Tag Friday inspiration

Happy fifth Friday of the month and welcome to our viewing of tags galore. Each and every one of us love creating with no boundaries and this is the perfect occasion to follow our muse and have fun experimenting and playing with new ideas and techniques. I'm sure you're gonna love the line up today and find something that inspires you and when you do it would be lovely if you could pop over to everyone's blog and leave a little love.

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Tracy Evans

I love Tag Friday posts, the freedom to create anything we like as long as its a tag and a Tim Holtz Etcetera Tag was the perfect starting point for me. Vintage pieces and colours were my inspiration for this piece and this was great fun to create. Pop by my BLOG for all the details.

Jennie

I always love a Tag Friday and had every intention of making something colourful to cheer me up as we are having a terrible summer of weather ..... but somehow this happened! Do join me over on my blog if you would like to see more.

Nikki

I have been working on my tonal values to create light and dark in my tag today featuring the exciting new quote stamps by Alison Bomber / PaperArtsy. Do pop over to Addicted to Art to see all the details.

Sara Emily

For my first Tag Friday, I  tried out a new-to-me crackle product, pairing it with some old mixed media favorites. I hope you'll take a minute to stop by my blog  for the details.

Brenda

Like all the Creative Guides I love a Tag Friday post and today I have an mdf tag to share inspired by my visit to the Dare 2 Create retreat last weekend in Coventry. I was lucky enough to attend Andy's workshop and I also sat with Dee Adams when she did her demonstration in the evening, this takes something from both of them and I love the look. More photos and details are over at Bumblebees and Butterflies if you'd like to see how I made it.

Annie

Hi everyone it's lovely to join you here for  June's Tag Friday x You can see how I have trimmed my tag to make a bookmark..for more details pop over to my blog HERE x

Astrid

I love Tag Friday and on this occasion made a Summer Fairy tag, hoping she will bring some sunshine and Summer warmth to where I live. If you want to see how I put this together, - just join me HERE

Alison

I think we all love a Tag Friday round here, and I was definitely delighted to have a chance to play some more with my new PaperArtsy quote stamps.  Yes, I really do mean "my" stamps.  I'm so excited... now I have lots more words to go with my pictures!  I do hope you'll pop over to Words and Pictures to find out more.

Amanda

I've gone all deep and meaningful with the tag I have created for our June Tag Friday. To find out more just click here and you will be whisked straight over to my blog.

Deb

I took this Tag Friday opportunity to join in with the 'Get Hip For Summer' fun using Tim Holtz's Hipster stamp set.  I envisioned this very cool dude as an up and coming film star, hope you can pop over to my blog for the whole story.

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Well there you are inspiration in abundance and such a variety of styles within the genres we love to see.

There is still one more Destination Inspiration post here on Monday using the current travel bag contents and then next Friday we will be welcoming you to the next new theme to get your teeth into. But don't forget there's still time to enter the June Canvas challenge where you could win yourself a $25 voucher to Simmerz Paints.

Have a wonderful weekend whatever you've got planned.

hugs Brenda and the Creative Guides xxxx

June Destination Inspiration - Arriving at Terminal #4

Hello Everyone and Welcome

Amanda here today, all ready to greet you at Terminal #4 , the penultimate leg of this months Destination Inspiration. Lets begin by taking a quick look inside the travel bag to remind ourselves of the contents:
Product: Paint
Technique:Any Resist
Colour: Orange
Substrate: Beer Mat/ Coaster
Just a few, but as you will have seen if you are journeying with us this month Annie (Terminal #1) , Deb (Terminal #2) and Julia (Terminal #3) have not let the lack of supplies limit their creativity. If you have been delayed and are just arriving be sure to check out their projects by clicking on the relevant links provided.

Here is the project I have created 

I have used 2 resist techniques in my project
1. Remnant Rub Resist on the coaster base
2. Gesso Resist Stamping on the house and door.
Here are the colours of Distress Ink I have used throughout the project



Lets start with the coaster. I added Tim Holtz remnant rubs from a few different sets around the sides of the coaster.  I then applied distress inks ( Mustard Seed, Wild Honey Rusty Hinge) with a blending tool to the 'remnant rubbed' coaster building up the colour until I was happy. The inks picked up the 'spongier' surface of the coaster and created a delicate texture whilst the remnant rubs resisted the inks .



I then adhered the coaster to four more coasters, one on top of the other to create the base/plinth for the house adhering Tim Holtz designer tape (Chatter) around the edges to finish off .



