Hanging Autumn Leaves

Welcome Fall CVC #1 September

And here we are in the first month of Autumn already and 

the challenge theme is about autumn colours in nature.

Starting with the focal elements here are some autumn leaves taking centre stage.

I found some discarded backgrounds I keep in a couple of files and added to them to be able to die-cut some leaves. 

I used leaf fragments dies ......

... dabbled small areas with watery distress inks to get more depth to the colours, dried them.

When dry I used my permanent ink pem to add veins, you can just see that on two that I started with.

 Next I blended brown distress ink round the edges and around the holes, ....

.... but the colours then seemed much more subdued. I decided to leave the green ones out at this point.

So I took out some reinkers and with small drops of water I dabbled colours back onto the leaves.

Finally I rubbed micro glaze over the inked leaves, left it to soak into the card for a few minutes, buffed it and then soaked the plain side with water, scrunched the leaves up and heat dried them. I had experimented with another piece of inked card first and the colours didn't move when the water was applied.

For the background I used distress inks with some Alison Bomber and Tim Holtz stamps.

Eh voila, the hanging leaves with the green ones back in again.

xxx

Supplies 

Tim Holtz Distress inks - Forest Moss, Scattered Straw, Dried Marigold, Crackling Campfire, Scorched Timber, Spiced Marmalade, Ground Espresso, Vintage Photo, Frayed Burlap

TH Distress Reinkers - Barn Door, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade.

TH Distress Spritz - Rustic Wilderness, 

TH - Stampers Anonymous - Correspondence 225, Field Notes CMS396, Tidbits CMS488, Curator CMS493

TH - Sizzix - Leaf Fragments

TH Idea-ology - Ephemera Pack Curator. 

Alison Bomber - Pressed Grasses EAB40

Silhouette Framed

 Every Adventure is Worthwhile 

I enjoyed making my last CVC August frame project and thought I'd try another one to go to 'Men In Sheds' for their fundraising fayre. If you've not heard of Men's sheds before, it's an association where men can meet for connection, conversation and creation and also to make, repair and repurpose mostly wooden items, supporting projects in their local communities. It also helps to improve wellbeing, reduce loneliness and combat social isolation. Since retiring this has given hubby a great place to hang out and develop his love of woodworking.

I used another piece of the woodblocks hubby had cut me, prepped it and layered with the Frenchic chalk paint. The last bar one layer I added the most minute amount of the scottish salmon paint and mixed it in the the fresco paint. When it was dry I rubbed over some vaseline, randomly, and painted the last white layer. I left it to dry but not mature. I warmed it slightly with my heat gun and then rubbed over the surface with some kitchen paper so it revealed some pink areas underneath, then I lightly sanded to smooth the revealed areas and the sandpaper also exposed some more of the underneath layer.

I used a Tim stamp to produce a fabulous pattern, stamped the words to add and punched a black bird to add as my silhouette. 

To finish I used some paper from Tim's correspondence pad for the background in the frame, found a stamped star in my bits box and die-cut a border using tim's provincial embosslit using white card then rubbed a black soot distress ink pad lightly over it, spritzed with water, dried then brayered white chalk paint over the protrusions.

I kept this one quite clean and simple and finished off with some tissue/washi tapes giving me extra words.

Supplies

TH stamp - Classics #3, Nature's Wonder CMS343

Frenchic Chalk Wall Paint

PaperArtsy - Fresco Finish Paint - Scottish Salmon

TH Punch (very old) Bird

TH Paper pad - Correspondence

Silhouette Butterfly frame

 Dare To Dream Frame

The theme for August at CVC Challenge is Silhouettes and at the time of making this project (back in June lol), hubby was busy making wooden things to sell at a school summer fayre linked to 'Men in Sheds' where he loves to go to get some woodworking time and of course there's always a lot of chat going on with the other members over a cup of tea.

I wanted to help and support the fundraising so I got him to simply cut me some blocks of wood and set about creating the design for one of them which needed prepping with a layer of white gesso and then a layer of Yorkshire Rose Frenchic Paint. When dry I stamped the butterfly collage stamp and embossed it with black embossing powder. When it was cool I painted in the gaps.

So what to do next?  I adhered a Tim hardware head to the top and tied rafia round it. I didn't feel this would be sold on it's own. Hmm!  Ping! Let's add it to a frame. 

I found a piece from the wallflower paper pad which became the background.

I stamped some words and added a few flowers and curly moss. 

Eh Finito.

I hope someone will want to buy if for a couple of pounds.

