I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Here's a canvas board with a snowy Christmas theme. However the background was made months ago and just left in a box, so I've hauled it out to use as a Christmas easel card.

I think the process steps to re-create this backgroud are something like -

- I began with some gesso scraped and dabbed on, dried and then texture paste added through a stencil.

- I probably dipped and dried layers of distress inks and the colours look like snowy sky, tea dye, pumice stone and vintage photo.

I stamped the image from Tim's new Scribble Woodlands set using three archival ink pads, olive green, watering can and coffee and cut round it. The clock was cut from gold card, daubed with sand paste, dried and watery washes of paynes gray, raw umber and quinacridone gold added to it. I also died some seam binding with stormy sky, stamped the sentiment and found the skate charm to dangle from the ribbon.

I watercoloured the stamped image with some of the distress inks before adding it to the card with foam pads to lift it a bit.

I wanted this to be a real winter wonderland so I added loads of DecoArt snow-tex to get the effects I wanted. It scraped beautifully over the textured clock.

I even added some to the skate after I had painted it with burnt umber media fluid acrylic paint and ribbed some silver spark metallic lustre over the blade.

Even the ribbon got a dusting of it too.

Here you can see the easel which allows it stand.

With the background already made this only took me a couple of hours ... that's amazing for me lol.

I really would love it to be a white Christmas, but there's very little chance of that here in the south of the UK - so I carry on 'dreaming'.

Thanks for stopping by and if you are at Mixology this weekend, see you this evening or tomorrow. I shall be driving up this morning so that I can help get it all ready.

Enjoy your weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

'Tis the Season

Here's a design using the Scribble Woodland set of stamps and the beautiful deer head as the focal image.

The details of how I made them are over at Country View Crafts Project Blog today with a few more photos as well.

I have yet to get stuck in to getting my Christmas cards made but these have given me a bit of a start which is why I made two of them.

Off shopping today to get the last bits I need for the Mixology workshop this coming weekend.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Steps copied over from CVC

I had found a piece of left over infusions drenched paper and cut it in half so I could create two of the same cards (my box needs so many more cards before the beginning of December!!)

I took the scribbly woodland stamps and olive, watering can, coffee and black archival inks and stamped over the scribbly twig and snowflakes.

I love using my Tim waterbrush and took stormy sky, vintage photo and ground espresso distress inks to colour in part of the snowflakes.

You can probably make out that although these two deer heads were coloured with the waterbrush and brown distress inks, I actually stamped them in different colours to begin with. The on stamped in black on the right looks very striking but the one on the left was originally stamped in coffee which made this gorgeous creature look quite insipid, so I took a black posca pen and did my own scribbles over the top to create a more stronger looking deer head.

The sentiment was stamped onto left over card from another project and I was ready to put the card together.

I found some paper string and small holly die-cuts ...... 

 .... and put the cards .........

..... together.

These are gorgeous scribbly images and I can see me using them alot for Christmas cards this year.

Have a great week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Stars - canvas board

This is my second DT sample for the Stars challenge running over at Country View Crafts and I chose to use one of the canvas boards I like to play with and an easel to make it a standing card.

Process Steps

1. Scrape white modeling paste with a palette knife over the background and let dry.

2. Choose your colour palette and inks or paints.

3. Create watery washes of the colours you want to create the background with and dip, spritz and dry until you are happy with it, then randomly stamp a background using
a contrasting colour of paint.

4. Use a stencil and distress ink to add another layer to your background and then spray with Americana matte sealer and whilst still wet sprinkle in some glitter, I couldn't get it to show up in the photo but adds a lovely effect for the theme.

Collect together embellishments. I used Picture Star stamps from Artistic Outpost and Wild West by Tim Holtz as well as altering star die-cuts and a wooden frame.

 The frame has a rust finish using the decoart paints and some texture sand paste.

I stamped onto patterned paper as well as add some behind the frame, I love the girls feet hanging out the bottom as a quirky touch.

The gold card easel can be seen behind the canvas board and will lie flat for postage too.

This reminds me of my two young granddaughters who love their ballet and dancing lessons.

To find out more about the challenge please click the link here and see even more inspiration on the challenge blog.

Have a great weekend and keep warm.

hugs Brenda xxx

Make your own frames 1

I recently did a workshop locally where my lovely group of ladies spent the morning making their own frames using card, wood and plastic. I sadly didn't get any of their finished makes photographed although Joan did send me one of hers with her gorgeous dog Tilly all framed up. So I'll start with this simple design first. I haven't embellished it although I am very tempted to add some more to it but as this is of my daughter and her boyfriend I thought I would leave them to be the stars of the show.

