Dies and Distress for a Vintage Journey

Hello everyone lovely to see you and sorry it has been pretty quiet around here, but as it so happens, this is a scheduled post as I am currently in Australia, visiting my lovely grandchildren. Even though it is winter here I am having a wonderful time. But, onto my project:

It's time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey where the lovely Annie chose the current theme Dies and Distress.  You can read all about it HERE

I decided to alter an Ideaology Assemblage Clock, using lots of Distress and Dies to do so.

I started by taking the glass out of the clock and covering the whole outside with Gesso. I then added some texture past in various places, applying it with my fingers, just to grunge it up a bit.Then I  painted the outside with a mix of various brown and Black Soot Distress paints.

Of course I got so caught up in the process that I completely forgot to take pictures, but above and below you get perhaps a bit of an idea of what it looked like...

Next I worked on the inside of the clock

I took the back off the clock and used it as a template for a piece of card that I had run through a clock and gears embossing folder. I carefully cut out the circle and then inked all over it with a mix of Antique Linen, Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Inks. Then I took a piece of ordinary computer paper, stamped a sentiment from the Way with Words set in Jet Black Archival and when dry crumpled it up, flattened it out again and then distressed it with the help of Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

I took a little metal wing from my stash, covered it with Versa Mark and then used Walnut Stain and Tumbled Glass Distress Embossing Powders to create a kind of patina effect. I also used some Verdigris Antiquities powder by Ranger and a bit of Wow Copper EP. I then embellished it further with a flower created with Tattered Florals and a Spellbinders die and some little flowers from my stash.

Now to the outside: On the right I used the mini inkwell and feather die, coloured with Distress Markers and inks. I draped some swirl leafy diecuts around it.

On the left I added some die cut leaves and a little stamped butterfly, fussy-cut by hand as so far I don't own any butterfly dies small enough for this, but the Butterfly Frenzy Decorative Strip die would of course be perfect for this...

The leaves were inked with Peeled Paint Distress Paint and then I went around the edges with Vintage Photo DI.

The top of the clock was further decorated with another die cut as well as a few smaller flowers and further leafy swirls.

Well, hope you like my altered clock and that I have given you a bit of inspiration to play with some of your own dies and Distress products. Make sure you go over to the A Vintage Journey blog, to see all the amazing projects my team mates have created. And of course we all hope that you will play along with our challenge. You could win a £10 voucher from Countryview Crafts and be in with a chance to be chosen as one of our 3 "Pin Worthies". Thanks for visiting today and see you next time!

Assemblage Clock	Texture Paste	Distress Paint	Distress Paint
Distress Paint	Steampunk set texture fades	Way With Words	Distress Markers
Archival Ink	Distress Ink	Vintage Photo Distress Ink	Walnut Stain Distress Ink
Peeled Paint Distress Ink	Spellbinders Blossoms 5	Tattered Florals	Mini Feather and Inkwell
Spellbinders Foliage

InLinkz.com

Best wishes

Hello everyone, thanks for dropping by here and I very much hope your month is going well, be it summer or winter where you are....

It's my turn to share a project for  the Spellbinders International Flair blog .
As it so happened I needed a card, and though I don't create cards often, I decided to do one for this occasion, using both some older and some newer Spellbinder dies.

These are the Spellbinder products I used:
A2 Matting Basics B
Royal Wings 3D embossabilities folder
Grateful Lattice Expandable Pattern
Foliage
Ribbon Banners
Feathers
Tattered Blossoms (Heartfelt Creations Dies)
Other products:
Heartfelt Creations Tattered Blossoms Pre-cut set,
Tattered Angels Chalk Board glimmer mists
Distress Inks
Home made spray inks
Golden brand Iridescent Gold acrylic paint
Rock Candy Distress Glitter
Paper Clay butterfly embellishment made with Martha Stewart mould.
Sentiment stamp

I started by cutting a piece of card with the largest of the matting basics dies and ran it through my chosen Embossabilities folder.

Next I cut a piece of the Grateful Lattice and cut it to the size of my base card

 I then stamped my chosen flowers in Hydrangea Archival ink and cut and embossed them with the matching die. I also cut and embossed my chosen feathers. I inked them while still in the die.

I coloured my background card with my Chalk Board Glimmer and home made mists and darkened the colours with Chipped Sapphire DI. I also added a bit of gold acrylic paint for extra sparkle

I trimmed the piece of Lattice so that it would only cover part of the card and coloured with more spray inks for a distressed look.

