Friday, 27 December 2024

A Winter's Tale - Alison Bomber

 I bought some of Alison's mini stamps in the Country View Crafts Advent sale and I've had fun using this gorgeous image of Star Anise and using it in creating this frame .

Background - a scraped layer of gesso using a palette knife leaving a gap around the edges. Dried, dipped in pumicestone DI, dripped and dried again. Blended gathered twigs around the edges and added some text stamping using hickory smoke.

2nd layer using vellum, tear the edges and stamp with textured stamp from Alison's pressed grasses set, using versamark and embossing powder.

Focal panel - stamped with Alison's Winter Tale stamp in coffee, painted in the image using lost shadow and walnut stain DOs and brown distress watercolor pencils. The image has watery tea dye roughly painted around it and hickory smoke blended around the edges.

The winter greenery was die-cut with white card and snow-tex daubed over it for texture,

I found the snowflakes (which are glued to the underside of the frame) and icicles already cut in a bag ..........

..... and used those with the other miscellaneous oddments to add interest to the frame.







Supplies

Alison Bomber - PaperArtsy  -  mini Winter's Tale stamp,EM90, pressed grasses EAB40

Tim Holtz - Sizzix - Festive Gatherings, Paper Snowflakes,

Tim Holtz Ranger Distress inks - pumice stone, gathered twigs, tea dye, hickory smoke

 Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Watercolor Pencils Vintage Photo, Ground Espresso

Tim Holtz Ranger Distress Oxides -  lost shadow, walnut stain

Ranger - Seafoam White embossing powder

Miscellaneous - vellum, star anise, silver berries, twigs, pinecone, 

Ranger Coffee Archival ink

49 and Market Garden rub on transfers

Monday, 23 December 2024

Santa - Vintage photo - Tim Holtz

 Memories of Father Christmas


As a child many, many years ago I can still remember being so excited for Father Christmas coming on Christmas Eve and getting into bed wanting to stay awake to see him. Whilst I lay there waiting I was sure I could hear sleigh bells in the distance. Of course I did fall asleep and I would awake to my pillowcase that I had left out on the end of my bed, being filled with presents and always a satsuma, some crayons or paints and a bar of chocolate.

I love this old photo of Santa, a name change? I've used it with Tim Holtz goodies in a collaged panel.

It was a lovely surprise for me this morning to see that Tim Holtz had added it to his Instagram story today. How exciting is that?

I used several papers from an old 12 x 12 pad from Tim and parchworked them together and stitched around the edge. The frame was discarded from a photo frame so I just painted it with glue and sprinkled distress rock candy glitter all over it ad blended some walnut stain around the edges.

The rest were bits and pieces from one of Tim's ephemera packs, snippets from tubs and bags in one of my Christmas boxes.



xxx



Supplies

Tim Holt papers, ephemera, stamp, dies, glitter and photo


Thursday, 19 December 2024

Country View Crafts CHRISTMAS Frame 'Grand Christmas Exhibition'

'Grand Christmas Exhibition'

Another project for Country View Crafts 'Christmas' challenge.

I couldn't resist making another Christmas frame for my sideboard display, and again a box frame from Ikea to match the previous one I made for the same challenge.



Process Steps

For this project I left in the internal frame and used a piece of lightly inked and painted background from my left overs box and then over that I mounted the poster ephemera piece.

It was then just fill the frame with bits and pieces that related  to the exhibition of toys, dolls, fancy goods and novelties. I made the gold packages, filled bottles with shiny beads .....

..... and collected together other small elements to add to the top too.

The sleigh of presents was die cut from one of Tim's Bigz dies and painted green with some narrow washi tape added. The sledge part was cut from some card painted painted and distressed to look like rust.

I added some icicles and snow-tex and ....

.... some rub-ons from 49andMarket.

I have to admit the designing and finding all the elements took much longer than the actual making, lol.



 
                                             

Materials

Tim Holtz Ideaology - 

Ephemera pack - Noel

Bottle brush trees

Corked vials

Alpha parts - frozen

Tim Holtz dies - Sizziz

Sleigh

Festive Gatherings

49andMarket - rub-on transfers

Miscellaneious from my own supplies Silver tree, games pieces, small santa, small vial, beads, icicles die - not named, the star is an old punch by Tim Holtz.

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Frostie the Snowman - Tim Holtz

 Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul

I had a playtime using the new TH Sparkle Fade stencil and some Distress Watercolor Pencils to create some small backgrounds and I chose 1 to create my first card from the new Mr Frostie set of TH stamps.







Supplies

Distress Watercolor Pencils - prize ribbon, weathered wood, tumbled glass, kitsch flamingo.

Distress inks - pumice stone, dried marigold, blueprint sketch, walnut stain

Archival ink - watering can

Distress Spritz - weathered wood, fossilized amber

Distress Mica Spray - antiqued bronze

Distress Paint - pine needles,

Sizzix thinlits - festive gatherings


Sunday, 15 December 2024

Taking a workshop with Zoe Hillman - Advent board

 Advent and grungy project 

On the 1st December I was at Country View Crafts to attend Zoe's first workshop. She had designed this board using some of the Tim Holtz Christmas idea-ology range and also some printed pieces she had made.

Here is my version of her original.







It was a great day and I loved being able to sit and make something beautiful like this. 




Monday, 9 December 2024

Country View Crafts CHRISTMAS Frame 'Deck The Halls'

This is a project for the December 'Christmas' challenge on FaceBook.

I love handmade Christmas decor and these little box frames from IKEA are perfect for making small and beautiful projects to put on shelves, coffee tables etc.


Process Steps

Take a piece of vellum, stamp the holly using Versamark and sprinkle the embossing powder over and heat.

