Challenge 18 Bountiful Harvest

Hi - it's S@ndy here - welcoming you to another leg of our Vintage Journey.

With Halloween soon becoming a fond memory, we step into fall.  For this challenge let's think about the Bountiful Harvest.  It seems that pumpkins, wheat, corn and even the Harvest Moon could be in order.  Just let your imagination take you to a crisp fall day.  For those of us in the US -  a Thanksgiving theme could be nice as well.  You can make a card, 3-D project, scrapbook layout, journal page, canvas or tag. Again, let your imagination run free.

Please keep in mind that we are a Tim Holtz inspired challenge blog so please let us know how you have been inspired by Tim's style or products. If you would like a reminder, you can read all the challenge rules here.

We are proudly sponsored by Country View Crafts and as always there is a 

£10 shop voucher awarded to the winner chosen by the team.  We will also be choosing three Pinworthies who will be featured on our Pinterest page and they will receive a badge to display on their blog.

Our Creative Guides have put together some fantastic projects to get you inspired so let's take a look.

S@ndy

For this challenge I would like you to join me in the "Paper Pumpkin Patch", a Bountiful Harvest indeed! I used as many different pumpkin dies as I could find, three from Tim's collection, and gave each one a different treatment.  I hope you'll stop by my blog for more details.

Jennie

 

I decided to make a Harvest Wreath for this lovely challenge and had lots of fun making leaves and flowers using my Tim Holtz Tattered Leaves and Tattered Poinsettia dies. It smells beautiful as I also raided the potpourri bowl in the sitting room for some nuts and seeds! There are more photos and details on my blog if you want to know more.

Jools
 

A beautiful and bountiful time of year for all, with an abundance of produce in fabulous rich colour tones. I have used a bounty of Tim’s Dies and Texture Fades for my project. To see more please visit my blog

Astrid

 I loved Sandy's theme and decided to alter a book box using numerous autumnal elements and colours. It is intended to keep all the beautiful gifts I have received over the years from Crafty friends. To see more of how I created this box, please visit

my blog

Julia

 Living in New England, Fall is one of my favorite times of the year with the crisp days and colorful foliage.  It's also a time we seem to focus on being thankful for all we have been given over the past year as we celebrate Thanksgiving.  I was inspired by this theme of thanks for my project today making an Art Parts container adorned with many of Tim Holtz Idea-ology pieces, sponged inks and embossed pieces.

If you would like to see more photos and details about my project - including what I slipped inside my container - please visit my blog post here.

Nikki

  

For Sandy's harvest and thanksgiving theme I have created this card using Tim's papers, distress sprays, paints and inks plus a number of his dies and techniques. For lots more detail please hop over to Addicted to Art.

Chris

 

  A heavy influence of Tim's products for this make but not forgetting various distress techniques too! The inky canvas, masses of dies, Idea-ology, crackle, tissue wrap, torn music paper and ephemera. Whatever I seemed to think of and reach for, this autumnal piece was most definitely Tim, Tim, Tim all the way! The full run down of steps and products can be found here.  Chris xxx

Brenda

I love all things autumn; the colours, the misty mornings, kicking the dry leaves underfoot, picking the apples off the tree and when I was younger I would cook, jar up and freeze the last of the summer fruits and vegetables, especially the runner beans. So this is my little celebration to a bountiful harvest for 2014.

Julie

For this challenge, I initially gathered my inspiration from a photograph of a wagon filled with an abundance of fruit, vegetables and grains. I brought these aspects into my project adding several of Tim's techniques to get my desired effect. If you would like to see how I made this and what techniques I used please pop over to my blog. It would be lovely to have you visit.

Annie 

 Although we don't have Thanksgiving in the UK I love the idea of it and envy my american friends. There are so many wonderful decor pieces that you can purchase to decorate your home in the most amazing rustic colours. Autumn is a favourite season of mine and going from Halloween to Thanksgiving and then Christmas sounds like a fabulous way of managing our dark dreary winter nights. Spending time with family and friends....mmmmm love it x

Now that you've seen all this fantastic inspiration from the team I hope you will join in this challenge.  We can't wait to see what you have to show us.

