Cityscape mixed media collage

There's a new challenge for January at the Crafty Individuals blog and the lovely Coco has chosen 'scenic stamping' so I interpreted that as a scene with stamps in. Jean has described it -

Basically the title suggests that you create some kind of a scene involving at least one of our CI products in the make.  The scene might be made using just one of our collage stamps, or might incorporate several of the items from an Elements plate, or might use several of our different stamps combined together - to tell a bit of a story.  I think it is a really good subject to choose, and gives lots of scope for experiment.

A picture was starting to emerge in my head with thoughts buzzing around in there too. It looked pretty similar to what I ended up with which is quite unusual for me.

I started with the idea of having a horizon line to create a cityscape scene of rooftops and making a collage with stamping and cut outs.

I painted the first layer with vintage photo distress ink as I imagined this mixing with a layer of gesso over the top. When I look back to this I realise that actually none of this is seen in the final piece.

But this all started to create the scene adding gesso as texture, a resist and adding lines above the horizon where I will stamp 359. I chose this stamp a) for the silhouette skyline shape and b) because I want to get to go into London more this year. I love the city but get up so rarely, so here's hoping.

I also added some stamped text (214) using coffee archival so that it would not merge with any further distress products.

In my own crazy head I began to see the lower portion as the River Thames as I added some torn old book paper with gesso and vintage photo DI. Ok what to do next?

So I decided that if there’s sky and water then there needs to be some blues. First I sprayed water and then broken china, salty ocean and weathered wood over the whole piece keeping the weathered wood to the sky area and the darker colours to the water area. I dipped the sky are in some broken china and dried it and then splattered water over all of it and dried again. 

This next bit I love, I used faded jeans distress stain and undid the spray piece using the tube to paint on the ink, cool eh? It's really beginning to look like a waterscape.

I found a thin ornate strip die which I stamped across some of the deep blue areas and then I stamped the Christmas city skyline without the Christmas tree. As this was stamped onto a textured area it didn’t take all the ink as a silhouette normally would but I love the impression it gave giving the buildings some depth to them. 

BY shading the non inked areas with a 4B pencil it gave some shadow effects too.

So now I needed a reflection and I tried reverse stamping with both archival and distress inks, but neither worked, so I stamped the image onto card, cut it out and then laid it upside down in the water drawing a rough outline. A watery wash of pumice stone, black soot and vintage photo inks filled in the watery effects.

I still wanted more so I drew some in building shapes, painted them and their reflections with the idea I would add a title and some collage pieces to it. I already knew what I wanted to call it. (Photo taken at night which is why it went somewhat blue).

I wasn'thappy with the painted building shapes so out came the collage scraps and built a line of new ones, I rather liked these much better and I added more reflections in the water.

The final collage was added using ticket ephemera from 307, 239 and 255 and the title using alphabetical strip die.

Finished......

.... and mounted in my collage journal.

You will find all the challenge guidelines on the CI blog and you have until the end of January to join in. You could be in with a chance of winning a free stamp, and you be able to obtain a cool 25% CI web discount if you enter.

That's it for today, thanks for stopping by and for giving me your support. I read every comment and am so grateful to receive them.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxxx

Visual Journey pages #3

Monday morning, I had woken early with rust and patinas floating around my head (see last post and DI post at AVJ) I was pinning more pictures of them on Pinterest, ones that were pinging ideas into my head. (Do you do that and then those light bulb moments have gone out when you come back to the photo and wonder why you pinned it – or is that just me getting old lol?)  

Anyway I sat at my desk and my Visual Journey book was in front of me and a recollection of one of the pictures I had pinned immediately came to mind. Straight away I opened the pages and got out the gesso to add a thin layer scraped across the double spread and dried. The matte medium was sitting on my desk in front of me so I did the same with that as well.

Now for colour iced spruce came to mind so I got out the distress sprays and some glimmer mists and I remembered seeing a patina background done with stencils. My mind immediately made a link to a new challenge blog 'Make Art' celebrating all things Wendy Vecchi and the challenge for January is to use texture paste, I don’t have any Wendy stencils but I do have some of her paste including the crackle one. Here we go. I had intended to use stains with the wet stencilled paste but several telephone calls and texts later I came back to it and it’s dry and cracked. OK next? (Can you tell my mind was racing?)

Firstly I bound my precious book in plastic bags and used iced spruce, weathered wood, brushed pewter, and evergreen bough distress sprays, spritzed with glimmer mists, dripped and heat dried. 

Wanting the pattern of the stencil to show up more I got a paintbrush with some vintage photo and tea dye sprays and just painted over most of the raised areas. 

Next a piece of cut and dry, some rusty hinge and water sprayed on my mat and dabbed lightly onto the page with the sponge, then fully dried again. 

Using Wendy’s 'A Form of Art' set I stamped random text using the ledger and using watering can archival so that it blended nicely into the background.

I had mopped up the stains from my heat mat and stamped various elements from both the above set of Wendy’s stamps, plus the 'Fashion Style and Art' set and the 'Collectible Art' set to add the focal images and text to the pages.

I finished this all in one session and I tried not to over think what I was doing. I enjoyed the freedom of the experimentation and expressing my creative thoughts without worrying about it having to be a 'polished' project and I really followed my muse. I really am pleased with the outcome and the style.

I hope you will be able to join me in two places, both joining the 'Use something New to you' challenge at Country View Crafts. In my post today I am using my 'new' Visual Diary (which is an altered book), I tried out a new technique by using the cut and dry and sponging on top of another colour (I usually use a paint brush instead of something spongy) and I have used some old stamps that have never been used.