This is simply a greyboard backing painted with gesso and distressed with ground espresso distress ink. I added the Tim Holtz easel to the back.......

... and used his cameo and oval dies to create the  frame to go over some simple core'dinations paper backing. I love this photo of them both taken in San Francisco when we were all on holiday together in August.

And here is Tilly, you can see that Joan set her frame in a landscape position whereas I had used a portrait one.

Sorry for the lack of posts at the moment with DT pieces and the Mixology weekend being so near I am struggling for time and it doesn't help when Mr Mojo decides to take himself off and leave me all alone either.

You will be seeing some more frames from me as I am cheating and using them all as individual posts to help keep me going.

I hope you have a great week. and keep warm with the sudden very cold morning frosts and cold snap we seem to be having here in the UK.

hugs Brenda xxx

Cracked Up

The fabulous Alison has chosen the theme for November and as the title says it's all about being 'Cracked Up'.

Share your crackled projects – whether your crackle is stamped, painted, texture paste or any other kind of crackle. To be a winner or Pinworthy mention your project must be in a vintage; shabby; mixed-media; art journaling; industrial or steampunk style (and I include timeworn in there too).

So following a visit to the new Ikea in Reading I bought some of these little frames and had fun using DecoArt media acrylics, weathered wood crackle medium and chalky finish paints to achieve this effect. Sadly or happily (whichever way you want to look at it) I got into the moment making several of these and didn't record the process in photos. But here goes with some explanation.

I began by giving the whole frame a coat of relic chalky finish paint. When it was dry I gave it a coat of weathered wood crackle medium and left that to dry.

Next came a coat of Everlasting chalky finish and when dry I finished with some brown and clear wax

Having decided I wanted to make this everlasting calendar for December I cut the pages to size, found some scrapbook rings and began creating collages on the pages.

The above one is the frontispiece and here are a few of the pages already made.

I painted up some leftover scraps of card with white crackle paint and used it to die-cut the larger snowflakes below, inking over with ground espresso and spritzing it with water.

I peeled a little of the crackle away to make the snowflakes look more distressed .......

..... and added remnant rub snowflakes over the top.

A small scrap of the crackled card was used as a mount for the 'traditions' below and also became something for the skate to sit on. Here in the UK lots of ice rinks open up for the festive period and have become very popular both before and after Christmas.

Here is how these pages look on the frame, each has the date of the month on.

Al paints and mediums are from the DecoArt range and can be found at Country View Crafts.

The prize this month is an Art Journal Kit from Tando Creative and it is all ready for you to have a go at adding crackle to it.

The incredible Creative Guides over at AVJ have posted some amazingly creative projects, so it would be lovely if you could pop over to leave them some love and we look forward to seeing your entries.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a 'cracking' weekend.
EEEEK it's only two weeks to Ministry of Mixology!!! Everyone is getting so excited, I know I am.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Experimenting with DecoArt products - Star media board

This STAR media board came about just by playing with some media fluid acrylics, and metallic lustres that were sitting on my desk as a result of trying to get my make and take sorted for Ministry of Mixology this month and if you are booked on, NO this is nothing like the piece we will be doing lol. This does however fit the theme the lovely Rachel has chosen for the Country View Challenge for November.

I didn't record my steps as it was a playtime but from what I can remember I had applied black gesso, black modeling paste through a stencil and then glued chipboard and wooden pieces onto the media board and was playing with the paints and hated what it became so it had another coat of black gesso and I put it aside to dry. When I came back to it the layers went something like this -

- with a damp brush I brushed on champagne ice metallic lustre.

- I applied a watery wash of transparent red iron oxide.

- I brushed lavish green metallic lustre over the stars ....

..... and iced espresso over the STAR letters.

- next came a wash of phthalo blue particularly over the frame.

- followed by a gentle brush of champagne ice just over the background.

- then a wash of translucent white over the top and only on the background.

- then a wash of quinacridone gold just over the background.

- I finished by rubbing in some champagne ice on the edges of some of the wooden pieces to highlight them.

I'm not sure whether I like the results or not - I need to leave it for a day or two and come back to it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a great week and if you get a moment please pop over to the CVC challenge blog to see all the details and inspiration to start a month of STARS.

hugs Brenda xxx