Canvas board recycled for CVC

Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK and the last day of the long Easter weekend, but what a fabulous few days it has been - Easter egg hunt, chocolate and family around - what could be better?

 

I am sharing this project over at the Country View Crafts project Blog and have recycled a canvas board. All the full details are on the CVC page, particularly how I created the background but having got a colourful mixed media backdrop I decided to add elements so I could enter the Creative Carte Blanche Creative Adventure - Triple Trouble - to use metal. corrugated card and lace.

Starting with the metals - some were gessoed and painted with decoart media acrylics, others were given the rusting treatment again using decoart media acrylics.

Here we have lace, wooden pieces and a corrugated heart.

The arch piece has a transfer waiting to be finished but I rubbed too hard and spoiled it so had to turn over and started again.

I layered up the pieces then added the final embellishments and the pretty girl on the arch.

Really rather pleased with this and reminds me of Finnabair's style. I will put an easel on the back and use it as one of my special cards.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you are having a fabulous Easter weekend, even with the horrible rain and high winds we managed  a break in the clouds yesterday afternoon which was enough to do the Easter egg hunt and later had dinner with all the family - 9 of us this time.

Take care and enjoy the week ahead.

hugs Brenda xxx



Update - copied over from CVC

HI Everyone, Brenda here. For today's make I took a canvas board I had made for another project and set about altering it. I really liked it like this but the finished article was not something I thought I would use so I took off the embellishments and set to work.

I took out my distress crayons and started smudging colours over the top ...

.... and then blended over picket fence distress paint and spritzed it with water.

I added more coloured crayons as well as white ...

... then dipped it into spritzed picket fence paint again before drying it and blending over squeezed lemonade, evergreen bough, mustard seed and picked raspberry distress inks.

Now it's completely changed we are ready to rock and roll.
Starting with the metals - some were gessoed and painted with decoart media acrylics, others were given the rusting treatment again using decoart media acrylics.

Here we have lace, wooden pieces and a corrugated heart.

The arch piece has a transfer waiting to be finished but I rubbed too hard and spoiled it so had to turn over and started again.

I layered up the pieces and began adhering them to the board using matte medium.

The sprayed with some misters and a glitz spray from my supplies.

Then added the final embellishments and the pretty girl on the arch.

Really rather pleased with this and reminds me of Finnabair's style. I will put an easel on the back and use it as one of my special cards.

Visual Journey #10

Welcome to March and the continuation of my Visual Journey using an old altered book to work in. Since starting this visual journal I have experienced the greatest of freedom in expressing myself through my art and I am learning to free myself up from the constraints of designing for design teams and workshops. Don't get me wrong I love those activities as well and I am very motivated by challenges and time constraints but taking a little time to just go where the muse takes me is so refreshing.

These pages started with three distress stains - tea dye, bundle sage and brushed corduroy and I blended them over the page using an almost dry babywipe. Just before I started, the collage I made for Crafty Individuals last month came to mind where I had used a skyline and then that made me remember my Finnabair workshop where she taught us a layout using the same sort of idea, so I drew a pencil across two gessoed pages and blended the stains but in the end this ended up nothing like the Finnabair design I had in my head.

I decided to pick up my bits bag (leftover paper bits from other projects) and a wooden cutlery box where I keep leftover ephemera and embellishments and started to pull out items that would go together. I didn't have a theme in my head, I just wanted to see where I ended up.

As I was collecting bits together I decided to do some stamping in tea dye and vintage photo, then the distress damask came later using gathered twigs. I gave this a light spray of Americana acrylic sealer as I didn't want the stamping to smudge when I add the glued strips in the next step pf the process.

Here I have glued on strips of paper, torn pieces of tissue wrap and then used the tea dye distress stain dabber to make three large splats and a brush and walnut crystal ink to make fine splatters. Be warned the distress inks don't dry very well over the gesso when splattered.

I added the numbers 6 and 9 because they are the ages of my youngest grandchildren.

The 19th is my birthday, the number 13 is my lucky number and all the letters are in alphabetical order (well almost).

I finished with a few bits to give the pages meaning and tell the story, looking to keep an overall balance in the design.

The girl and quote was included in an order from somewhere many moons ago and I found it in one of my image boxes. Great quote too don't you think?