I would love it if you found time to link to my Visual Journey blog hop with anything in your art journal, visual diary or sketchbook that has excited you, pleased you and where you have felt unconstrained and free in producing your art.

This is not a challenge it is always an anything goes activity in a journal/visual diary/sketchbook where you are designing, composing, colour mixing, trying out techniques, using different materials, creating your own exercises, titles, mood boards or taking yourself out of the box to bring new ideas to life, to spark you off in new directions and allowing your own imagination and creativity to develop in complete freedom. In other words having fun. (see more info below).

Thanks for stopping by today and to those who have linked already, I hope you are enjoying seeing what each other is creating, thank you for sharing. I'm off to link to 'Make Art' and join in the Wendy Vecchi challenge.

Have a great end to the week.

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code

Faux rust effects tutorial

I've had great fun over the last week experimenting with my Tim Holtz/Ranger products  to find ways of creating faux rust. I've wanted to to this for a long time and as it is my turn to do a Destination Inspiration post over at A Vintage Journey, I saw this as my opportunity to get right down to it. I have rusting powder in my supplies and will often take time out to do a batch of objects with it and keep them in a little box for when I need rusty bits on a project, but sometimes you want something quickly and I now have five other ways I can use the paints, inks and embossing powders on my shelf in practically no time at all. All these can be seen in detail with step by steps and photos on the AVJ blog today.

I also used a similar method in creating the rusty corners for the configuration box on my worn cover project last week which can be seen here.

Here's how I did them.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL AND AVOID BURNING YOUR FINGERS ON THE HOT METAL

Dab vintage photo distress paint and dry.

In layers, drying between them, dab on random splodges of aged mahogany, walnut stain and spiced marmalade distress paints.

Using an embossing ink pen add splatters of distress powders in tea dye, vintage photo, walnut stain.

At this point I was a little disappointed in the light tones the tea dye created so ........

Drip over a little butterscotch, honeycomb, teakwood and sunset orange alcohol inks.

Eh voila, the rusty effect was achieved.

Thanks for stopping by and if you would like to see other ways I devised for creating faux rust results from my experiments please pop over to AVJ for today's Destination Inspiration post.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Updated with details from AVJ

Good morning one and all it's Brenda here, I hope you are up for some serious metal work today. I've had it in my mind for ages to do this particular Destination Inspiration post because I love corroded metals and their wonderful colours. I also like to create faux metal effects, but I have a very limited number of techniques that can be used without spending lots of money on specialist supplies. So I thought I would experiment with distress products and ranger products to see what I could come up with. During my experiments I researched quite a bit about rusting and patinas and ended up focusing totally on using the products on my shelves to achieve different rusting effects. I hope you like the selection.

Rusted wooden shapes

Using distress paints and alcohol inks

Dab vintage photo distress paint onto shape and heat dry (if you get the gun close enough it will create texture bubbles which look cool for this effect).

In layers, drying between, dab on random splodges of aged mahogany, walnut stain and spiced marmalade DPs.

Using an embossing ink pen add splatters of distress powders in rusty colours I used spiced marmalade, fired brick, vintage photo and walnut stain.

Drip over a little butterscotch, honeycomb, teakwood and sunset orange (or any other rusty colours you have) alcohol inks.

These turned out a bit too shiny for me so after a quick chat with CG Jenny who has shown us metallic techniques herself I sponged over a little matt medium and dabbed over the anti static bag after it had almost dried which has given it a more muted look.

I suppose you could call this next one an out-take photo as this is the underside of the circular wooden shape above and I really like the effects of that too.

Using distress paints and cinnamon

Dab over with spiced marmalade, vintage photo and black soot distress paints. Whilst wet sprinkle over some cinnamon. (Yes ground cinnamon from the spice rack).

With a paint brush stipple the colours and cinnamon together

and finish off by dipping the cog in the left over cinnamon.

Leave to dry and if you're anything like me you will help it along with your heat gun - oh boy the workroom did smell nice.

When cool I rubbed off some of the excess powder and I think I will buy a spray matte varnish to seal it.

Using re-inkers and sprays (or stains).

Use gesso with wild honey, barn door, vintage photo and walnut stain re-inkers. With a palette knife 'splodge' colours over the shape and heat dry.

Repeat the process again to get more texture layered  again heat drying and getting some of those texture bubbles.

To finish spray spiced marmalade, vintage photo and walnut stain in separate layers drying between each until desired effect is achieved.

Using distress embossing powders.

Stain the cog with vintage photo, spiced marmalade, barn door and walnut stain sprays or stains – dry.

Add layers of vintage photo, mustard seed, spiced marmalade, fired brick, aged mahogany and walnut stain distress powders and bake them in together really well.

Add more if needed until you are happy with the effects.

Using distress paints, sprays and sand

Paint the cog with any brown, red and orange distress paints you have - I used walnut stain, aged mahogany and spiced marmalade (I now want to try with other colours in those hues).
Paint the colours on thickly and then dip the shape into ordinary fine sand and heat dry.

When cool rub off excess sand and you are left with some great texture.

Spray with vintage photo, spiced marmalade and barn door sprays. and heat dry.

With your craft knife cut a few bits of the surface away and paint the gaps with the leftover spray inks.

Now I have a whole collection to use in projects. Can you see there is a rogue cog here.

 Yes this one ......

It was one of my practice ones that came out too shiny and I added watery gesso to it and although it didn't get me the look I wanted I do like it for it's shabby appeal.

So now I have a nice little collection to use in future projects and it just goes to show you can experiment with any supplies you have in the craft room to see what works for you. I have used Tim Holtz products here, but there are lots more paints on my shelves that I can experiment with. What about you?

Have fun.

hugs Brenda xxx