Now for the Tiny House. I die cut a house from thick brown card stock using Tim Holtz Tiny Houses die,assembled and put to one side. I applied Deco Art White Gesso to Tim Holtz Slate stamp (CMS299- Slate and Stone)



and stamped on to two strips of card. I dried with a heat gun before adding colour using Distress inks. This is how the build up of colour began and you can see how the gesso stamping resists the ink - love this technique but I maybe 'gesso 'biased' as I love the product!



I kept adding more and more ink, eventually covering the green tones you can see above, bringing in more yellow and orange tones until I was happy with the depth and intensity of colour. I then die cut the house again from these strips of card and adhered them to the brown house I had already made . By using two layers of thick card the house has better rigidity and good stability.



With the main structure of the house all assembled it just needed a bit of'dressing up' and of course a roof and door!
I used the Gesso Resist Samping technique again on the door, but this time using one of the stamps from Tim Holtz Birch and Pine stamp set (CMS280) and colouring with Distress Inks.



I hand cut the roof from wood grain card stock as I wanted it to be slightly wider than the roof die that is included in Tims Tiny houses die. I used Distress Paints ( Walnut Stain, Ground Espresso , Black Soot) to colour.



To 'dress' I stamped one of the butterflies from Tim Holtz Flutter stamp set (CMS294) using Black Archival ink, water coloured it using Distress Inks (Mustard Seed, Rusty Hinge, Mermaid Lagoon) and applied a coat of glossy accents to give it a glossy appearance. I adhered a Tim Holtz Ideology game spinner to the body of the butterfly before adhering in position on a Tim Holtz Alpha Parts arrow which points upward to an Ideology game piece painted with Distress Paint (Mermaid Lagoon). There's also an Alpha Parts arrow adhered in front of the door pointing outward .

A view from the back



from the side



and finally from the front



Thank you for your company today. I hope you have enjoyed your time here at Terminal #4 and leave with a little inspiration. Pop back next Monday when a fellow Creative Guide will be ready to greet you at Terminal #5, this months final stop.

We hope you will be able to join us in our current challenge 'Canvas'
The challenge is open until Thursday 6th July 2017 so there is still time to enter.
We always love to see what you create and appreciate each and every one of your entries .
Wishing you all a great week
Take Care
Amanda

Guest Friday with the amazingly talented Claudia

Welcome everyone to our special guest spot for June and we have the ever amazing and talented Claudia with us today. I am sure many of you know Claudia and her fabulous art and we are blessed to have her here with an amazing project and fabulous post with process steps showing how she put it together. I'll let her introduce herself.

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Hi, hello and a joyful "Servus!" from my wonderful hometown Vienna! Claudia here (some of my former pupils may well have recognised me from the baby photo above as it shows me - already raising my "famous and much feared eyebrow" and giving that "What is it you're doing there?"-look at that young age...giggle).

 I feel so blessed and proud to be able to share some creative fun with you today as a Guest Creative Guide for the wonderful "Canvas" challenge hosted by lovely Nikki! Being part of the amazing Creative Crew from A Vintage Journey - even if it is just for this veeery limited time - is an honour, great fun and such a pleasure!

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A few words about myself: I am married to the most wonderful man in the world and I have the most wonderful son you can think of and we all live in a flat near the Danube in beautiful Vienna with our lovely dog girlie Bluna, two budgies and some fish in a tank. I have studied arts and have worked as an arts and wood works teacher before I became a stay at home mom and freelance artist, designer and writer for several manufacturers and creative magazines. I have done a little workshop in the UK two years ago and loved it!

I love nature and am endlessly inspired by its beauty. I enjoy ballroom dancing, writing poetry, watching movies, hiking, riding my kayak and spending the summer in the Austrian lake district where I try to escape the heat and noise of the city.

I have started my creative hobby and blogging about it on my blog Von Pappe II  back in 2012 and I am still amazed by where this has been taking me. I keep finding tons of awesome inspiration by other creative souls all around the globe and I really hope to be able to give back a little with my art and inspire others the way they inspire me.

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I was so delighted to hear that the theme for June's challenge is "Canvas" - I LOVE working on canvases as a substrate - be it the ordinary way or flipped over to use them for creating shadow boxes. And I love the texture and feel of it! This time I decided to use a cut to size plain canvas strip alongside some gorgeous Calico Craft Parts on a small raw canvas.

My project was mainly inspired by our renovating and swapping rooms in our flat during the last weeks - after feeling quite sick and weak for years now (after being diagnosed with Hashimotos quite late) I had come to think that I couldn't do anything that exhausting anymore - but I was proven wrong! Totally wrong!

After over a week of painting walls, climbing up and down ladders, carrying heavy stuff, mounting and de-mounting furniture and such I found that I felt veeery exhausted of course - but in a good way! (I found muscles in places where I had almost forgotten I had some).

