The beautiful Lily Grace

Hello everyone and a warm welcome, thank you for taking the time to look in here. Today I am sharing the next page in my altered book, a page around the beautiful Lily Grace.

Lily Grace, or Grace as she was known, was my husband's great grandmother, this shows her in 1880.

I adore the expression in her face, to me she looks like a real charmer, dreamy and romantic. She would give birth to 5 children 4 girls and a boy. Unfortunately I have no photo of her husband, but I keep hoping he will have looked a little bit like his brother, whose photo you can see here.
People are always asking me how I put my pages together, and I promise, I will do some full step by steps in the new year. Meanwhile, here are just a few "along the way" photos:

I covered the next double page in my book with some Tim Holtz tissue wrap, followed by a thinish coat of gesso. When that had dried I coloured the page with a mix of different acrylic paints (Tim Holtz Antique Linen, Paper Artsy paints in brown tones, both opaque and translucent) I used a brush and both a baby wipe and some kitchen roll to blend them together. I call this the wipe-on-wipe-off method. With the gesso underneath you can easily blend and merge the colours as long as they are still wet and with the help of the kitchen roll add additional textures to the paint.

 Here you can see the different textures a bit better, achieved through the tooth in the gesso and the kitchen roll bunched together and pounced on the wet paint. When the paints had dried I sprayed on two colours of Sprays: Lindy's Stampgang Starburst spray in Bodacious Blush (what a name lol) and Tim Holtz Victorian Velvet. They both have wonderful old vintage pink tones and the star burst just adds a little sparkle.
Anyway, because I wanted a really romantic feel to these pages I then added the top layer of a rose tissue, a packet of which that I was lucky enough to find in a stationary shop.

I used Ranger Multi Matte Medium for this, my absolute favourite of the moment, because it really dries totally matte and has the perfect consistency.
I had this notion of Lily Grace writing romantic love letters so I stamped a number of vintage writing stamps on some tissue paper.

I stamped quite a few, just to have a choice and then selected just three to adhere to my page, tearing around the edges to avoid hard lines.

I could have left it at that, but could not resist the temptation of adding some more texture to the page with the help of some stencils. I never seem to learn the lesson of "less is more"....

By the time the texture paste had dried it was dark, so I could not take any more step by step photos.... (it gets dark here in Scotland just after 3:30 at the moment :o( )
So all I can show you now are some close ups of how I finished the page:

I mounted the photo of Lily on to some tags and other stamped elements and embellished with some flowers, sprayed with a mix of glimmer sprays. I also did some more background stamping with a little Prima stamp and added her name with the little Tim Holtz letter stickers.

Sticking with the love letter theme, I rolled up a bit of old book paper, tied it with some vintage lace, tucked in a little flower and added some other flowers underneath. Everything was adhered with the Ranger medium.

Well that was pretty much it. The page is probably a bit over the top, but then I think Lily was quite a full on lady.....

Sorry this post got a bit long, but for those of you who asked, I hope it has given you some idea of how I put it together. Hope you are having a good week and that you will find some time to be creative!

Thanks for visiting like always

Vintage Mixed Media style

Hello everyone and welcome. It's been a bit quiet here this week because I have been busy prepping and scheduling projects for the time I will be away over Christmas, (off to see my grand children in Australia, - can't wait!)

Anyway, all I have to share today are a few more mixed media Christmas cards. Sorry, not very exciting really... but here goes:

These are not all that dis similar to some earlier ones I did, but on a slightly larger format.

The background was done with a Trimcraft paper line I found in the Range of all places, it's called Gilded Winter and has some stunning papers in it. But of course I could not leave them as they are so played around with texture paste and various sprays. For this one I used the Lathenay stencil from Memory Box, a Lindy's Stampgang Spray,  as well as Bundled Sage and Walnut Stain Distress Sprays. Raised bits were dry brushed with Decoart Dazzling Metallic Luminous Gold, and Treasure Gold in White Fire.

The little snowflake in the centre is paper clay, I made it with a sugar craft mold.

I did some background stamping to add a bit more interest to the background still, the little vintage image is from Maja Design Winter Frost basics.

Instead of adding a sentiment to the outside, I did an inside page, also to show up behind the decorative edge of the card:

The wonderful sentiment stamp is from Stampendous, the snowflakes are Tim Holtz.

I did two further cards in a very similar way:

This one uses a Dyan Reaverly stencil and another image from the Maja design papers. The inside is similar too, - I have so many cards to make, I quite like doing them in a series.

And the final one in blue tones:

This photo is terrible, it gets dark here so early, I had to take it with flash, - it is so much nicer in real life.

And the inside:

Right, that's 3 more to be ticked off the list, hope you think they are ok......

Thank you for visiting like always and have a fantastic weekend.

I'll be running a children's card making workshop this Saturday. for our school Christmas Fair, so a busy day ahead....

Victorian Christmas

Hello everyone and welcome, specially also to new followers! Lovely to have you join me on my creative journey!
Today I am sharing a page in my water colour journal.

Ever since it started, I have been wanting to play in the Artist Trading Post new challenge blog, and every time I have just missed the deadline.
When I saw the new theme Stencil Mania hosted my the amazing Julia, I was so inspired by all the fantastic DT samples, that I knew I just had to prioritize for it straight away. So here is my journal page, full of stencilling....

The background to this page started as a kind of mop up page from other projects, picking up various Lindy's Stampgang and Tim Holtz sprays.

Then because of the challenge theme I added texture and crackle pastes through various Martha Stewart and Memory Box stencils, and when dry I added some Golden Acrylic Paint and Walnut Stain Distress Spray over the raised bits and highlighted with treasure gold. Here are some close ups:

As you can probably see I also did some more stencilling in the back ground with various Tim Holtz layering stencils and both Archival and Distress Inks. I also stamped and gold embossed a La Blanch swirl stamp in various places.

