January Tag Friday

Hello and welcome!

It's the fifth Friday of the month and time for another Tag Friday here at A Vintage Journey. As you know the Creative Guides really love these special Tag Fridays as we get the chance to create without a theme ..... time to play, experiment and generally have fun!

And we have a great line up for you this month!

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Ann

I decided to create a crackle effect background for my tag today using Dina Wakley Acrylic Paints and Paper Artsy Crackle Glaze. For more photos and details it would be lovely to see you at Ann Chuang Crafts.

Astrid

I decided to make a tag that would fit inside a pocket that I can stick in one of my journals.

Both are made from old book pages and if you would like to see how it cam together, just visit my blog

Alison

I'm on a run of tags playing with the idea of nature taking over the decaying remnants of human culture...  Yes, I know - it's been a laugh-a-minute lately round my way!  This tag continues to celebrate greenery and wildflowers flourishing amidst the ruins left by mankind.  Do come and visit Words and Pictures if you'd like to see more.  I'm promise it's not as depressing as it sounds!

S@ndy

My tag is a very special one this time.  Next month my wonderful parents will be celebrating their 75th (yes, I said 75th!) wedding anniversary and I wanted to make my tag in their honor.  Love is the key.

Deb

For January's Tag Friday I decided to make a tag accordion booklet with some gel plate printed tags that I had in my stash.  Come on over to my blog for all the details and more pictures of the individual tags.

Barbara

Every year in the month of January, I'm so thrilled to see and try new releases by all craft companies! To create this tag I enjoyed to mix new and old stuff by Tim Holtz! To see the close-ups details and read the materials I used for my tag, check out my Blog Yayascrap & more!

Jo

 

Hi everyone! Here's another double-sided tag for my Tag Journal, one side features snowdrops as this January I've been surpised by them flowering so early and the other side is a Valentine heart design as it's nearly February. I created it using Tim Holtz products including a Pocket Card, some stickers, Distress Inks and three Thinlet sets; please find full details on my blog Let's Art Journal. 

Julia

I'm in Valentine Mode already so used that theme for my January tag.  I used new and old dies, embossing folder and stamps but it's all from Tim Holtz/Sizzix/Idea-ology accept for the clay hearts, lace and ribbon.  You'll find all the details on my blog post here.

Jennie

Having just returned from Creativation 2020 I decided to create with some of the samples I returned with and had great fun with vintage papers and embossing powders. Do join me over on my blog for more details.

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Thank you to all the Creative Guides who have created for this Tag Friday. I am sure you will want to visit their blogs for more details and to leave some love!

We also love it when you join in too! Do please link up with us and share any tags you have made this month, or will make before the linky closes next Thursday evening. You might be chosen as a Pinworthy to be pinned to our special Pinterest Board.

And don't forget our new challenge will start next Friday hosted by the lovely Sara Emily.

Have fun and and a great "crafting" weekend.

Jennie and the Creative Guides

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Creative Card Making With Sara Emily

Welcome to the first Creative Card Making post of 2020! It's Sara Emily here, and I'm sharing a pair of simple cards that are suitable for winter birthdays/just because or they may be added to my 2020 Christmas card stash. Because they are in the vintage style, I think they fit in nicely with Alison's challenge theme, We're All Getting Older!.

First, I'll share some close-ups, and then I'll finish up with my tutorial. To see the holographic effect of this snowflake, one has to turn the card in the light.

The colors look a little different in my craft room light, but this blurry photo shows off the textures of the flakes.

Here's how the cards came together; it wasn't a clear path, but I've tried to simplify my process. I have just a few process photos, but you should be able to get the idea as I talk my way through.

Not at all feeling creative, but having a couple hours to play, I started by having a go with one of my yet unopened Oxide sprays. I made  a bunch of backgrounds on water color paper using Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire Distress Spray stain. I die cut Icy Flake from one of the backgrounds.

I applied Crackle paint from a brand new jar to the flake, but didn't get the best crackle. I later read the directions, which calls for a shake, which I didn't do. Could that be the reason? It's so thick, I don't think it could be shaken; perhaps stirred.

When dry, I scribbled with Distress Crayon to help accentuate what little crackle there was.

I cut a second flake from white card, and heat embossed with Holographic powder. Initially, I planned to reinsert this into the deep blue background over a background from my stash (pictured below).

But I wasn't feeling it, so I stamped a piece of white card I cut into a suitably sized card blank with Distress ink and one of Tim Holtz Flurry & Pine stamps. I wanted to leave a white border, so I used washi tape to mask the edges before stamping. I used the remaining ink on the stamp after each impression by stamping on the stash background I ended up not using.

I removed the tape, and a bit of the card tore. To cover my boo-boo and to make the card more vintage, I decided to blend with Frayed Burlap and splash with a little water.