Next I inked my flowers with Chipped Sapphire DI and shaped them with a flower shaping tool. I fitted a little spacer bead in the centers.

I inked my feathers with spray mists in similar colours to the background. I added some Distress Glitter to both the flowers and the feathers.

I cut one of the leaves from the Foliage die set and coloured it with Iced Spruce  and Bundled Sage DI and shaped and distressed the petals with a flower shaping tool again.

I stamped my chosen sentiment onto the ribbon banner

I layered it all up as you can see below and tucked the little butterfly behind the flowers.

I matted my background panel first onto white and then blue card and that was it.

Nothing special really, but I enjoyed making it and I hope you like it...

Thank you for visiting and have a creative week!

Four Seasons but remember the now!

Saturday saw the start of Linda Ledbetter's  Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities 3 challenge, based on Tim's latest book and sponsored on alternate weeks by Inspiration Emporium and The Funkie Junkie Boutique, Tim and Mario themselves have  added to the prizes too. To find out more, just click on the link! 

Now if that's not enough, Linda has put together the most amazing design team, her Curiosity Crew; I was totally delighted to find so many of my blogging buddies among them, and boy, what inspiration they have provided!! The first challenge is all about Paint Marbling. Details of this technique can be found on page 43 of the book.

I love this technique and funnily enough had guessed and hoped this might be the first one, and when I saw it I immediately thought I would do something related to the seasons to have a chance to play with the technique several times in different colour ways. So I started with 4 size 8 tags, moving from cool colours for winter and spring, through to warmer ones for summer and autumn.

Below you can see the 4 tags after marbling, inking, doing some Sprits and Flick and in the case of 1 and 2 I added some stenciling too straight away.

For tag 1 I used: Picket Fence, Antique Linen and Tumbled Glass, and then inked with Frayed Burlap, and Walnut Stain. For tag 2 I used: Antique Linen, Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint and inked with Crushed Olive and Frayed Burlap. Tag 3: paints: Antique Linen, Scattered Straw, Wild Honey and Crushed Olive. Funnily enough the green of the Crushed Olive totally disappeared when I dried it, so I brought some of it back in when inking and also added more Wild Honey. Finally tag 4: Paints: Wild Honey, Ripe Permission, Fired Brick and Festive Berries. I inked with Aged Mahogany, Chipped Sapphire and a tiny bit of Dusty Concord and Walnut Stain.

After the backgrounds were done I added stamps, more stenciling, some embossing with texture fades etc.

Here is a close up of tag 1, kept it in a wintery mood.After adhering the stamped and die cut trees I added a bit more colour and texture with shadows. They were stamped in Iced Spruce. The dry embossed snowflakes on the right were from a little folder that came as a freebee with a magazine some years back. I am keeping my fingers crossed Tim will bring out a Snowflake layering stencil with the next release....

This tag sees a mix of stamps from the Tim Holtz Nature Walk set and the Artistic Outpost Birds of a Feather set. The little feathers at the bottom are Spellbinder dies, the greenery is from the TH Spring Greenery strip die and the little flowers I had in my stash. They are rather plasticky , but when I blasted them with my heat tool they curled up which I rather like.

For tag 3 I added some stenciling also, to fit in with the other two tags. I then used my favourite butterflies from the Papillion set, stamped them first straight onto the tag and then again, fussy cut them and coloured them with Distress Markers. I also used a stamp from the Odds and Ends set and some remnant rubs.

Finally for tag 4 the stamping is from the Mercantile set (I am totally in love with that bottle). The feather is from Spellbinders again and the word Autumn was cut out from a piece of Core'dinations card embossed with a texture fade. To echo the first tag I also ran it through a seasonal strip embossing folder.

 All 4 tags were then first mounted on to pieces from Tim's latest 8 by 8" paper collection, I added some more stenciling and inking to these pieces first and then I mounted them all onto a piece of dark brown mount board and further embellished with some die cuts and the words Remember the Now made from the little chip board letters. The final touch was an altered Ornate Plate (using more Distress Paints), and then mounted onto a Weathered Clock die which was also painted and rusted up with various Distress Embossing powders and some Antiquities Verdigris etc.

The text in the opening is from the Mercantile set.

I had so much fun creating this piece and obviously will be adding it to Linda's Challenge. This first challenge is sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium

Well hope you like my piece and have a fantastic week!

Thank you for visiting and make sure to stay inky!!