An InLinkz Link-up

A warm welcome back to Lynn Stevens

I am so pleased to welcome Lynn back to A Vintage Journey as a Guest Creative Guide. If you have visited Lynn’s blog at all, you will surely know about her love of all things Halloween and when Lynn guested earlier in the year she specifically mentioned that she would love to be involved for our Halloween theme. So here she is ………

Lynn Stevens has been involved with Art through out her life. She has had her own Mural and Faux Painting business for 15 Years. In her spare time she enjoys making altered art, stamping and designing jewelry often incorporating vintage or found objects into her art. She has been on many design teams. A Gilded Life, Retro Cafe Arts, Artistic Outpost, Alpha Stamps, I Brake For Stamps, Oxford Impressions, Gingersnap Creations and has been a guest designer for Technique Junkies and Scrolls work and Firecracker Designs By Pamela. She's been published in many issues of Stampington magazines and Altered Arts magazines. When she's not in her studio you can find her combing through junk shops, antique stores or yard sales looking for undiscovered treasures. Her blog address is.
http://trashtotreasureart.blogspot.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/razzledazzlestamps.

 

I adore Tim's Halloween dies and knew I wanted to create something extra special.

I had a Christmas tree advent calendar that was just waiting for a makeover.

The inspiration comes from Tim's configuration boxes.

but I wanted to fill them with Halloween goodies so I opted for the tree re-purposed to do the trick

Center stage is set using Tim's dies.  Distress inks and some idea-ology.

Now isn’t his such a cool way to upcycle something using it in a similar way and with the same purpose but giving it a new theme and redesigning all the box front and embellishments. I love how the little scene has been created to look like a haunted house surrounded by the graveyard and all the ghosties and ghouls have come visiting.

Thank you Lynn for sharing your creativity with us and for making such a gorgeous configuration goodie box.

I know there will be further details of this fabulous make on Lynn’s blog so please take a visit to Trash to Treasure and see.

We are looking forward to seeing more of your entries this week for the Halloween To Die For theme. You have till Thursday at 6 pm (BST) and then we will be back again on Friday morning to start the next wonderful challenge which will be hosted by our lovely S@ndy.

Have a fabulous week filled with good moments and hopefully some creative time for you.

hugs Brenda xxx

Guest project Pamellia Johnson and Heavy metal winners

These fortnightly Friday’s sure do roll round fast and today we welcome Pamellia as our guest designer. Pamellia resides at My Little Craft Things and makes beautiful layered cards and tags but today she has made a very special Halloween project for us all.

Hello Everyone! My name is Pamellia Johnson and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wonderful husband and our two little girls, Scully (a teacup Maltese) and Pebbles (a teacup black Pomeranian).

Thanks to my very creative and talented Mom, I have been crafting in some form or another since I was a little kid. I've dabbled in a variety of crafts, but my true passion is card making. I enjoy many different styles, but my favourite is shabby chic, oh how I love all the soft muted colours, big shabby bows and frilly laces. I have only recently discovered the world of Tim Holtz and have being really enjoying learning about his products and techniques.

When the team from A Vintage Journey asked me to be a Guest Creative Guide, I was just so honoured. When they gave me HALLOWEEN - TO DIE FOR as the theme, I just knew I had to do something extra special with lots of Tim Holtz influence. I hope you enjoy my Halloween House!!

My Halloween house started as some scrap paper, which I used to build the template. Once I fine tuned the measurements, I made the final version out of pizza boxes. I gave both sides a couple coats of beige paint to cover the printing and flaws of the boxes. Then I used a brick stencil and some texture paste to give the walls some dimension. I smooshes some texture paste here and there, then added some bits of cheesecloth.

Another coat of beige paint, and then Tim Holtz took over! I rubbed Gathered Twigs distress stain over some of the areas and then spritzed it with water to make spots and drips. I did the same process with Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo. Then I took some Walnut stain distress spray and gave it a couple squirts. Lastly, a little Picket Fence watered down and washed over a few areas to mute the colours.

I used Tim Holtz's cracked glass technique to do the windows, his effect powder technique to do the rusted aluminum awning and many of his other techniques to complete all the details of my Halloween House.

