Road trip card

I got the new TH vintage cars stamps recently and lo and behold a couple of days later the amazing Pamellia from My Little Craft Things posted a fabulous shabby vintage car card which totally inspired and motivated me to get my stamps inked up straight away. I stamped the whole set and the new newsprint background not quite sure where I was gonna go with this one but after watching Pamellia's video I knew I wanted dimensional layers. I love the new vintage designs but once I was into the card making process I realised all the cars faced the same way which is a little disappointing when trying to create interest, so I got out an old Crafty Individuals stamp and used that too.

I was also inspired by my great friend Astrid who the very same day had a post about using up 'old stock' that has collected in the craft room and not been used, so out came some old paper stacks.

Tim's new cog thinlits came out to play too giving me some more of the masculine feel and interest .....

.... a street name, number plate and clock from a Tim stash ....

... and some washi tape build the collaged and dimensional look.

The background has been dipped in pumice stone DI and all of the papers have distressed edges inked with ground espresso.

I quite like the look and the effects and huge thanks to Pamellia and Astrid for inspiring me and helping me get my mojo back.

I always appreciate your visit thank you for taking the time to stop by.

hugs Brenda xxx

A Visual Journey #29

For all my friends

After gessoing the pages and leaving them to dry I stamped CI 063 Friends in Paris stamp and again on a piece of card using black archival ink. Over the top I rubbed in some of the Tim Holtz distress micro glaze - I wanted to keep an area around the image without colour on it. I also stamped CI 430 Baroque Splatter Script in cornflower blue archival.

I splodged distress inks on my craft mat and dipped the pages in forgetting that DIs and gesso don't complement each other and that the DI doesn't want to dry even when baked with a heat gun. So I did the same with some distress paints and had more success.

You will see where the glaze is neither the inks or the paints stayed I had to wipe them off as they just beaded up and lay on the resistant surface.

To add to the Parisian feel I added texture paste mixed with tarnished bronze distress paint through a fleur de lys stencil and let it dry.

I added a couple of small collage pieces and added white texture paste around them and over the fleur de lys.

Before I added the last layers I dripped some glimmer mist and distress sprays in the textured areas.

Gosh only another couple of weeks and I will be off on holiday and I'm so looking forward to some quality family time round the pool and eating out in the evenings, can't wait.

Have a great end to the week and thanks for stopping by today.

hugs Brenda xxx

Cards for Crafty Individuals

The monthly theme of 'Music to my ears' continues over at Crafty Individuals and I have made some cards for my DT samples linking with the music theme.

My 'Thanks' card uses stamp sets CI-377 where I cut out the silhouette dancers and CI-194 for the music background. The music stave is a memory box die and the sentiment is Tim Holtz, although it's difficult to see the black background actually has music notation on it.

On my second card I have used the CI-366 stamp set and created layers with border dies and snippets from my scrap box. 

Now I am sure you can see the musical link to the previous two cards, but this next one it is more obtuse. Can you guess what it is?

I couldn't resist creating a card using this beautiful collaged stamp of the pretty girl advertising perfume (CI-148 and CI-335), but take a closer look at the name of the shop. Is that a big enough clue?

This card uses the beautiful Floradora girl stamp and the Woman's World tag set. I haven't added any overt references to music but as soon as I saw the stamp it resonated with me and I immediately saw a link to the challenge as the name of the shop where this perfume is sold is called Adele. I love Adele's music and have both her albums, so it fitted nicely in my brain lol.

Jean as always is very generous with her prizes and offers so do pop over to the challenge post to see more amazing samples from the DT and find the details of how you can enter.

A big welcome to all the new followers who have joined me recently, it's wonderful to have you aboard and to all my commenting and silent readers who stop by to see what I am up to, thanks for sharing in my creative journey.

Take care, have a great weekend. I will be travelling back from my holidays today so I will update with some photos on my return.

hugs Brenda xxx

Tag for Crafty Individuals

It's May, a new challenge has started at Crafty Individuals and the theme is about music.

I have interpreted this in my own way (as I do ....) and taken a play on the word 'song' in the caption used on my tag.

Process steps -

Blend distress inks old paper, evergreen bough and weathered wood with a blending tool and mist with stormy sky and peeled paint mix in a mister. Blend the edges with frayed burlap - spritz and flick with water and heat dry.

