September Tag Gathering Leaves

Hi Everyone,

It has been very quiet on my blog in the last couple of weeks as I have a new member of the family that has been demanding my attention, more about him later.

I am showcasing my September tag today the step by step instructions as always have been given by Tim Holtz on his blog and can be found by clicking on the link HERE.  I must say I found this tag the hardest so far this year.  Firstly I don't do faces so nothing in my collection remotely matched the one Tim did, I like to be different so this was not the main problem.  I did however have a huge problem actually getting this technique to work and look good on the background, especially with a light alcohol ink, and reading through the blogs I am not the only one who has to have about 10 goes to get a decent result.  I found that using two different alcohol inks (Stonewashed and Shell Pink)made the resist pop out better so this is what I have gone with in the end.

 

As you can see I have used one of my favourite of Tim's stencils (Latticework) to get the background. The lovely new broom stamp was very kindly loaned to me from my wonderful best friend ANNE  and she has not even had chance to use it herself yet so I will be rushing this straight back to her this week.  A few remnant rubs were added around the stamped areas.

 

 

 

The twigs for the broom and the leaves were coloured and stamped as Tim shows on his blog and they were cut from the Autumn Gatherings Decorative strip.

 

 

The twigs were layered up and I wrapped twine around two small pieces of card to act as the ties.

 

 

Further leaves were glued at the top of the tag to decorate the linen ribbon.

 

I mounted it onto a black tag and it was done. 

 

Now  remember I mentioned the addition to the family?? well here he is

 

 

His name is Georgie and he is a 6 year old Cavapom (Pomeranian and King Charles Spaniel x)

He is a rescue so need plenty of love and attention at the moment but he is very affectionate and loves nothing better than loads of cuddles and walks.

As he settles down into his new surroundings I should be able to get back to a little more crafting and blogging again as I know I have plenty of catching up to do with everyone.

 

Thank you for dropping in today and I hope to get around to visit everyone soon.

 

Mo xx 

 

 

 



A Vintage Journey Guest Design Spot

Hi Everyone

Thank you so much for taking the time to drop in

Once again I have been very honoured to have been asked by the team to be Guest designer over at

A Vintage Journey. It is Jennie's turn from Live The Dream to host the latest challenge and the theme she has chosen is With a Flourish. Now I don't have any problem at all finding ways of using flourishes in my work as they are so perfect for subtle stamped backgrounds or as die cuts in the foreground to create a feature. I chose to create a card this time pictured below. You can find more pictures of the finished project plus a few close ups by visiting A Vintage Journey and I have given a quick tutorial below. 

Firstly I made a 6" x 6" base card from 300gsm white card stock and placed my cabinet M/S die face down centrally on the card and placing the magnetic base plate over the top to run it through (so effectively upside down to how we would normally do it) this is just so you can get it central

Next I used a piece of cut n dry to apply  picket fence distress paint to an Indigo Blu Vintage Flourish stamp and stamped randomly all over one side of the card, re applying the paint for each flourish.  I dried with a heat gun and repeated this step on the other side. I blended Shabby shutters, Tattered rose and Victorian Velvet Distress inks all over both sides of the stamped card and the distress paint resisted the ink giving a lovely soft effect, then I used the same stamp and the Victorian Velvet distress ink to stamp over again giving a darker layer of flourishes.

I die cut 3 frames for the apertures using the m/s die together with the bigz cabinet card die and painted them with pumice stone distress paint. Whilst the paint was still wet, I sprinkled pumice stone distress embossing powder over and heat embossed. I mixed some white texture paste with pumice stone paint and used it through the speckles stencil to get even more texture on the frames and give them a stone look.

I inked the edges of the frames and glued one on the front, the second on the inside left back to back with the front one and the third I glued onto a found relative card and trimmed to fit.

To get the frames lined up correctly I added glue to the back of the found relative frame, placed it directly on top of one on the inside left, and shut the card.

I die cut 4 vintage flourishes and painted with tattered rose distress paint, sprinkled distress embossing powder over as earlier but this time using a mix of pumice stone, vintage photo and antique linen. (note: as these are placed back to back, you need to do 2 on the right side, and 2 on the wrong side) the photo does not show this - schoolgirl error!