I decided I liked the snowy background for my crackled snowflake, so I stamped another white card blank.

This time I used Tim Holtz Design tape, thinking it might not pull at the card. Wrong! Two of the strips really stuck onto the card, even with gentle application. You can see the devastation in the close-up photo below. Perhaps I need to use a better quality of card.

Not one to give up easily, I tried several scenarios to rescue the beautiful snowy card, including the ink and splash distressing used above, but ended up applying more of the Design tape back over the torn up edges. This is a trick I picked up from Zoe Hillman who makes the best vintage cards. I used foam adhesive to give dimension to the layers.

To finish the card, I used this heat embossed snowflake from the Snowflake & Wreath die set by Tim Holtz and a gum drop I colored with Alcohol Pearls and ink. The chippie is from my stash. I decided not to use the glittery snowflake on this card; it just didn't go with the design tape edge.

    

Using the original snow flurry stamped card, I ended up layering the two snowflake die cuts, offsetting them and topping with a gum drop for a second card. You can see in the close-up below, to  age the snowflake a bit, I tapped it with Distress ink.

So now I have two cards for my stash, ready to send out if I need them or a good start on my Christmas card stash for 2020!

 Thank you for taking this tortuous creative journey with me today; I hope you didn't get lost along the way! Perhaps I've given you some ideas to try when things don't go the right way right away! There's still plenty of time to join in with our current  challenge, We're All Getting Older! Please come and join us on this first leg of our 2020 Creative journey. Happy crafting! Sara Emily

We're All Getting Older! Tutorial

Hello all, it's Alison here with some details of how I created my aged parchment for this month's We're All Getting Older! challenge theme.  There have already been some lovely entries showcasing ways to make something new look old with mixed media supplies - weathering, distressing and antiquing.  There's still plenty of time to play along, and hopefully these simple techniques I'm sharing today will give you another nudge to join us on A Vintage Journey this month.

There are plenty of close-ups of the finished tags to be seen over at Words and Pictures, so here I'll focus on the how-to steps I took to create my torn and weathered parchment papers, as well as a few notes on my "pressed" flowers accompanying the love letters.

I had planned to do my ageing with the help of tea and coffee.  I knew I had a whole heap of already tea-stained tags somewhere, but could I find them?  Could I heck!  So, in a bit of a huff, I decided I would go for a Distress Ink version instead.  I used plain size #8 manila tags, and started with a smooshing of Antique Linen Distress Ink.  I spritzed quite a lot of water on the inky craft mat before pressing my tags down multiple times, drying in between.

Next step was to add some Old Paper drips and smooshes to the mix.  (Of course - Old Paper has to be the perfect Distress Ink colour for old paper!)  I also folded some creases coming in from the edges of the tags and blended on Vintage Photo and Walnut Ink Distress Inks to make them look like the creases have been weathering and cracking over the years.  (Apologies - my camera is playing up at the moment, randomly ignoring various pictures I've taken, so I don't have photos of each of these stages separately.)

I'd also done some inking around the edges of the tags by this point, and now it was time to add some vintage script.  This is a lovely PaperArtsy stamp I got as a little freebie, so I'm afraid I can't tell you what set it comes from.  Maybe some PaperArtsy fan out there knows!  I added random bits of script in Potting Soil Archival, just rolling the unmounted stamp onto the tags in partial stampings.

For extra wear and tear, I did a bit of careful ripping right at the edges of some of the creases.

The "parchment" was looking pretty old and worn by now - though there are some more stages of mouldering and mottling to come in a bit - so I decided to move on to the pressed flowers.  Again, I started with some simple wrinkle-free distressing, smooshing Old Paper, Antique Linen and Bundled Sage Distress Inks onto a large piece of off-white card.

From that I cut some of the gorgeous Wildflower Thinlits stems to go on each tag.

I used Distress Oxides in the same ink colours and a water brush to add extra tinting to each of the flower stems - adding a touch of Stormy Sky now, in both Oxide and Ink form.

Once I had those blues in the flower stems, I decided I'd like the same tones to echo onto the parchment.  I used the Stormy Sky Distress Oxide, spritzed with water on the craft mat, and then flicked onto the tags with a paintbrush to create areas where the paper has been damaged by moisture over the years (the bluish tint has a feeling of wateriness about it).

Mostly I dabbed the Oxide colour up with paper towel before it dried too strongly blue... leaving just a greyish blue hint of tears shed over these long lost "love letters".  And yes, maybe it has gone just a little bit mouldy or mildewy too.

The sharper-eyed amongst you will have noticed I'd added some extra stamping by this point too... the lovely rambling tendrils from the Rubber Dance Weed Love set, stamped in Potting Soil.  This pictures also shows those mildewy splotches in contrast to the warmer background really well.

There are some real vintage pen nibs, altered with Picket Fence Distress Crayon to highlight the lettering.

