Vintage Shabby Collage Journal - Stamping with Tim Holtz Flowers

 Using scraps from projects and snippets to create little collages.

I have a double spread today using materials from a variety of companies but the important ones are listed below.

The background stamping was done by using hickory smoke oxide, this leaves a fabulous impression of light on dark.

Here is the train driver who is carrying a cargo of flowers to the airport where it all will be sent to florists in Paris and New York. The boxes are carrying fragile freight and he does not want his cargo to get crushed. It is a great responsibility to get all the boxes delivered on time and safely, but he is experienced and wise and ready to do a good job.

Claude, this dedicated driver carefully carried all the packages for miles, stopping at stations to pick up and drop of passengers, many of them regularly taking this route and train knowing that Claude always did a good job at keeping the train to time. As he pulled into his platform at Charles de Gaulle Airport he was thinking of all the arrangements that had been made to transfer the cargo to the plane travelling to New York and to shops in Paris. He watched the handlers remove the boxes from their carriage and gave a sigh of relief knowing he had got them safely to the terminal and they were now off to their final destinations.

Claude was happy and satisfied that his task had been accomplished and he was ready to head off hme to his family.

• “Just living is not enough ... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” – Hans Christian Andersen

xxx

Materials

Stamps - Tim Holtz Flower Jar CMS297, Perspectives CMS213, Ledger Script CMS241

Distress inks - scorched timber

Distress Oxide - hickory smoke, walnut stain

TH Snippets - Urban Layers

TH Collage Strips - large

TH Words - Small Talk

The Graphics Fairy - Fleur Tab

TH Cello Sticker Tape

TH Clipping Stickers

TH - papers

Sakura Micron brown pen

Using Scorched Timber Oxide on my background - Tag 2

If you've seen tag one on my last post, which was yesterday, this is the follow up. 

I added lots more splatters and drips to the original background and found that by mixing both the Scorched Timber and Broken China it gave me a gorgeous patina colour so I literally smooched both colours in the oxides on my mat and with a blending tool mixed them together to create the edge colour. 

I added some stamping, stencilling and splatters of white acrylic paint before creating the collage. 

When it was dry I roughened those edges and went round giving a careful deep dark fine edge with the Scorched Timber distress ink pad.

Thanks for stopping by.

xxx

Using Scorched Timber Oxide on my background - Tag 1

The amazing Tim Holtz has just released his final new colour for the distress range. Having received the new Scorched Timber distress ink, distress oxide, distress spray stain, distress oxide spray and watercolour pencil from Susan at Country View Crafts I had to have a play and first checked it's colour tones against some other browns in the range.

 I took a piece of A4 card, cut it down so I could die-cut two tags from it and created a background using both Scorched Timber and Broken China distress oxides.

I smooshed, dipped, dripped and dried several layers and added splatters etc as well. Once I'd cut the tags I chose two mini TH stencils and added some stamping to add more detail. This time I used the distress inks rather than the oxides and blended carefully.

I picked out two photobooth photos and chose these two lovely ladies for this tag.

And finished the collages.

I think the new and yes the last colour in the distress range Scorched Timber is going to be my most favourite brown from the whole set.

Stay tuned for tag 2 which should be along tomorrow.

If you have visited today thanks for stopping by.

xxx

12 Cards of Christmas #8

Sleigh Ride

I haven't had time to create any more cards after this one and the Christmas prep is taking up so much of my time but I love it. I may have over estimated how many different designs I could get done!

For this card I found an old flat square stamp and used it to create the blue square by pressing some iced spruce and faded jeans distress oxides onto it, spritzing with water and stamping onto watercolour paper.

I took an old set of Tim's stamps called Deco Christmas and stamped the sleigh with black archival. I used the stamp platform and went over it 3 or 4 times but noticed that the textured watercolour paper was preventing a smooth and filled in print and the oxides could also be seen as if they were coming to the surface of the black prints. You can see in this photo below.

 

I decided to try a paintbrush and some carbon black decoart fluid media acrylic and although it was a bit of a faff painting eight of them it certainly did the trick

So I ended up with a lovely collection of these that went to The Packhouse at Runfold, near Farnham. I need to go and check to see if they have all gone!

xxx

Oxides background for cards #3

Do you remember the background masterboards I made as my first outing using the new Distress Oxides (here if you missed it) and then the two cards I made using some of it? (Again here and here if you missed those too). But waste not, want not I wasn't going to let the pieces left over go into the bit box yet and I needed a couple of cards to send to to lovely friends who had sent me happy parcels in the post, so I put them to good use. I'm using these as my project for the Country View Crafts project blog today, so please pop over there to see more details and photos.

Thanks for stopping by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Crafting from the sofa #8 - Retro circles

Well I'm having to schedule some posts quite ahead of myself as I seem to have been so prolific with the panels for my lovely Eileen Hull HeArtfelt Journal, but in keeping with the previous panel - Retro Garden - we now have some Retro Circles.

I still used the same 12 x 12 paper stack and similar colours and a doxide background created along the way with mop ups from different projects. I didn't add and stencilling or stamping as I just love the depth the oxides create with layers of dipping in different colours.

 I gathered some simple bits from the few supplies I have beside the sofa .....

...... and even found the ticket to add after I had taken the photo above ......

