Back to Nature challenge at A Vintage Journey

Hello friends, - it's the first Friday of the month and that means there's a new challenge starting at A Vintage Journey

The lovely Jennie is our host and this is what she had to say about her chosen theme:
This month we are asking you to celebrate natural elements in your project. Think real nature in terms of twigs, dried flowers, shells or pebbles or perhaps stamps and stencils depicting these wonderful elements. Immerse yourself in the colours of the seasons whether they be bright or muted and create a project in our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I decided to pull out some of my Tim Holtz goodies and created a large card:

I built the card layer by layer and started with a panel using the 3D wood grain texture fade and coloured with a mix of Oxide and normal Distress Inks.

After that I got caught up in the process and forgot to take step out photos, but I think it's quite easy to see how it all came together, so I won't write a long tutorial....

The central panel is a piece of design paper to which I added some texture, Design Tape and background stamping.

I then used the Flower Jar stamps and dies to create my little flower arrangement. They were stamped in black archival and coloured with Distress Markers.

The little ticket was the smallest of the postage stamps Thinlets dies, and the word is is made with letters from another Tim die.

I created another panel using the Botanical Texture Fade, sanded it down a bit and then wrapped some string around it and added a number brad.

I added some white splatters and then chose this "Snarky Comment" to finish it all off, - it seemed suitable as when I started I really had no idea where this was all going....

Well, that's it from me, - thanks for coming by here, and if you have not been yet, to hop over to A VINTAGE JOURNEY to see what my talented teamies have created, and like always we would love it if you play along with our challenge.

Happy September

xxxxx

Today is Full of Possibilities for Shimmerz

Hello everyone and welcome to this sadly neglected blog.....
I am sorry I have not posted for ages and ages, but life is taking me in different directions right now and blogging has taken a backseat. However, today I have a post going life on the Shimmerz blog, so I am sharing a little preview here.

Should you wish to see more, all you need to do is CLICK HERE.
Have a good week, and hopefully the sun shines for you!

xxxxx

Dreaming of Spring - a project for Shimmerz

Hello lovely bloggy friends, thanks for looking by here today.
I am sharing a project over at Shimmerz today, so just a little preview here:

If you would like to see more detail and a full step by step, - just click here.

Have a lovely weekend and thanks for your visit!

xxx

Happy Earthday and safe travels

Hello dear friends! As many of you will know it's earth day today, the day when we celebrate the beauty and tranquility of our beautiful planet. So I wanted to wish you all Happy Earthday by sharing this card created as a card to wish friends safe travels.

We all know how much our beautiful earth, and the creatures that live upon it, are under threat, from environmental onslaughts, from terrorists and wars to name but a few. I think Earthday is perfect to bring greater awareness to these problems and to call on each of us to make responsible decisions.

OK, enough philosophy, onto my card:

I have no step by step photos, but will give you a quick run through the details. As you can see there are quite a few layers. I wanted a shabby grungy feel to this card so distressed the layers.
A piece of 7 x 7 scrapbook paper was treated with gesso, inks splatters and background stamping.

The globe was cut from metallic card, run through a Tim Holtz embossing folder and then coloured with some Alcohol Inks.

This layer was created with a piece of torn watercolour paper run through the same embossing folder and then I added some scraps of the top layer of a paper serviette with collage medium.

The top right corner needed something to balance out the other embellishment, it's a resin crown (I think from Prima?) I have had in my stash since ages.

A shabby Petaloo flower, some ribbon, twine and foliage and two little labels to wish my friends safe travels.

And that was pretty much it. I don't enter challenges very often, but as this one fits the Earthday challenge over at Anything but Cute, I thought I would add it there.

Thank you for your visit like always and HAPPY EARTHDAY!!!

You are the source of all change on the planet. If you tend to your internal peace

You're tending to Peace on Earth

                                               Panache Desai

Mixed Media playtime fun

Hello all, - hope you are having a good week!
I am still on my last two days of holidays and had some  fun playing with different stuff and experimenting really for another project. Here is the result:

I have no step out photos, but will give you a quick run down on my process. It all started with playing with some Bister powders in combination with Walnut Ink crystals by Tsukineko. I splattered them around on watercolour paper. sprayed with water, tipped and tilted and watched the stuff play and intermingle.

I was not too happy with the middle section, so covered it  with some gesso streaks, a few splatters and finally with torn strips of paper from the  Prima Time Traveller 6 x 6 collection, making sure that the white edges showed.

Next I die cut Mr Rainman (Tim Holtz for Sizzix) from the same collection, choosing a darker piece and then overstamping with white Snowflake Fresco Finish paint and an old script stamp.

Some words die cut from the same paper, using the Tim Thinlets Adventure die set.

Some back ground stamping with Black Stazon Ink

And finally mounting it on black card and then grey thicker card.

That's it, like I said, just a bit of experimenting and fun, but having fixed a little easel on the back, it will stand up and might just land up becoming a birthday card for a male friend.

Thanks for dropping by like always and have a great week!

A card to fit the person for Calico Craft Parts

Hello all, another preview day I'm sorry to say.... I have a somewhat different card (well for me anyway) over on the Calico Blog. Here is a preview, -  one of the elements of my card:

To see the rest, just CLICK here

Thanks for your visit like always and have a good week!

Spring flowers for Shimmerz

Hello all, - it's my turn today to share a project over on the Shimmerz blog, so just a little preview here...

To see the full project, like usual, all you need to do is CLICK HERE and I wanted to also say how much I appreciate all of you, specially those who take the time to hop over.....

Thank you for being here and have a wonderful weekend!

xxx

Springtime in Paris, a card for Shimmerz

Hello lovely visitors, today I have a card to share over on the Shimmerz Blog.

Here is just a little preview, if you want to see more, just click HERE.

Thanks for dropping by and have a good week,

Artist Journey at AVJ

Hello lovely visitors, great to see you here! Today it is my turn to share a detailed step by step "Destination Inspiration" project over at A Vintage Journey. As you can find all of the details there, I'll just give you a little preview here.

Hope you'll take the time to hop over. I had great fun creating it and very much hope you'll like it....

Thanks for dropping in today like always and happy creating!!

Shimmering Butterfly

Hello everyone, so happy you decided to visit today.

Well it almost is the end of the month and today it is my turn to share another project on the Countryview Challenge blog.

Beautiful butterflies to me always seem to herald the coming of Spring, and with this wonderful season now having officially started here in the Northern hemisphere I decided to create a card with a butterfly as the focal point.

The background was created with the help of Distress Sprays, using the so called salt technique. For those who don't know the technique, - it's very easy, - you spray any kind of sprays quite randomly, making sure your paper is quite wet. Sprinkle with some coarse salt and let dry naturally. I usually make a few backgrounds at the same time and dry them over night.

For this one I added quite a bit of gold mica spray as well.

Here you can perhaps see how the salt creates wonderful random patterns.

Once my piece had dried, I cut it to size and stamped one of the stamps from the Tim Holtz Classics 14 set, first with white paint, straight onto the background, and then again in black, on another piece of sprayed card. I cut the central piece out and adhered it to the card background.

The butterfly was cut from another bit of sprayed card with the Tim Holtz Butterfly duo Bigz die, it has a matching embossing folder, and adhered to the centre together with a pen nib. A word band and some background stamping, finished it all off.

Most of the products used for this card can be found at Countryview Crafts, and for UK people there is never any postage to pay!!!

Thank you for visiting and I hope you like my card!

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!