I seem to be at my happiest when creating collage pieces and in a vintage style.

A huge thank you to everyone who has been joining in and sharing wonderful pieces of journalling art. I look forward to seeing what you make in March, please link below if you would like to join the party and share your pages and ideas. This is just for fun and the opportunity to see how others approach their journalling. If you copy the link from here -

get the InLinkz code

 into your blog post you will share everyone's work with your readers too.

Have fun and listen to your heArt.

hugs Brenda xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

More Finn Journal pages

My pages today show eldest granddaughter Becca, so I thought I would do a quick catch-up for those who supported Becca and I when she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease and was in hospital for most of the autumn 2012 up until the beginning of December. Thank you to you all who sent cards and good wishes, you know who you are and Becca and I were so pleased to to have that support.  She had two six hour operations and some of her intestines taken out at that time and had to wait a year to see what the next steps would be. Since then she has had another operation and has made a remarkable recovery and we are so pleased with the progress she has made. She is now at 6th form college and doing well with her studies and will hopefully be learning to drive soon. Oh my gosh where do the years go?

So onto the project.

The base of the pages are kraft card, covered with text paper and gesso.

Cut and torn strips of card, canvas and tissue tape etc. were added and then gesso through some masks.

Next I added lace, tapes and trims and glued in the photos.

I added staples, gems and embellishments …..

….. and cut more small pieces and scraps and tucked into places.

I stamped with archival and then splattered with tea …..

… and walnut crystal ink.

I used a soft pencil to add lines around the photos etc. and added chit-chat stickers and some of my own journaling words.

Although this is a scheduled post I will be home today from my holiday, I will let you know what we did and saw sometime soon.

Have a great weekend.

hugs {brenda} x0x

A new flexible journal

I am still loving creating journal pages and canvases Finnabair style and after making the fabulous journal at Finn’s workshop at the end of August I found a way to recreate my own journal covers that will bend over and around the pages allowing you to embellish with lots of metal and 3D trinkets.

My journal is 18 x 15 cms and I used canvas and interfacing from the fabric shop. I stamped with matte medium and sprayed to get the colours then stamped over the top of that, I also sewed around the edges.

Both for the front and back I created layers with canvas, lace and patterned card ….

… and I adhered the embellishments over the top.

I have made one set of pages of my youngest granddaughter…..

… creating the photos within a collage ….

…. using a glittery patterned paper for the background.

Using a paperclip, stamped butterfly, ruler ribbon and other letters and ephemera, the pages came together.

The colours I used reflected the colour of Maddison's jumper.

Just to let you know I will have been blogging for  four years on Wednesday and I think a giveaway will be in order, keep your eyes open.

Hope you've had a great weekend
Brenda x

12 x 12 Layout – Family Memories

Before Christmas my friend Sue and I had another day together making a Finn inspired layout for a shadow box frame. These look lovely under glass and on the wall. I need to do a few more to get a collection together for the dining room.

This is my beautiful Mother who sadly passed away 2 years ago on New Years Eve. She loved butterflies so of course I had to add one to this layout. The one you can see is metal and was silver but with some distress paints and treasure gold was transformed into something quite different.

As in the Finnabair workshop I did last year, I used lots of metal embellishments mixed with paper flowers, card flourishes, lace and some wooden elements too, and I used several different sprays over the top.

 My Mum was an inspiration to me in many ways, hence the choice of word to use.

 These are very much her colours, she loved oranges and browns mainly so her autumn garden was a joy to see, but she also loved her fuchsias in the summer so some pinks and magentas were also evident too.

Here you can see the dimension of the double wings on the butterfly and the conical silver bead that became it’s body.

Just one little heart to represent my love for her.

This is Sue’s finished frame. She used a photo of her and her sister when they were young and gave the finished frame to her sister for Christmas. It made a very lovely personal gift and was very well received.

This frame holds the layout I did at Finn’s workshop last year but it held a vintage photo of someone I didn’t know. Luckily I was able to remove it and add one of me when I was about 9 or 10 years old.

Thanks for looking, enjoy the rest of your week. I am teaching my Vintage Tag Journal at Flitwick in Bedfordshire tomorrow and looking forward to meeting a new group of people. Susan from Country View Crafts is coming along too so I am sure we will have a fun day.

Take care.

hugs {brenda} x0x