Take a small paper mache panel give it a light coat of gesso and dry.

Take blue, yellow and white paints, on a palette mix your main colour leaving some of the paints to use to blend with. Using a small sponge dab and blend the colours over the surface and around the sides, dry.

Give the panel a coat of collage medium and lay the vellum over and gently press and rub so that it adheres This rippled more than I thought it wood but embrace the imperfections as Tim says and actually I quite like the distressed look.

Take the Christmas ephemera piece, blend the edges with brown distress ink and then secure to the panel using foam pads.

Cut the frame, ink the edges and stack the layers over the wallpaper background inside the the frame.

Add the quote chip and some 49 & Market rubon transfers.

Gather some berries together, bind the middle with ribbon and tie it around the frame. Adhere the middle of the bunch of berries with hot glue.






Materials

Tim Holtz 

IdeaOlogy Ephemera pack - Christmas Noel

Wallpaper - Christmas Noel

Quote chips - Christmas Noel

Stampers Anonymous - Yuletide CMS356

Distress Ink - Walnut Stain

Sizzix thinlits TH Stacked Deckle frames

PaperArtsy

Fresco Finish Paints - Midnight, Zesty Zing, Snowflake

Ranger Seafoam White Embossing Powder

49 & Market - Rub-on Transfers

Miscellaneous - Vellum, berries, ribbon.

Sunday, 8 December 2024

CVC Workshop Winter Wonderland Project

 

Some photos from my Winter Wonderland workshop at Country View Crafts - 30th November 2024













My 2024 Christmas workshop project for Country View Crafts - I so love making 3D boards and they are very popular. I used lots of Tim Holtz products and loved adding the ledge and blocks to help create this wintry landscape. The natural elements helped add a wonderful cold, icy, wintry feel.

1.    Paint all the small wooden pieces with 1 coat of white gesso – dry. Repeat with a coat of white acrylic paint – include the base of the silver trees. Sand the edges of the cubes and blend the exposed edges with a dark brown DI to give a shabby effect. Repeat the effect randomly on the corners and odd parts of the ledge and frame.

2. Paint the large board with a coat of gesso to seal it and dry. (no paint)

Take speckles or snowy effect stencil and texture paste (I used distress texture paste matte) add very sparingly mostly round the edges of the top 2/3 of the board and dry.

Take tumbled glass and broken china Dis and speckled egg and iced spruce DO. (or any sky blue colours). Create puddles and dabble them over, spritz, drip and dry. Take white acrylic paint and lightly brayer over the top, the white will hit the top of some of the snow droplets but also create lighter areas on the board that you can rub in with your finger to create cloud effects. Dry.  If you want to add more of the blues, repeat puddles and daub with a brush, the texture paste soaks up some of the blue watery ink and also the inks lay and puddle between the snow droplets. When it’s dry scrape the texture paste through the speckles/snow stencil to add more white snowy texture through it. Again, dry it. KEEP BOTTOM THIRD OF THE BOARD CLEAN.

Moving to the bottom third of the board use the tumbled glass DI and Iced Spruce DO to make puddles of colour. With a paint brush daub a light layer over the board and add a little silver paint into it, let it all move around a lot in your hand and dry it. Splatter with water and watch some rings appear. Dry and take iced spruce distress ink and a chosen small chosen stencil (I used the mini version of Festive THS029) to create background for the seed heads.

Glue the ledge on at this point. The top of the ledge is 22 cms from the top f the board. Put to one side to dry.

 

3 Take the four, silver, die-cut trees, glue shapes back-to-back, offset slightly, and don’t worry if some of the white shows through, it actually looks like snow. Glue a gold star to the top of each one.

Take the gold sparkly row of fir trees, Cut the sides to fit the wooden panel and use a palette knife to add a small amount of snowtex to both the gold and silver trees using a palette knife. Put aside to dry.

 

4 Take the white card panel. Blend silver paint through a star stencil and dry it. Blend tumbled glass (light blue) DI over the surface. Sparingly rub some micro glaze randomly over the surface and gently buff off excess. Blend broken china (mid blue) over the surface. Splatter water droplets on, leave for about 30 seconds and the blot off with a paper towel and dry. You have created a mottled sky with snow falling in the background. Sand the edges and then blend a dark blue and then a dark brown distress ink round. Splatter it, the main board, the panel and the row of fir trees with some white paint. Dry the card panel, then adhere this to the wooden panel to create a frame. Paint glue round three sides of the frame (not the bottom one) and sprinkle rock candy glitter over it. Put aside to dry.

 

5 Take the round circle, lightly blend antique linen over the surface. Spritz with water, blot & dry. Spritz, blot & dry a second time. Place the moon mask over the top & blend antique linen distress oxide through it to create the texture of the moon. Dry it. Use a very fine paint brush to add glue over the oxide and dip into rock candy glitter.

 

6 Take the ribbon spritz it with water. Make a little puddle of tumbled glass, dip and dry. Repeat with a watery puddle of salty ocean. Make it into a bow.

 

7. Make up the double snowflake. Use small amounts of brown and white paints to colour the deer.


Now all pieces are prepped it’s time to assemble the project. Start by adding the star background frame on the ledge and adhere the two blocks either side of it. Glue on the silver icicles strip, the moon, gold stars, silver snowflakes. Adhere the white dried flowers and bundle of sticks on the blocks. Use a glue gun to add the seed head spray, bow and bells. Glue on the silver trees then use snow-tex on the ledge and adhere the decorative pieces – I always add glue to the areas that are going to sit in the ‘snow’. Add the Winter Wonderland title. Lay this flat in a box to carry it home.