Behind the Mask

Hello everyone and happy Saturday to you all.

This week has been an extremely busy one for me professionally, and it made me think about the many different roles we play in life and the personas we juggle with on a day to day basis.... Wife, mother, professional, artist or crafter, friend, - we all will have our own list of personas that we display to the world in different situations. Probably one of the reasons so many of us turn to art journaling, because that is a place where we can totally be ourselves. Anyway, enough waffle, just to share some of the thoughts behind this tag which eventually will be integrated into an art journal spread.

I am not a great fan of buttons on the whole, but I wanted to play in the current Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge and buttons kind of fitted my theme. To quote the wonderful Mark Twain:
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man, the biography of the man himself cannot be written. So very true, and in addition, people can press our buttons or we button up etc. etc.

Anyway, I shall stop philosophising and get on to my tag: The background was created with a mixture of paints and Distress Inks. I added some TIm Holtz Tissue Tape, some background stamping and embossing with a couple of different folders.The button at the top I found in my stash and I surrounded it with a couple of Tim's wings, altered with some paints and alcohol inks

 The words were stamped with peg stamps on some scraps of paper, cut out and glued on

 The vocal Image from the Tim Holtz Classic 5 set was stamped on tissue paper and then integrated into the page. I added some tear drop doodles and a few rubs.

 A pen nib and home made clay heart embellishment treated with crackle accents, some rusty wire and indeed some tiny buttons, finishes it all off.

Hope you like it, if you want to see a larger image, just click on the photo. Thank you for visiting and have a fantastic weekend!

I am entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge "Buttons"

This Ol' Chicken came into the Wood

Hello everyone, nice to have you visiting here today.
Ok, so what is with this weird title? Well, I did not know what to call this post and just wanted to do something slightly different.
The whole inspiration for both this post and the project came from the current challenge theme over at Simon Says Stamp and Show which is "into the wood."

At first this theme had me totally stumped, but then I came upon this old wooden container and I decided to alter it. For once I remembered to take a "before" picture, - so this is how it started out:

Once upon a time it was a nice weathered wood plant container, but it had become quite grotty as you can see.

I started by sanding it down, then I gave it a coat of Gesso and when that was dry I coloured it with dark brown acrylic paint. When that had dried I added a thin layer of crackle glaze, let that dry to the touch and then put a final coat of straw coloured acrylic paint on top with cut and dry foam because I wanted the crackle to become quite random, and if you use a brush the crackles tends to follow the direction of the brush strokes. The inside was painted with a glaze of Titan Buff paint. Next I added the chickens and roosters, carefully torn from the top layer of a paper serviette. I glued them on with Modge Podge, added some background stamping and coloured the edges with  various brown inks.

Here you can see one of the sides. I also added some charcoal pencil around one side of the roosters and chickens, to bring them out a bit more and add some depth.
The front and back were further decorated with some fussy cut bits of Graphics 45 French Country papers.

Finally I rubbed some Treasure Gold around all of the edges and covered the whole thing inside and out with two coats of Modge Podge.

Well, I hope you think it's an improvement.

I am adding this to this week's SSSS challenge

Thank you for visiting, much appreciated!