So I promised myself to have more faith in the future and not give in to chronic illness that easy anymore. Hence this little canvas with my new motto (and of course the loads of white paint I had used to paint the walls in our flat inspired the style of my project too).

So I started out with a cut to size canvas strip that I had distressed around the edges and then glued to my canvas using a heavy glue and creating folds. To find out where my folds needed to be I had first placed all my Calico Craft Parts I wanted to use on this piece in their right spots.

Once the canvas strip was stuck in place properly I glued the MDF parts on too and let everything dry.

Next I went in with some special glue to use with my gilding flakes and applied it randomly to the glued on wood shapes.  When the glue had dried to the touch I carefully stippled on the flakes using a soft brush (and trying not to breathe too hard).

Only after the glue had thoroughly dried I used a stipple brush to remove the excess flakes by gently scrubbing them off.

Using a small palette knife I added some DecoArt media Texture Sand Paste here and there - also partially on top of the gilded wood shapes!

After that had dried I scraped on some dark brown acrylic paint with the same palette knife.

Then I decided to be daring and generously applied some heavy body white Gesso in various spots with an old and worn bristle brush to create a lot of texture and a worn look.

Time to go in with another layer of gilding flakes and also some white DecoArt media Antiquing Cream to tone down some of the spots that I found were too dark or prominent.

Some tiny sprinkles of more brown acrylic paint were added with the splatter brush.

DecoArt Gold Rush Metallic Lustre was used to paint the edges of my canvas. I used my fingertip and smudged the metal paint on quite randomly - not aiming for perfect coverage.

To finish up my piece I added my word sticker and some tiny letter cubes (that are normally used to create little bracelets with friends' names on them). I glued them to my canvas with matte Decou-Page. Done!

This close up shows how generously I applied the white heavy body Gesso and what a fantastic texture that gave! I even made sure I smudged some across the letter cubes to "fuse" them with the rest of the piece.

Sometimes art is about concealing and/or revealing precious things and thus give meaning to your piece. It isn't always necessary that everything and every step you took to create your piece is still visible in the end - the layers you've created are there and always will be and will give depth and life to your piece. So they are much needed steps on a creative journey (and mostly our creative journeys lead us to ourselves, right?). And sometimes the preciousness of things becomes even more visible and sensible when they are partially hidden away from sight, slightly "damaged" or stained.

I so hope that you like my little canvas and that it even may give a little faith to others too. Take care and have more faith!

Claudia

xxx

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On my Claudia this is one extraordinary project using canvas in a wonderful and unique way. I would never have thought of pleating it like this to create divisions to add your shapes and words and everything has been wonderfully textured, coloured and painted with all the mediums you added. I love the use of the gilding flakes to create such magnificent areas of depth and shiny colour that add such a regal touch to the finished piece. Thank you so much for being our Guest Creative Guide and for sharing something about you as well as this brilliant creation.

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So there is still time to enter our Canvas challenge, there are not so many entries this month but the projects entered already are fabulous - if you would like to try your hand at winning a $25 voucher from

then please show us how you have used canvas on a project and share it on the challenge post here.
YOU STILL HAVE TWO WEEKS TO ENTER - because this is a five Friday month so on the 30th June we will have one of our Tag Friday posts for you too.

Have a fabulous weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda, Claudia and the team of Creative Guides. xxx

June Destination Inspiration - Arriving at Terminal #3

Welcome everyone to Terminal #3 of our June Destination Inspiration posts!  Julia here today with my project using the items packed in our travel bags this month:

1.  Product - Paint

2.  Technique - Any Resist

3.  Color - Orange

4.  Substrate - Coaster

And here's what I created with these supplies!

And now I'll take you through the steps I took to make this little panel.

I've been cleaning out and reorganizing my craft room for the last month and a half - and donated a lot of my excess to my church for their yard sale in June.   And one of the things I got rid of was all of my coasters that have been languishing in a drawer for years!  

(And as usually happens - as soon as you get rid of something you need it - right??!!)  

Never fear!   I just made my own coaster by cutting a piece of mat board 4" x 4" and curving the edges with my Zutter Corner Rounder!  So here's my substrate -  a coaster!

For my resist technique -  I stenciled over my coaster using 3 different Tim Holtz mini stencils applying white acrylic paint through the stencils using a foam applicator.  

Wash your stencils immediately after sponging with paint -  it dries really quickly!

Here you can see the result of the stenciling with the paint.