The sentiment is an adage ticket spritzed with water, screwed up tight dried opened up and inked and stamped with the sentiment on the back. The little tea roses were all made using the bigz tattered pine cone die and inked up using tattered rose, Victorian velvet and scattered straw.





A tutorial by Tim himself can be found on This link for the making up the pine cones, the roses are done in the same way but keeping them more in line on the top and curling the edges with a poky tool rather than just creasing them. If you have Tim's Compendium of curiosities book 3 the faux tea roses are on page 65.  I made a few as I could not decide how many I would use on the final layout.


The leaves were left over from my bursting flower box project and I gave a detailed how to on that post, you can find it on the link Here.

All that remained then was to put it all together, with the addition of a wishbone which I drilled a small hole into the top to take a ring pull and a small linen ribbon bow the card was complete.

There is still a whole week to enter their current challenge. In Jennie's own words, this is what she is looking for in your entries.
' Have you ever noticed that much of Tim's packaging includes that fabulous flourish? It has always been one of my favourite Tim images, so for this challenge let's see what you can do with your flourishes! You might not have the "actual" Tim flourish but I am sure everyone has a flourish die or stamp in their stash which can get the shabby/vintage treatment.

Our challenge runs for two weeks and then a winner will be chosen by the team. The winner will receive a £10 shopping voucher from our host Country View Crafts on-line shop. We shall also be choosing three blog badge winners, our "Pinworthies" who will be pinned to our special winners Pinterest Board.'

I also have the lucky winners of my atc's from my Tiny Things post picked out by my hubby Alan randomly
The winner of my arrows set is Julie  http://julizdesignpost.blogspot.co.uk/
The winner of the Butterfly/Dragonfly set is Rita http://rmgcreations.blogspot.co.uk/
Congratulations to both winners please email me your contact details so I can get them in the post to you. Thank you also to everyone for your lovely comments

I do hope I have inspired you to have a play with some of the techniques.

Mo x

Little Things AVJ ATC challenge

Hi Everybody,

Hope you are all well and I guess slowly getting back to normal after the holidays. 
I am as ever cutting it a bit fine with my entry for A Vintage Journey this time but there is a reason for this.  You know how it is when you create  something and you feel it is not quite right, well that is what I did with this challenge but more about that later.  The very wonderful Alison is hosting the challenge this month, I am sure most of you know her and have seen her work, but for the very few that haven't have a pop over to her blog HERE  and prepare to be amazed.  The title Alison has chosen this time is 'A little touch of Tim ATC's only' click here HERE for the details.

 

So as you can see I have been playing around with my Tiny things stamp set again and decided that it would be the perfect match with this sentiment together with the fact we were dealing with quite a small area also. I did take a few photos along the way so you could see how I put them together.

 

First  I used Pumice stone to distress 4 blank atc cards 

 

Then used Pumice stone again through the Splatters Stencil

 

 

I used Black Embossing Paste through the Chevron stencil

 

 

Whilst that was drying I stamped the sentiment onto some of Tim's Wallflower papers and cut out.

  

I chose a few die-cut arrows and coloured them with distress stain

 

 

Then I stamped a few chosen Tiny things stamps again onto Wallflower paper and tore carefully around them, I watercoloured these in with stains and then used Glue & Seal over the coloured image which makes the colours pop more but also enables you to remove any other medium that gets onto the image where you don't want it.  

 

 

I liked the way they were coming together, but they were a bit clean!

 

 

so I got out my Timmy spritzer and black distress marker and gave them a  few spritzed black speckles.  You can see I have also gone around the arrows and the wording with a Stabilo All pencil to make them stand out more. 

 

 

If you look closely at the ballerinas dress, you can see I was able to remove the black speckles from it with a wet wipe because I had protected it with glue & seal.

 

 

Here are a few close ups

 

Now to the ones I did and was not happy with.  Don't get me wrong, I quite like the idea and the colour of them, but I just did not feel they were as Timmy as the others.  What do you think?

 



 

I would like to give both of these sets of atc's to a good home, so, if you like them leave me a comment and let me know which set you like, I will do two seperate draws for them next week.

Thank you for popping in today, and for your lovely comments on my previous posts.

BBFN Mo x