Please come over to Facebook and join the Country View Crafts Challenges group if you haven't already and share a silhouette project with us.

xx

Supplies

TH stamps - Botanic Collage CMS447, Simple Sayings CMS155,

TH - Idea-ology Hardware Heads

TH paper pad - Wallflower

TH - Distress Ink - Walnut Stain

Ranger - Embossing Powder Black 

Frenchic - Chalk Wall Paint Yorkshire Rose

Rafia and flowers from my supplies

In my garden - shabby panel

 In My Garden

The Great Outdoors CVC #2 July

Well I'm out and about in my garden for the second challenge for July at Country View Crafts and I've created another shabby panel. I also seem to have gone somewhat French (see later info in the post about this!) - that came about because Tim has some bee images that have been labelled in French, so I clicked with it and brought out a bit of school learnt French, but checked it on Google as well :0)

So in my garden I have bees and that was true when my Olive tree was flowering a few weeks ago - there were bumblebees buzzing away and flitting like mad from flower to flower. It surprised me because the flowers are so, so small! I have lots of flowers and bushes, I have raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, runner beans, sweetcorn, roses, dahlias, fuchsias, hydrangeas and more - and I love it. I've also had lots of blackfly and slugs and snails, caterpillars, but very few butterflies and ladybirds sadly. 

Finished Panel

So the time to create this panel took longer than I had anticipated but read on and you'll find out why,

Process steps

Two pieces of paper adhered to card and brayered with white acrylic paint to tone it down.

Texture paste scraped through Tim's stencil for texture and left to dry. Water spritzed over the stencilling and walnut stain distress ink mixed with water on craft mat puddled through using a paint brush. Neat ink then painted over a few of the stencilled shapes to give variations of tones. Any puddled colour was splattered over, but most of it soaked in and can't really be seen.

Pieces for the focal point layers were collected together, much of it in bags as leftovers from previous projects. I keep lots of the bits and pieces to use for collages and toppers. The only things I had to do were stamp the bees (on leftover background) and create the text pieces on the computer. I also gathered a butterfly rub-on and embossed on vellum to add to the specimen slide.

The bees are stamped with an old Tim Holtz stamp mounted on wood. It was fabulous using it again and to give it an outing.

I layered up all the elements and lost the butterfly duh! But found a little one in the field notes snippets I could replace it with. Buuuuutttt .... I wasn't happy with it, there were imbalances - like the left side is so dark whilst the other side is very light, to me that took away from the focus of the bees and garden. So I had to have a play.........

This was what appeared. I got rid of the black flowers, added from the wildflowers dies and also added a ladybird peeking out at the bottom. Although there is a depth imbalance on either side now, I think I can live with that because now the whole piece is lighter and looks more like a garden.

Here you can see the contrasts and differences. I'm happy.

NEXT DAY

Is it a Bee or is it a Wasp?

I hadn't glued anything down before I went to bed and today everything changed!!! (Typically Me!!).

I brayered over the brown stencil texture to lighten it more, 

I didn't like the yellow on the bees (or wasps?).

Because I think this is more likely to be a wasp the French text seemed inappropriate so I made some in English.

I also stamped the panel mount with text from the Entomology set.

I added some snippets.

Now I'm even happier.

xx

Supplies

TH Sizzix dies - Specimen, Entomology, Wildflowers

TH Stampers Anonymous stamp - an old wooden stamp of a bee?, Entomology CMS328

TH Mediums - Collage Medium Matte

Th Distress inks - Walnut Stain, Wild Honey, Scattered Straw

TH Snippets - Field Notes, Curator

TH Small Talk stickers

White acrylic paint, White Gesso

Background papers and text - Tim Holtz and my own

Butterfly panel - watercolouring with distress inks

 Butterfly Metamorphosis

The Great Outdoors CVC #1 July

I'm doing a workshop at CVC headquarters this month with a theme of butterflies, bees and moths and it's focussed on creating sketchbook pages. I had created so many pieces to add, that I am completely zoned in on butterflies again and I wanted to create a butterfly painting by watercolouring using distress inks, but rather than draw and paint I decided to use one of Tim's butterflies being used in the workshop but use it in a completely different way.

To begin I stamped it in antique linen so that I could use the shape but not the pattern.

I used salvaged patina, rusty hinge, ground espresso and uncharted mariner with a fine round brush.

I cut out the butterfly .....

.... and blended ground espresso round it.

The orange edges in the wings looked very sharp against the blues so I blended them using white charcoal pencil.

Then used a white posca pen and black drawing pen to add final details.

xx

Supplies

TH Distress inks - Antique Linen, Salvaged Patina, Rusty Hinge, Ground Espresso and Uncharted Mariner,

TH Butterfly stamp - Perspective CMS213, 

White charcoal pencil,   white posca pen,   black ink pen fine 

TH - Collage Strips, Snippets, Remnant Rubs, Mummy Cloth.

Gesso