....... and it all came together and into the journal quite quickly.

No real techniques at the moment - but I'm loving just having time to collage bits and pieces together.

I have to say the midori style booklet I made for these is filling up quite fast now.

Thanks for taking some time to pop by.

hugs Brenda xxx

Crafting from the sofa #6 - Vintage ladies collage

I managed to get quite a few panels made in the weeks where I had to have the cast on my leg and I couldn't sit at my desk, this was one of the earlier ones.

I wanted to try something different with the oxides and decided to use the distress glaze. I applied some through a stencil just rubbing with my finger, you can see the stencil had some ink left on it which mixed with the product ......

.... it was also rather thick so I wafted the heat gun over it lightly to melt it and then rubbed it away.

I blended over iced spruce doxide, which revealed some of he rubbing away where the wax caught the paper. I knew at this point what I'd done - silly me but I wasn't going to waste the paper or my time.

I dipped the paper in watery iced spruce and faded jeans and you can see the resist just didn't work. There are a couple of places you can see it faintly but not enough to call a resist technique ......

To finish the inking I dipped it in spiced marmalade and vintage photo.

When I came back to this a few days later I decided where it was going to go in the pink journal and gathered the bits together to create a collage. As it was balancing up the two men on the previous panel ......

....... I chose the two lovely ladies from the paper dolls pack and some other collage elements that also would fit in and help balance the two.

Once put together it looks like this?

I was so happy to find this coloured butterfly in the botanical layers pack, it matched the palette perfectly.

I've really been enjoying making these, they're a bit like ATCs, quite easy to get finished and addictive too. I'm hoping I will be continuing the series to fill the journal when I'm back on my feet.

I really appreciate you stopping by.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

canvas board - under the sea.

Oh my our sixth challenge at A Vintage Journey for 2017, that's half of them for the year!!!!

The lovely Nikki has chosen CANVAS for the theme and describes the challenge for us -

"Let's work with canvas this month in our vintage; shabby; mixed media, art journalling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk style. It doesn't matter how as long as some canvas is a dominant feature of your project. Perhaps you may use a canvas in the traditional way or use the reverse to create a shadow box? Canvas boards are fabulous to work on or perhaps you have some canvas sheets which can be cut and adhered to another surface."

As I'm still crafting from the sofa and chose to use a 5 x 7 canvas board that I love to work on and experimented with the doxide inks to create an underwater background. 

Begin by blending the colours over the board.

Flick with water and dry.

Blend the same colours over again in different places.

Flick with water again and dry twice more.

Blend with these two colours - spritz and dry.

Blend with broken china and spritz and dry.

Take the fish and seaweed stamps, spritz them with water and stamp onto the oxides to create this watery scene.

Finish by stamping the octopus onto card and painting it and die-cutting some greenery (I used left over painty card).

I also added some little glass cabouchons.

We're hoping you will be able to join us for the latest challenge and in the meantime |I recommend you pop over to the AVJ challenge to see what all the amazing Creative Guides have submitted as their inspiration projects - there is always an incredible amount of talent on show.

Less than three weeks now until I go back to the fracture clinic, I will be sooo pleased to get this cast off.

Have a wonderful weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Crafting from the Sofa #4 - Hearts for CVC

This is a panel for the pink journal, created in stages whilst I am recuperating from my broken ankle and it also serves as my DT piece for the new challenge at Country View Challenges - which is HEARTS chosen by the lovely Hazel.

For this background I began with the splat stencil and fired brick doxide. I replaced the stencil over the patterns and rubbed in some distress glaze aiming to keep the splatters looking clear and defined as I added other watery layers.

And so the fun started dipping the media paper into fossilized amber and spiced marmalade LOTS of times, heat drying between each dip. This really looked like molten lava to me but the splats remained and didn't get washed away with all the dips and spritzes of water.

Next I stamped the half tone stamp to create some visual texture and blended the orange and yellow colours around the edges.

This was all a bit fiery for me so I finished by dipping it in some watery gesso to tone it down somewhat.

Well I thought I had finished it, that was until I started gathering the elements to use. 

The story behind this is that about 10 days after I broke my ankle my gorgeous daughter Maddie and her lovely partner Tom took a long weekend break to visit Rome, she thought it was just that, a mini break, but he had other ideas. The outcome was she said YES and they are now engaged and of course we are all thrilled for them both.

So back to the panel - Whilst looking through a tub of vintage photos I found the married couple - remember I have only brought limited supplies down into the conservatory but this one spoke to me and linked to the engagement of these two special people. I stamped and cut the flowers and pen nib and punched the hearts and found some lovely appropriate remnant rubs. The oval is waxed paper and was used to help diecut the stitched ovals when Nikki came to visit, I decided to keep it and glad that I did.

So here's where I needed to add some hearts to the background too. I blended worn lipstick doxide randomly then replaced it again and with a water brush and some vintage photo doxide painted it over the ink to get some hearts that blended into the background perfectly.

Great, I inked and painted the flowers, edged all the pieces with walnut stain DI and collaged the elements together.  

After I had added it I thought the pen nib fitted for signing the register lol. It fits in the journal perfectly.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll pop over to the Country View Challenges blog to see what other hearts projects my fabulous teamies have come up with it and maybe we will see you take part.

Hopefully we will get some lovely weather for June.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx