A Bountiful Harvest

Hello everyone and happy Halloween to you all.
Today is the start of a new challenge over at A Vintage Journey. The lovely Sandy is our host and this is what she had to say about the theme:
With Halloween's passing we step into fall. For this challenge let's think about the harvest. It seems that pumpkins, wheat, corn and even the Harvest Moon could be in order. For us in the US - a Thanksgiving theme could work but not necessary.

I decided to alter a book box, I want to use it for all the lovely crafty gifts I have received from blog friends and using the harvest theme for all these gifts of kindness, a different kind of thanks giving....

I had great fun altering it and adding lots of lovely autumnal embellishments. Unfortunately I got so caught up in the process, that I forgot to take a lot of step by step photos, but I'll try and talk you though at least some of it.
This project started as a large paper mache box. I first added lots of wrinkled bits of tissue paper to the box with matte medium. After it had dried, I covered it all over with gesso to seal, scraping it on with an old credit card for even more texture and then played around with various colours of Decoart Media acrylic paint until I was happy with the result.

I then added some verdigris embossing powder in places, added two little metal corners and highlighted the raised bits with Treasure Gold. The metal corners were treated with both Distress Paint in Peacock Feathers and Treasure Gold before before adhering them.

Of course it is important to treat the sides and back of the box too. In the photo above you can see how adding the strips of tissue almost gives a leather like appearance to the box after you have coloured them with the paints. My box had the raised bits on the side already, but if you like this "old book" feel, you can easily create that by adding some strips of card to the spine, before covering with tissue.

Next I took a piece of Core'dinations card stock in a sort of cinnamon colour and gave it a few spritzes with Walnut Stain Distress Spray. Loved the effect, but I wanted to add some "harvest" feel to it, so rant it through the Tim Holtz Thankful embossing folder.

I sanded it lightly to bring out the words. (Please note it is a good idea to emboss after you have used the sprays and not before as you will lose some of the depth of embossing by adding the wet medium).

I tore around the edges and embossed them with the same verdigris embossing powder, being careful to keep the words Thankful and Harvest.

I added an ornate plate, again altered with paints, glued a bit of book text behind the opening and then added the little dragonfly, just because I felt it needed something else. As you can see I continued the book text theme further down with a rusted up pen nib, all of course to add to the vintage feel of it all.

Finally I had great fun in adding some harvest themed embellishments in one corner, - a mix of die cuts, berries and some beech nuts, and that was it for the outside of the box.

The inside of the box was covered first with Brown chalk paint, then Decoart Weathered Wood Crackle medium and then when it was touch dry with another colour of chalk paint. In the lid I stamped a sentiment from the Way with Words set on a piece of Scrapbook paper and that was it.

I loved doing a harvest themed project, make sure you check out what my wonderful teamies have made, like usual, they have out done themselves, you don't want to miss it. Just click HERE.  And of course we all hope you will play along in the challenge, and you could even win a generous voucher from our wonderful sponsor Countryview Crafts

Thanks for dropping by and happy weekend!

Sneak peeks of Sheena Douglass upcoming weekender shows

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping in.
I am just sharing a few sneak peeks of projects I made for Sheena Douglass's upcoming weekender shows on Create and Craft. We are launching some amazing new Pebeo mixed media paints as well as some new stamps. You don't want to miss this, all happening this coming weekend!
Here are just some of the samples I made: The first lot, all use the new paints and in some cases also the wonderful Aquatints:

Wall hanging with three mini canvasses

Canvas Board

8 x 8 canvas

Card with 3 tags

The next few are all made with the stamps that will be on the show and a mix of Distress Inks and Aquatints

Hope you'll take the time to watch the shows on either Saturday or Sunday, as this is a weekender, shows will be on all through the day. Sheena like usual will be demonstrating some amazing techniques, you won't want to miss this!

xxx

My version of TOT (Tim's Autumn Tag)

Hi everyone
Well last month I am afraid to say, I did not manage to do my Tim Tag, so this month I was determined to get it done, even if rather late in the day....

At the beginning of the year I decided to always create double tags, a size 8 on top of a size 10 and add the month at the top. Why? Who knows, just thought it would be fun and it does give you more room to play....
Now for those of you who don't know, Tim's original can be seen here. For once I had pretty much all of the products he used (well almost). I also loved the colours he used, so mine are pretty similar and I used exactly the same techniques he shows for my background.
But, on my small tag I decided to use a different stencil with the spider stamp, I used the shattered one.

I also decided to use the skull  and little label stamps rather than the pumpkin, but they are from the same set, I did use the little letter tiles, I just put them at an angle because I thought it would suit my design better.

I don't have the tinsel, I have an absolute hatred for tinsel of any kind, so I then finished my tag quite differently.
I added a little Halloween Ticket from the Odds and Ends set:

I also don't have the ideaology monocle, but I was lucky enough to have another one which was a gift from my lovely friend Louise, I think it is a genuinely old one which she got on ebay so I added that instead and used different remnant rubs as I don't have the holiday ones.

I used the Halloween words stencil on the background tag:

I highlighted the raised bits with Treasure Gold in Copper, but it does not show up very well on the photo....

