Neutral Zone for A Vintage Journey and a blog break

Hello friends and welcome. It's the first Friday of the month and that means a new challenge is starting at A Vintage Journey. This month the lovely and talented Nikki is our host, and this is what she had to say about her chosen theme "Neutral Zone":
Time to banish colour! You can create with blacks, whites, greys, beiges, creams and browns but whatever you make, and whatever style, needs to stay in the neutral zone. And remember to create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby,mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I decided to make an eggshaped tag, seeing this month we will celebrate Easter. I then decided to use the tag to decorate the cover of my latest journal insert.

At the last moment I decided to add one of my dried ferns, which of course adds a little spot of colour, but I hope this will still qualify as most of it is definitely in the neutral zone....

Below a quick step out of how I made the tag:

I diecut the tag from white card, using the largest of a set of tag shaped dies I had in my stash, and added some strips of book and craft paper and some texture using one of Tim Holtz's stencils.
.

Next I added a mix of some Paper Artsy Fresco paint in Buff and some Decoart Media paint in Translucent white and while the paint was still wet a few spritzes of Distress Oxide spray in Vintage photo, plus quite a bit of water. I then dried with my heatgun.

Next came some background stamping and a little strip of washi tape, to balance out the darker left side a bit.

Finally I added some lace, some dried baby's breath flowers and a wax seal and hand wrote the sentiment with my dip pen. At first I thought that was the project all done and dusted, but as I had no one particularly in mind to give this tag to and I have piles of tags and other projects gathering dust in my craftroom (do other people have that problem)? - I decided to add the tag to the cover of my latest journal insert.

As you can see that's when I then decided to add the little fern to the other dried flower, gluing it down with some collage medium.

Below still a few close ups and a few of the journal pages inside.

And some of the journal pages, please bare in mind this is really a writing journal, not an art journal, I just like to decorate the pages a bit with ephemera, washi tapes, some background stamping and so on. Makes it more fun to write in it.

So, that's it for my project, do hop over to a Vintage Journey  to see what my talented teamies have created and of course we would love you to play and share your neutral projects with us all.

Well, like always thank you for your visit for now and it may become even more quiet here as I will be going off to Australia in a few days time to spend time with my grandchildren and family there and I am pretty sure there will not be much time for blogging. So I may see you now and then and again towards the end of May on my regular Fridays...

xxxxx

An experiment, project for Shimmerz

Hi all and thanks for coming by!
Today I am sharing a project on the Shimmerz blog, so just a sneak peek here I'm afraid to say....

I've called it an experiment, as it's the first time I used Shimmerz product on black gesso. If you want to see more, - just click HERE

Thanks for dropping by and of course I would love it if you took a look.

Have a great creative week,

Journal Cover for Calico Craft Parts

Hello all and thanks for dropping in!
Sharing a journal cover over on the Calico Craft Parts blog today.
Here is a little preview:

Hope you'll have time to see the rest, - would love to know what you think, - just click HERE and it should take you straight over.

Have a fabulous creative week and thanks so much for dropping by!

Spellbinders Mixed Media Journal cover

Hello everyone, thank you so much for having a look in here at this very busy time of year! I hope you have survived the first part of the festive season!
Let me start by wishing you all the very best for 2014!!! I hope you will have the most amazing creative year and that you will get closer to realizing your dreams!

I have several aims and dreams for the world in general of course, but also for my creative journey, one of them being to journal more regularly. So what better start than to create a cover for a brand new journal.
One of the things I love about Spellbinder dies is that they can be used in so many different ways, and for this project I chose to use them to add dimension to my Mixed Media cover.

These were the dies and other products I used:
Dies:
Radiant Rectangles
Grateful Lattice
Persian Motifs
Tattered Blossoms (Heartfelt Creations)
Font One Uppercase
Fantastic Flourish 1
Medallion 6
Les Papillions
I realize this is a lot of different dies, but these could be substituted for any other ones you might have in your collection.
Other products:
Paints:
Antique Linen
Iced Spruce
Bundled Sage
Frayed Burlap

Embellishments and other products:
Molding paste, Gesso, Muli Medium (Matte), Crackle Medium, Embossing Powders, Treasure Gold gilding paste, Walnut Stain (Tsukineko), Some background stamps, script stencil, paper flower, selection of cogs, little key charms, some bits of lace,Derwent Pastel Pencil.
First I cut a piece if 7 x 9" mount board to form the actual cover of my journal.
Next I used my Grateful Lattice die and made it into a stencil, by cutting it out of an old cereal packet.

I used it to create some texture onto the largest of the Radiant Rectangle dies which was also cut from some packaging. While the texture paste was still wet, I stamped into it with an old text stamp.

I then cut some of the other dies I wanted to use, all out of the same strong cereal packet card. I love how it shows up all the detail of the dies. Here is a selection of the ones I used:

Next I adhered them to my mount board, adding some further stenciling and a few little cogs and some strips of lace for further interest. When I was happy with the composition I covered it all with a thick coat of Gesso.

Time to add the first layers of colour in my chosen pallet.

So far so good, - time to add some letters. I cut them from the same material, coloured them and added texture with crackle paste, embossing powders and paint to give them a metallic appearance.

Here is a close up, so you can see the textures, this is what I love about mixed media!

Time for some more colour and shading to add depth.

Nearly there, - it just needed a bit more to focus the eye around the page, - a flower, cut from old book paper, came to the rescue.

I cut about 5 flowers of the same size, glued them together and then added another flower from my stash to the centre, adhered it to the page and gave it all a few spritzes with Walnut Stain to blend it into the page.

A butterfly, to balance the composition on the other side was needed now, so I cut two of the dies, layered them together and coloured them the blend with the rest of the page.

And finally to stick with the "rule of three" in composition, a couple of little rusted keys from my stash completed the composition...

Here are some further close up photos still of different parts

I just love all the detail in the dies, it adds another dimension to what ordinary chipboard pieces could achieve using similar techniques.

Well, here is the finished piece and I hope you have enjoyed my little mixed media step by step.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you will enjoy the rest of the festive season.

I will be busy with family commitments in the next few days, but will try to stay in touch and come and visit all my favourite blogs when I can.