Background fun

Hello all and thanks for dropping in! Well the weekend was here and I had some time to play, yay, - so I experimented in my techniques journal and played with  a new background technique, (well for me anyway). Here first of all is the finished page:

I'll give you a quick run down on how I did the background. Mine was inspired by a video I watched on Youtube by Blanche Siegmann from La Blanche stamps.

There are 3 main steps to it: You need Ranger or indeed La Blanche speciality stamping paper, - I used Ranger and it worked fine.
Step 1 - cover your page with Metallic Distress Stain (I used Brushed Pewter).
Step 2 - When stain has dried, swipe over it with a Distress Ink Pad, I used two blue tones, Salty Ocean and Tumbled Glass. You can blend the colours a bit with a blending tool if you want.
Step 3 - Take some stencils of your choice, a damp cloth or baby wipe, gently rub over the stencil and the colour will lift. After that I did some more stencilling, this time using Archival ink in coffee.

I finished the background by doing some background stamping, using La Blanche stamps, and both Archival Black and gold acrylic paint.

Here is the finished background and I have to say I am pretty pleased with it and will definitely use this technique again.

Here you can maybe see a bit how the stamping in Black and gold kind of works together. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to pick up the subtle shimmer of the gold paint.

I added a few thin strips of old book paper and tissue tape for a bit more interest.

To finish the page I stamped a few Ephemera pieces, again, using various La Blanche stamps.

I also used a vintage photo from  a 7 Dots Studio  collection.

And here is the finished page.

With a rusted up pen nib added to the little paper strips.

And here at last the finished page glued in place in my journal.

Well, that's it for today, have a good week and stay creative! Thanks for your visit like always

Tim's August tag

Hi everyone and welcome to all of you, but specially my new followers, thank you for deciding to follow along here!!

It's not often I publish in the middle of the day, as most of my posts are scheduled for either mid night here in the UK or early morning. This for once is an unscheduled post, fresh from the crafting table so to speak....

As the title suggests, it's my take on Tim Holtz August tag, though I have to confess, I made it a few days ago, but only now found a minute to blog it. Just as well, as August is speeding by at a horrible pace.

I'm keeping this short(ish) as all details can be found on Tim's Blog.

I followed all his techniques closely, but changed the colours, stamps and the overall design as back in January I decided to work with two tags, a #8 on top of a #10, to give me more room to play with.

I used the new Gothic stencil and Wendy Vechhi's crackle paste though you can hardly see the crackle on this quite delicate stencil.

I used the butterflies from the new French themed Framelets set, but as they were getting a bit lost against the tissue tape and other background elements, I stamped the larger one again and fussy cut it, just to pop out a bit more.

The film strip, overlapping both tags to hold the overall design together a bit. I decided to put my pen nib on top of the strip. I did stitch it vertically, but it's hard to see from the photo. I also added some tissue tape and more stamping to the background tag.

A word band, high-lighted with Picket Fence DP (I don't have the newer word bands yet, they're on the wishlist).

Remnant Rub words on the vial label. Believe it or not, I had quite forgotten which words Tim had picked and then when I looked I had picked the same ones, must have been there somewhere in my unconscious mind.....

A Philosophy tag and the way I usually finish my Tim tags with the month at the top.

Well, that's it pretty much, - oh I did not use the speckle stencil as I thought it might get a bit too busy in the background, so I used the Spritzer tool for some very subtle spots instead.

Linking this to Tim's August Tag.

Thank you for visiting and have a great week!