It also lights up at night!

Thank you so much to the entire team of A Vintage Journey for inviting me to spend the day with them. I am thrilled and honoured to be here with such a talented group of artists!

  My Little Craft Things

Wow, isn’t this a fabulous haunted house? It is an amazing 3D project with so many details and techniques, I know I will want to re-visit this again and again and thank goodness it will be pinned on our Pinterest Guest Designers board for everyone to find again easily.

Thank you Pamellia for taking the time to create such a magnificent Halloween work of art, for providing us with such clear steps to follow and for sharing your amazing creativity with us.

 

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Now we move on to sharing who the winner and pinworthies are for our Heavy Metal challenge and the fabulous Terry has chosen her designs.

It’s never easy choosing winners, but with a little help from my Creative Guide friends here it goes!

The Winner is -  Angela Radford from Felix the Crafty Cat -

Angela’s hand is totally heavy metal.

Angela your voucher will be on it’s way soon and your project will be pinned to our winners board. Thank you for sharing such an original and unique project with us.

Now to the pinworthies in numerical order:

No: 22  Karen Garrard from

Winton Rose Paper Creations

 

No: 24 Sara Barker from

sarahscloset

 

No: 26 Jan Hill from

Scrapbooking from the Attic

 

All these amazing creations will be added to our Pinworthies board.

Thank you to all who played along, we all hope you will join us for many more challenges to come. Don’t forget there is still a week left to join Anne’s fabulous Halloween theme To Die For. Don’t forget they don’t have to be Tim’s dies or products but please just tell us what the strong Tim inspiration is for your project, this is how we explain it for you.

– *STRONGLY influenced by Tim Holtz - what does this mean? We do not expect you to use all Tim Holtz products on your entry, if you have them, have used them so that they are your strong Tim focus then that is great but there are other ways you can enter. Because we ask that your work is strongly influenced by Tim, then we want to see and read about his influence on your entry, that could be by ‘casing’ one of his projects but using other products that you own, using one of his techniques to create something similar to his makes or your own design or it could be that  you've read his books, watched his videos or DVDs or completed Creative Chemistry 101 and 102 and have followed his processes to complete your design. Just tell us what that strong influence is so that we can fully understand your thinking. I am sorry but just using some distress inks does not comply, we don’t class that as having a strong Tim influence. Don't forget we are primarily a vintage challenge but we also accept shabby chic, mixed-media and journaling styles. See our explanation of these in the side-bar.

 

I hope this helps and I hope you will come and join in with the wonderful projects that have already been linked for this challenge.

 

Have a great weekend and happy crafting.

 

hugs Brenda and the team. xxx

Destination Inspiration - Distress Sprays and Texture Pastes

Hello all and lovely to have you drop in here at A Vintage Journey. It's Astrid here and as it's Monday you may know, every second Monday one of the creative guides shares a project, technique or inspiration piece. So today it is my turn again and as I was thinking about what to write for what I have done, I came to the conclusion that Destination Inspiration is perhaps not quite the right title on this occasion, maybe it should be Destination Exploration, for when I started I had no idea where I would land up, as really I was just experimenting.... But I hope that what I am about to share, may give you some inspiration along the way too to explore and discover....

So I decided to play with the new Tim Holtz Distress Sprays and try them out on as many different substrates and texture pastes as I could. I created a series of 9 different tags, I will number them, show you the different effects and give you a quick view of the tags after I had completed them.

The full details of some of the finished tags I will show on my own blog in the days to come, for otherwise this post would get far too long. If you are planning to play with the sprays, I highly recommend to get a large cheap sketch pad and lay it on top of your work surface. It will soak up all the excess spray, and will give you amazing results that can be used for die cutting or journaling or what ever you please.

So here goes:

Tag 1

Sprays on a plain manila tag:

Colours used: Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, Walnut stain.

Adding some stenciling with Walnut Stain Spray and stamping.

The completed tag.