The final step was to add some still legible words of love to the fading letters, courtesy of my Love Edition quote stamps from PaperArtsy.  They're stamped in Stormy Sky Distress Oxide - a lovely delicate blue.  I just had to work out the exact placement for the panels in relation to the stems and to each other across the triptych of tags.

Believe it or not, those driftwood planks the quotes are mounted on (cut from woodgrain paper using Tim's Planks die, and tinted with DecoArt's Vintage Effect Wash) have been sitting around on my craft desk since summer 2018.  I'd planned some sort of beachy, summery creation, but it didn't work out, and they've been looking for a home ever since.  See... you can just never throw anything away!

I'm happy with my aged parchment, and those weathered driftwood planks add another new-to-old element to the whole project.  I like the contrast of the warm sepia and the cooler blues of the flower stems, especially with the mildewy echoes in the background to balance the overall look. 

I hope you've been enjoyed seeing the steps along the way to this aged and weathered trio of tags, and I hope it will inspire you to turn something new into something old, or create some vintage antiquing effects, and share your project with us this month at A Vintage Journey.  After all, We're All Getting Older! ... so we might as well travel that path together!

And just a little cheeky heads-up that I've got another project full of ageing, weathering and distressing coming up at Words and Pictures.  So if you're still in need of inspiration for the challenge, there'll be some more for you there tomorrow!  Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy crafting all.

Alison xx

Holly Jolly Christmas Pinworthy Winners

Hello Vintage Travelers,

All of us here at A Vintage Journey hope you and your family had a most joyous holiday season.  

We were so impressed with the entries we had for this challenge - it was difficult to choose just three.  Thanks to all our wonderful followers who played along - here are the "Holly Jolly Christmas" Pinworthy winners.

Karen

Mac Mable

Zowie Dixon

Karen, Mac Mable and Zowie, we will be sending you your Pinworthy Mention badges to display on your blog or website soon and will pin your projects to our Pinworthy board on Pinterest.  Thanks so much again for participating in our challenge and we hope that all of our followers will join in our current challenge, We're All Getting Older, can't wait to see what you create!

Happy New Year and Happy Crafting,
S@ndy and the Creative Guides

We're All Getting Older! January Challenge

A very happy New Year to all our fabulous followers and participants here at A Vintage Journey.  We hope 2020 will bring you lots of joy, good health and prosperity and, of course, plenty of creative inspiration and playtime.

It's Alison here, and I'm delighted to announce the theme of our January challenge: We're All Getting Older!  The good news is that it's nothing to do with your age, it's all about making things look older... time for some distressing, antiquing, ageing and weathering.  You can use inks, mixed media products or old favourites like tea and coffee, but however you do it we'd like you to make something new look as though it's old.

There are so many possibilities with all the Distress products, or weathered crackle, or rusting, or worn patinas, or other paint effects for a grunged up, ancient look...  I hope you have lots of fun with it.  As always, the Creative Guides have been pulling out the stops to provide you with some inspiration to start you off.  Take a look at how we've all been "getting older"...

Alison

I've got a trio of aged parchment tags, love letters with faded flowers pressed between them.  I'll be sharing the how-to details here at A Vintage Journey in a couple of weeks, but if you hop over to Words and Pictures now, you can see lots of close-ups and hear some of the stories behind these tags.

Jo

For Alison's fabulous challenge, I created a worn and distressed Art Journal page of Paris making the collaged papers look old using Distress Inks. Please pop over to my blog, Let's Art Journal, to see how it all came together.

Nikki

I have created a notebook using Eileen Hull's Notebook die for this challenge. Starting with some Tim Ideology patterned paper I have altered the cover to create a vintage feel. For more photos and details do head over to Addicted to Art.

Astrid

 As I am getting older most of the time I spend at my craft desk is taking up by journaling and creating journals. Not art journals in the traditional sense, but decorated journals that leave plenty of space for actual writing. So for the challenge this month I created one that is full of vintage pages with pockets and numerous journaling cards. For a little tour of what is inside, please come and visit me.

Annie

I decided to alter a canvas for Alison's fabulous challenge theme. To age the background I used coffee, distress inks, rusting powder and splatters of gold paint as well as some aged/torn papers and ephemera from my stash. To view the step by step  you can visit my blog by clicking HERE

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How's that for some inspiration to get you going?  We hope you'll join us on A Vintage Journey this month and share your projects and techniques for making things look older.  It seems like an appropriate theme for the start of a new year, don't you think?!  There's no escaping it... We're All Getting Older!

We're really looking forward to seeing what aged, weathered, distressed or antiqued projects you come up with.  As always, we'll be selecting some of our favourites as Pinworthies to go on our Vintage Journey pinboards.  Thanks so much for stopping by today and happy crafting all!

Alison and the Creative Guides xx

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