Now to add the orange color.    I rubbed 3 colors of Ranger Distress Oxide Inks - Spiced Marmalade, Fossilized Amber and Walnut Stain onto my craft mat and spritzed with water.

I kept pressing the coaster into the inks until I was satisfied with the colors and the look of it.  The wetter it is, the more it blends - the less wet it is you get the look of droplets.

Then I got out some items I thought I'd like to put onto my project.  I added a Quote Chip along the top that I sponged in Ranger Distress Marmalade Ink.  I added butterflies and a vintage poster from Layers/Botanical.

I also added some Remnant Rubs/Botanical  and Small Talk Stickers. 

To finish off my project I added some orange rhinestones and propped it up on a little wooden easel!

Thank you for stopping by Terminal #3  at A Vintage Journey today - I hope I have inspired you with my creation using the contents of my travel bag.  We hope you are able to stop by again next Monday when there will be a new Destination Inspiration post by another of the Creative Guides using the same supplies!

I'd also like to remind you there is still time to join in on our June monthly challenge, "Use a Canvas" which will run until July 6th. You will find the link and all the challenge details  here.

Paper:  Cream Little Sizzles Matboard - Sizzix

Ink:  Ranger Distress Oxides - Spiced Marmalade, Walnut Stain and Fossilized Amber, Ranger Distress Ink - Spiced Marmalade.

Accessories:  Idea-ology Layers/Botanical, Quote Chips, Remnant Rubs/Botanical, Small Talk Stickers,  rhinestones - Kaiser Craft, Zutter Corner Rounder, wooden easel - Joann, white acrylic paint, foam sponge, 3 mini stencils - Tim Holtz.

Time For More Pinworthy Inspiration

Hello everyone, we are pleased to have our three very talented March Pinworthies with us today; Irena from Irena's Art, Kerstin from Scrapbook Dreams and Nora from Creations By Nora.  They have all made some amazing projects for our current Canvas challenge so without further ado, here they are!

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Irena

Hello my creative friends. I am so excited to share my canvas with you. 
My name is Irena Stefanova and I am living in a small town in North-East Bulgaria. I started crafting about spring of 2014 with cards, but very soon after that, I was hooked on mixеd media. It gives me pure joy and delight. I love recycling, altered stuff, gelli printing and art journaling.

I have made a canvas (25/31 cm) that brings melancholy mood .

I have used 4 of my new Distress Oxide, black gesso and crackle paint.

For more details please visit my blog irena-s-art

Thank you to AVJ for this opportunity to join in the June Challenge.

Kerstin

Hi everyone, Kerstin here and I was so pleased and honoured to be asked once again to join you all as a Guest Creative Guide here at A Vintage Journey.

I have been creating for many years now, always in search of new techniques and yet unexplored territory, because my great passion is to try out new and sometimes crazy ideas.

  All my mixed media projects are a little bit magical, grungy, romantic, sometimes funny,

 but always made with heart and mind.

This month the challenge theme is "Canvas", what a wide field on creative possibilities. 

I decided to make a canvas in industrial grunge style.

I created the background with a photo from an old magazine, 

some rusty colors, stamps and a brick stencil.

I used some products from DecoArt - Matte Medium, texture paste, fluid acrylics.

The new puffy stickers were a birthday gift and  I immediately had to try out

 it was a great fun, because you can cut this pieces very easily

and you can build your own piping system.

 Chipboards were embossed with my favourite powder from Emerald Creek Dares 

'Burnt Copper Leaves', I love this mixture black/copper metallic look.

 More details can you see on my blog www.scrapdesigns77.blogspot.com

Many thanks for your visit!

Have a nice crafting time!


Nora

I am Nora from Uruguay, South America. After a few years of getting my law degree, I met an Italian guy, who would become my husband. Therefore, I moved to Italy in 2007. Massi and I live in a very small town, in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, with our doggie Lucky. I love photography, traveling and reading. Two years ago, I found a new passion of crafting, and I have been learning techniques and experimenting since then. I love mixed media and altered art.

This is the canvas I created for Vintage Journey Challenge Blog. I reproduced some masks and glued them down, to the canvas surface, that I had previously stenciled and painted.

I used pieces of metal embellishments and embroidery lace.

I added Scrapmatts letter's chipboards.

Please visit my blog www.creationsbynora.blogspot.com.

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Wow, think you will agree that our Pinworthy guests have outdone themselves for our Canvas challenge, thank you so much for sharing your talents with us all.  We hope that all of you have also been inspired to enter our Canvas challenge after seeing these amazing projects, you have a chance to win a generous voucher from our sponsor Shimmerz Paints or to be one of our Pinworthy guest Creative Guides.  Happy creating!

Deb xo