Well, that's it. I had fun making my October tag and of course I am going to add it to Tim's challenge.
Have a great week everyone and thank you for visiting!!

Mixed Media and Shabby Chic Chirstmas - the final two tags

Hello dear visitors and thank you for dropping in.
Today I am sharing the final two tags I put together for A Vintage Journey's Destination Inspiration post.
Here is the first one, a mixed media tag:

This started out as a plain size 8 tag over which I scraped some gesso with an old credit card.

I then pressed a piece of scrap card over it, pulled it off again and that gave me the cool textured pattern. Next I sprayed with various blue tones from the Distress Sprays: Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers and some Iced Spruce

I wanted to tone it all down a bit and give it more interest, though I was impressed with how well the sprays adhered to the gesso.

I added some strips of tissue wrap and stenciled some numbers with the help of the Cargo layering stencil. When the texture paste had dried I did some stenciling with Picket Fence Distress Paint and the Bubble Layering stencil. I also added a little home made spray using Chipped Sapphire re-inker and water. I then put the number stencil back in place and darkened the number with black Stazon Ink.

Time to embellish the tag:

I stamped the compass rose from the Classic 1 set twice, once straight onto the tag and then again on card. I fussy cut the actual compass rose and adhered it to the base and then added a little gear and nut which I had rusted up in the center.

I stamped the gents from the Steampunk set on smooth card, cut two of them out, inked them and then stuck them to the bottom of the tag with a little stamped round label.

Finally I stamped the sentiment from the Going Somewhere set onto some book paper, cut it out, distressed the edges and stapled it to the center of my tag and that was it.

The next tag is very different and much more feminine. No doubt it will eventually be integrated into a Christmas card.

For this one I used clear embossing paste from Wendy Vecchi and Tim's Harlequin layering stencil.

Next I used Vintage Linen, Iced Spruce and Brushed Pewter sprays for the background.

When it had dried I added a bit of Black Soot to the edges. As you can see it made a nasty wet edge at the bottom, but a bit of added water soon took care of that. I loved the wintery feel of this colour combination and at that point decided to make it into a Christmas tag. I created a kind of ornament by layering several die cut snowflakes and other dies on top of each other.

It's maybe hard to see from the photo, but there are three different dies layered on top of each other. Number 1 and 3 are from a Spellbinders snowflake set, in between is a die from the Ironwork accents. The central bit is a little metal filigree piece (available from the Funkie Junkie Boutique I believe

The little sentiment at the bottom was stamped with little letter stamps from the Papermania Madame Peraud collection, I punched them out and glued them to one of the Tattered Curvy Banner die-cuts and further embellished with some roses and pine branches and a piece of cheese cloth.

Well, that's it for today, thanks for visiting like always and have a good weekend!

Tag time again

Hi all and thanks for dropping in here again.
A few days ago I did a long post over at A Vintage Journey, sharing an outline of my experiments with the new Tim Holtz Distress Sprays. Here on my own blog I will be sharing some more of the details on how I made some of the finished tags. So here goes, on to the next two tags:

For this one I scraped some Wendy Vecchi Crackle paste through the Tim Holtz Crocodile Layering Stencil, one I don't use very often.

When using crackle paste you want to use something with big openings, otherwise the effect of the crackle would just disappear.

Next I spritzt the tag with water to make sure the sprays would mix well. For this one I used Tea Dye, Iced Spruce, Peeled Paint and Evergreen Bow. I dried them with my heat gun, as you can see they adhere beautifully to the paste and pool in all the cracks and crevices.

Now I would have loved to add the Layered Dragonfly die to this, but it is too large for a size 8 tag, so I stamped the dragonfly from the Classic 1 stamp set instead. I stamped it twice, fussy cut the first one and for the second one I just cut the wings and ran them through an embossingfolder to give the wings some texture. I coloured both with the same colours of Distress ink and then highlighted the raised bit with treasure gold. Finally I finished the tag with some further embellishments, a little key, coloured with some Distress paints, a stamped ticket and a philosophy tag. The damask shape behind the dragon fly was an old Sizzix die and I cut it from some Tim Holtz packaging

The next tag is a Christmassy one, using various embossing folders:

I put a size 8 tag again through an embossalicious snowflake embossing folder:

Next I used the Brushed Pewter and Black Soot sprays and then added quite a bit of  Picket Fence to lighten it.

Now this bit is important: If I did it again, I would colour the tag first, let it dry and only then run it through the folder as you loose quite a bit of the embossing in the background through the water content in the sprays.

Anyway, I then ran a bit of white card through a Sheena Douglas embossing folder. This one has really large beautiful flakes on it. So I cut out one of the flakes, highlighted the raised bit with Pewter Treasure Gold and used that as an embellishment.

I added a little old clock face to the center of the flake just for some added interest.
For the bottom of the tag I added a torn strip with some smaller flakes that are on the same embossing folder.

Again, the raised bits are highlighted with the pewter treasure gold. Finally I used the candy cane from the Christmas Blueprints 3 set.

I coloured it with Derwent Inktense pencils.

Well, that's it for today's installment, I may do a couple more in a few days time.

Thanks for visiting like always and I hope you get some creative time, - it's good for the soul!

xxx