Tag 2

Sprays on a Black tag:

This is the result of a first spraying, I used two of the metallics, Tarnished Brass and Antique Bronze and spritzt with lots of water. As I was not too excited with the result, I gave it a second spraying:

This time I added Picket Fence and Peacock Feathers. Because the Picket Fence is quite opaque, you get a wonderful patina effect when mixed with the metallics and the Peacock Feathers.

And here is the finished tag. The leaf was cut from the mop up excess on the pad I keep underneath, as explained above. I also added some Remnant Rubs and was interested to note that they are easy to apply onto the sprayed tag, unlike an inked pad, for as Tim has pointed out, the resins in the inks, stop the rubs adhering, therefore it is better to use them before inking, as I have found out to my cost on many occasions.. but on the sprays they work just fine!

Tag 3

Using Wendy Vecchi Crackle Paste through a Layering Stencil:

It's a good idea to choose a stencil with big opening so the cracks are more visible

After spraying with Tea Dye, Iced Spruce, Peeled Paint and Evergreen Bow. As you can see the crackle paste absorbs the sprays pretty well.

The finished tag. Like I said, I will post full details of the finished tags on my blog in days to come.

Tag 4

Plain Manila Tag run through an embossing folder for texture:

After spraying with Brushed Pewter and Black Soot:

Love how the Brushed Pewter mixed with the Black Soot almost gives a sort of bluey effect. If I did this again though, I would colour the tag first, dry it and only then run it through an embossing folder, as quite a bit of texture gets lost in the spraying process, because it is all quite wet of course. Love though how the black Soot puddles in some of the indented areas.

Here is the finished tag:

Again details to follow in days to come, but just to mention, the large snowflake was another embossed piece that I simply cut out.

Tag 5

This one I call my mixed media tag:

Plain Manila tag, Gesso scraped over with a palette knife

After spraying with Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, Broken China and Faded Jeans. I found that though the colour appears to hold quite well on top of the gesso, a baby wipe, will immediately wipe it off and it tends to pool in certain areas. I really wanted a darker blue, but alas there is no Chipped Sapphire spray yet, so I decided to make my own by mixing a few drops of re-inker in a spritzer bottle with some water. It worked just fine and I am not sure really whether there is much difference between that and the ready sprays.

Here is the tag after adding strips of tissue wrap, more stencilling with paste and paint, like I said, mixed media, and of course great fun to do.

And here finally the finished tag:

Well, just over half way there, - hope you are still with me....

Tag 6

Using Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste through a Layering Stencil

After Spraying with Rusty Hinge, Barn Door, Fired Brick and Walnut Stain:

The paste holds the darker colours better than the lighter ones.

And here is how I finished this tag:

Tag 7

Using Wendi Vecchi Clear embossing Paste through a layering stencil:

After Spraying with Brushed Pewter, Iced Spruce and a little Picket Fence and Black Soot:

I did this in two goes, drying once in between. Love the icy snowy effect of this colour combo.

And here the finished tag:

Tag 8

Using Ranger Embossing Paste through a Layering Stencil:

After spraying with Tattered Rose, Tea Dye and Walnut Stain:

The Ranger Paste is slightly thicker than the Wendy Vecchi paste which is produced by Dreamweaver. I did not feel though that it holds the colour any better than Wendy's paste, but again it holds the darker colours quite well.

The finished tag. Here I used the sprays also on some emboss resist paper on the ticket behind the flowers. As you can see, it absorbs the sprays really well.

And now finally

Tag 9

Using Wendy Vecchi Gold Embossing paste through a layering stencil:

After spraying with Faded Jeans, Dusty Concord, Salty Ocean and Tarnished Brass:

Not surprisingly really, the gold paste completely resists the sprays, but that of course can be a good thing. Below is my final finished tag.

So that is the end of my exploration into the possibilities of the sprays in combination with various embossing pastes. I was lucky in that it was my birthday this month, so I got the full set of sprays and I have to say I have loved playing with them. I love the subtlety of their colours and the way they mix and pool as only Distress Ink products will do. If you are thinking of getting the sprays, but don't want to splash out on the full set, I highly recommend you at least get the metallics and the Picket Fence, they give brilliant results mixed with just about any other colour.

Thank you so much for visiting and sticking with it and I hope you will give these sprays a try!