Stamp CI 430 with stormy sky and frayed burlap and heat dry. I love the distressed pattern and collage effects of this stamp, it's perfect for creating backgrounds.

Stamp various stamps from the collection CI 329 and also add some stamped card collage pieces.

I also added some drawn lines between the mini tag and the birds to make it look as though they are holding it between them. Add a bow ........

..... and sentiment or quote to finish it off.

I hope you can join us in the challenge this month. Jean is always very generous with her prizes and discounts so pop over to the Crafty Individuals blog to see what Jean has in store for this challenge.

hugs Brenda xxx

The Animal World at Crafty Individuals

I had great fun making these samples for the new animal challenge at Crafty Individuals and used the Alice Palace stamps.

The backgrounds were made by spraying distress inks over stencils and using them by printing them onto card and watercolour papers.

The images were stamped onto scrap pieces of inky leftovers, I love doing this it provides a great backing for these quirky images.

I added some collage bits and pieces to build the deigns and finish the compositions.

I you have some animal stamps why not join in the fun and do pop over during the month to see lots of inspirational pieces from the design team.

hugs Brenda xxxx

One layer no: 3 – Crafty Individuals.

Just catching up with a Crafty Individuals card. I think this was the most favourite of  four cards I made for a one-layer workshop last October.

I cheated a bit as we cut a separate piece of card on which to do our design and then adhered it to a proper card when we were happy with it. However there are no embellishments or layers of any kind, so from that angle it is definitely only one layer. Does that count?

Cut a piece of card 9 ½ x 20 ½ cms.

Take an acrylic block and dab three colours of distress ink pads direct to it, adding a little bit of vintage photo or walnut stain along the top and bottom edges. (I used victorian velvet, worn lipstick, rusty hinge and walnut stain)

Mist the block with water till you get small globules of colour and the stamp directly onto the card and keep pressing down and you will see the colours mix on the card below.

Stamp an image in black archival ink spanning the top and bottom of the strip of colour.

Tear some rough paper and position it in the top right hand corner to create an opening, masking off the rest of the card and stamp some music score through it with black soot.

Add a stamped sentiment underneath the colour block.

Roughen the edges and ink them with walnut stain. Adhere to a DL card.

Hey presto, a beautiful panel of colour and a great card that can be re-produced in different ways and is flat for posting. 

hugs Brenda xxx

Treescape for Crafty Individuals

Crafty Individuals have a new set of tree stamps out - CI-429  and called Trees Galore. 

These are much wider than others they have designed and give great scope for using them to create landscapes, much like I have done on my collage piece below. 

I started with a piece of linen card and the wrinkle free technique using some green and blue distress inks (sorry forgot exactly which ones). Over that, using Potting Soil archival ink, I stamped the trees one and a half times to elongate the landscape further

It left a tiny gap between the two stamped images so I used a brown drawing pen to join them up.

Using a second stamp from the set and Tree Branch archival ink I did a second generation stamp across the tree line to create an ethereal woodland background. 

I gathered stamped ephemera (also CI stamps) and other elements to begin building a collage.

Using papers and oddments the background started to come together.

I knew this small portion of a tag would be ideal to use and just stamped lightly over it using a CI text stamp.

Some scraps of papers, borders and hessian and a portion of Tim's film strip die with the ephemera filling the spaces gave me some shape to the layout and provided additional dimension and texture. 

This is now in my large collage journal.

Before I go I thought I would share a few photos from our weekend trip to London. The children had given us tickets to see 'Memphis' for Christmas and we decided to stay overnight.

It is currently on at the Shaftesbury Theatre and starring Beverley Knight - she was amazing as were the whole cast. Their voices reverberated around the theatre and filled every corner.

Our hotel overlooked Hyde park, so it was lovely to have a walk round on both days.

The Italian Fountains.

Statue of Peter Pan.

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.

On Sunday we went to the Eight Lives, Eight Stories exhibition at The British Museum where new technology has uncovered some secrets of eight mummies from the Thebes area of Egypt.

We finished off with a glass of wine at Covent Garden taking in the atmosphere and for a while listening to an operatic singer.

I hope you had a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

PS I have just discovered this is my 1000th post, so come back again tomorrow as I will be offering a blog candy to celebrate.