From that point on, the page kind of took on a life of its own and turned into a sort of Victorian Christmas page. (It was meant to have been something quite different originally)...

This little victorian Christmas angel (from the Papermania Vintage Christmas collection), was flying around on my desk, and she called out to me that she wanted to be placed there. So after that I then stamped and inked a Christmas tree stamp and added it to another corner of the page to balance it all out a bit. (No idea anymore who made that stamp, it's been in my box of Christmas stamps for ages).

I added some Ancient Gold embossing powder around the edges and adhered it to the page, covering up most of the crackled stencilling, ah well, too bad, it kind of just looked as if it was needed there.

The final bit was to add some bits of tissue tape and the words created with the little Tim Holtz letter tiles. I also added some snowflakes still, stamped in white Distress Paint and some highl;ight for a bit of festive sparkle with Diamond Stickles.
 I am adding this to the Artist Trading Post Stencil Mania challenge
That's Crafty Anything Vintage challenge

Thanks for coming by to look and have a creative week!!!

My little gift to you

Hello everyone and happy weekend!

It's been an absolute age since I have posted any freebies on here and I know that many of you started to follow me because of said freebies. So high time for some more, hopefully useful for those of you who like working with them :o). I designed them in a different format as most of us have normal printers, so these are A4 (8.5 x 11). I tried to do them in such a way that all parts might come in handy, either as vocal point or as a background.

 And here are 3 matching tags still:

You are free to use them for your own personal use and are welcome to sell any cards you make with them. Please don't sell them just as they are!

Thank you for visiting like always, and please let me know if you appreciates these freebies. If enough people are interested I am happy to continue to provide them occasionally. 

A dapper gentleman

Hi all and thanks for coming by here.
Today I am showing you the next spread in my altered book. I am not completely happy with it, but ah well, sometimes you win sometimes you loose.

Just showing a few photos and not doing a full step by step. What I did is pretty much the same as on my first page, which you can see here

The gentleman in the picture is another relative of my hubby, his name was Alan and he was the brother of DH's grandfather, a bit of a rogue and the black sheep in the family. This picture was taken in 1905.

Anyway, here are some further close ups, the whole double page looks a little better in real life.

I tried to keep all the embellishments and colours more masculine. All the cogs and gears are die cuts, made with a Cheery Lynne die.

The stencil, used for texture is my favourite of the moment,: Memorybox Lathenay.

Anyway, that's it for now.
Thanks for visiting like always!

Variations on a theme

Hello all and welcome.
Today I am sharing another set of textured Christmas cards.

I don't remember a year when I have enjoyed making my Christmas cards quite as much as this year.... Maybe it's because I started earlier, maybe it's also because I decided to keep them simpler (well for me anyway) without all the tons of embellishments I used to add to my cards.

This set is not so different from the last set I showed, but made in a slightly different way.

I used a beer mat for the base again, but instead of covering it with gesso, I added a scrap of neutral coloured scrapbook paper. I adhered it to the beer mat, and when dry, sanded around the edges.

Next I added texture through a stencil, I used the Memory Box Lathenay and Heartwood stencils for this set. I am completely in love with them. It was my blog friend Dee Adams who told me about these gorgeous stencils. She had used one of them on a beautiful card she made me a while back.

Each of the 3 cards are basically done in the same way, after the texture had dried I added 2 colours of Distress Paints: Pumice Stone and Antique Linen, blended them with a baby wipe and then did some spritzing with Tim Holtz Distress Spray in Walnut Stain and a Lindy's Stampgang spray called Cowabunga Copper.

The final steps were to highlight the texture with Treasure Gold in two different colours, White Fire and Copper. If you use the back (black side) of a bit of Cut n Dry blending foam, it's much easier to just hit the raised bits.

The sentiment is from the Tim Holtz Christmas Nostalgia set. The Santa images are from a sheet of Maja Vintage Frost basics paper. I cut them out and them embossed around the edges with Stampendous Ancient Gold embossing powder.

Thanks for visiting like always and hope you are having a good week.

Bugs, Bees and Butterflies for Countryview Crafts

Hello everyone and lovely to have you visiting. It's my turn to show you another project for Countryview Challenges, where the theme this month is Bugs, Bees and Butterflies. Well, this time round I just had to use my favourite butterfly stamp from the Tim Holtz French Flight set. I created the little wall hanging and had great fun making it all grungy!

Texture play fun

Hi all and thanks for dropping in here.
This year I am really enjoying making different kinds of Christmas cards, for the little set I am showing today I used gesso, texture paste and some beer mats.

I started with 3 plain beer mats, I covered them in Gesso, added texture past through a Prima 6 x 6 folder in different corners and then coloured them with various colours of acrylic paints. For some reason I am all into blue tones for my Christmas card at the moment.

I also added some stamping with white acrylic paint here and there and little patches of embossing powder for further texture.

Each of the cards was then finished in a slightly different way:

The vocal image on this one is a cut out snowflake created with the help of a Sheena Douglas embossing folder. The text is from the Tim Holtz Christmas Nostalgia set.

This one uses the little Tim Holtz deer. The filigree looking bit in the corner is actually a Cheery Lynne lace corner die, treated with embossing powder (Ranger Antiquities, a mix of Rust and Verdigris) and then I added some little bells just for fun.

This one is very similar to number 1 but using a different shaped snowflake.
I really enjoyed making these, they are a great size and will be easy to send, so expect to see more.....
Thanks for visiting like always and hope you are having some creative time for yourself too. Have a good weekend!!