spritz with water if they don't disperse enough and dry. You can see the subtle texture from the stencil on this photo too.

9. Add some neat quin gold around the tissue tape, spritz and dry.
10. Use a stamp platform to stamp the sentiment.

11. Seal the surface with two thin layers of matte medium.
12. Die-cut bells and greenery and adhere to the card adding some more thin washi tapes over the stems.

13. Finish by adding some dribbles or quinacridone gold to enhance the rusty look.

I'd love it if you had a minute to pop over to the DecoArt blog to see all the samples I made.

Thanks for stopping by and

xxx

Updated from DecoArt blog

nstructions :

Process steps for the pitted surfaces technique that I used on all the samples:
1. Pounce an embossing ink pad all over and cover with ultra-thick embossing enamel (UTEE).
2. Use a scrunched piece of dry paper towel and a small dry paintbrush to remove some of the UTEE to leave some holes or pit marks - tap off the excess.
3. Heat emboss
4. When cool, rub some Raw Umber/Paynes Grey/Dark Grey Value 3/Carbon Black paint over and when it is almost dry wipe over with a babywipe to reveal the dark pits in the surface.
5. When dry repeat step 4 again

Pitted Transparent Enamel:
(Enamel is a natural form of quartz. In simple terms, enameling involves a glass paste being applied to metal and then heated to fuse it to the surface. The finish of the enamel can be translucent or opaque depending on the temperature used to melt the glass. Higher temperatures result in a more transparent and durable enamel while lower temperatures give a more opaque and fragile surface.)

Create a surface that you want to be covered in clear enamel. I chose a piece left over from a previous experiment to use - shown below.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above. I used Dark Grey Value 3 for the pitting.

Pitted Coloured Enamel:
(To give enamel a particular colour, a certain number of special coloured components [pigments and dyes] have to be added. With these, almost any colour can be achieved.)

To begin, paint the substrate with any colour you like - with Christmas coming up I used Pyrrole Red.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

This would look great die-cut or stamped and cut out as a pillarbox I think.

Pitted Gold 1 and 2:
To start the first swatch, paint the surface of the substrate with gold media acrylic paint.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used Raw Umber on the gold.

To start the second swatch, paint the surface of the substrate with DecoArt Media Texture Sand Paste and dry it. Then give it a coat of gold media acrylic paint.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

Again, I used Raw Umber on this one, too.

You can see how the Texture Sand Paste added a different texture in places. Variations will occur depending how much of the UTEE you remove before heating it.

This next photo shows how much paint I spread on the surface and let almost dry.

Pitted Brass:
For Step 1, paint the surface of the substrate with a mix of Gold and Raw Umber media acrylic mixed together.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used Patina antiquing cream on the brass.

Pitted Silver:
For Step 1, paint the surface of the substrate with silver media acrylic.

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

I used Carbon Black on the silver.

If you have got any of the DecoArt metallic paints you can try any type of metal finish you want.

Pitted Pewter:
Here's a swatch using the Extreme Sheen metallic paint in Pewter with Paynes Grey pits.

Pitted Rose Gold:
Here's a swatch using the Extreme Sheen metallic paint in Rose Gold with Carbon Black pits.

To see how you could apply this technique to another project I have made is this Christmas card with a gold and silver bell on and both are cut from the appropriate swatch sample.