Hanging Autumn Leaves

Welcome Fall CVC #1 September

And here we are in the first month of Autumn already and 

the challenge theme is about autumn colours in nature.

Starting with the focal elements here are some autumn leaves taking centre stage.

I found some discarded backgrounds I keep in a couple of files and added to them to be able to die-cut some leaves. 

I used leaf fragments dies ......

... dabbled small areas with watery distress inks to get more depth to the colours, dried them.

When dry I used my permanent ink pem to add veins, you can just see that on two that I started with.

 Next I blended brown distress ink round the edges and around the holes, ....

.... but the colours then seemed much more subdued. I decided to leave the green ones out at this point.

So I took out some reinkers and with small drops of water I dabbled colours back onto the leaves.

Finally I rubbed micro glaze over the inked leaves, left it to soak into the card for a few minutes, buffed it and then soaked the plain side with water, scrunched the leaves up and heat dried them. I had experimented with another piece of inked card first and the colours didn't move when the water was applied.

For the background I used distress inks with some Alison Bomber and Tim Holtz stamps.

Eh voila, the hanging leaves with the green ones back in again.

xxx

Supplies 

Tim Holtz Distress inks - Forest Moss, Scattered Straw, Dried Marigold, Crackling Campfire, Scorched Timber, Spiced Marmalade, Ground Espresso, Vintage Photo, Frayed Burlap

TH Distress Reinkers - Barn Door, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade.

TH Distress Spritz - Rustic Wilderness, 

TH - Stampers Anonymous - Correspondence 225, Field Notes CMS396, Tidbits CMS488, Curator CMS493

TH - Sizzix - Leaf Fragments

TH Idea-ology - Ephemera Pack Curator. 

Alison Bomber - Pressed Grasses EAB40

Pressed Botanicals Collage - Pressed grasses and pressed umbels stamps by Alison Bomber

 Vintage Dreaming Collage

A vintage collage created directly in my Collage Panels journal, especially for using with Tim Holtz Found Relatives and Photobooth Pictures.

The Umbels silhouette stamp was inked up and directly added to the central panel .....

.... whilst the silhouette grasses were stamped onto spare card and fussy cut.

Some of Alison's words were added to bring a story to the overall project ....

.... this particular young lady is looking thoughtful and reflective with eyes looking upwards to the foliage and wondering about a walk in the forest where she can lose herself in her dreams and find some peace and quiet.

That is me sometimes, looking forward to a walk on our Ranges where the paths roam past the canal, out into fresh, bright openings and then back into some dense wooded areas which climb high and provide some beautiful views through the trees.

xxx

Journal page for DecoArt Media Team

I have started a new journal and if you missed the cover you can find it here. This is the first page made as a DecoArt Team member for 2019 and I have used real leaves I picked up in the garden as well as stencilled leaves too.
I know many of you might have already  seen this on the DecoArt blog but I'm just bringing all the details into the fold of my own space here at Bumblebees and Butterflies. My friend Alison Bomber calls it an 'encore' post.

Process steps

1. Using black archival ink randomly stamp a text background. Dry with a heat gun.

2. Use a monoprint technique using some quite thick paper or a piece of card. Randomly paint your piece of card with white gesso and press it onto your page.

Repeat until you are happy with the background. Play with the amount of colour you paint onto the card and watch for the variations it gives you. Leave some of the kraft page and text showing through. I placed a piece of wax paper behind my page to protect the pages underneath and prevent them from getting stray paint on them.

3. Using the dark grey mixed with titanium buff on your craft mat, spritz with water to create a watery wash, with a paint brush spread it out over a wide surface area …..

….. and dip your page into and dry several times.

4. Repeat step three with a very tiny amount of prussian blue (it really is a strong pigmented colour) mixed with some paynes grey.

5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to tone it down again but leave some of the colours showing through as well.

6. It was here I decided it looked a little too cool in tone so I brayered some transparent yellow iron oxide over to warm it up. I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing but I persevered and carried on.

7. Now I tried another monoprint technique using a stencil, but it didn’t work for me. I think it was because my background was too textured and didn’t allow my stencil to lay flat on the surface. We always learn something from our experiments don’t we?
Acrylic paints can dry very quickly especially in warm environments so I added a little extender medium to my colours for this next step. I used prussian blue hue and diarylide yellow.
I mixed both of these colours individually and together on my palette with the extender medium ……

…. then using my craft mat I painted some onto a stencil and then pressed it onto my page, rubbed over the back with some clean kitchen towel and repeated with the same stencil design to add pattern and texture.

But it wasn’t quite what I expected but you know what they say – get over it, there’s never a right or wrong way it’s all part of the learning process. So that’s what I did.

8. There is a bonus as you can press some clean media paper or card onto the surface of your mat or plate and rub over the leftover paint to ‘pull’ prints which can be used later.

9. Knowing that I had a leaf to add to the page I decided I wanted some of this background to show through but I also needed a more neutral palette for the leaf to sit on so I scraped some white gesso over the page using a palette knife keeping the flat side horizontal to the page. I can still see some of the original grey and blue and some of the stamping.

10. I took this a bit further and mixed some gesso and white modeling paste together and scraped it through the leaf stencil and a small dotty stencil to create texture. I left it overnight to dry and then mixed some sap green with glazing medium and painted it all over the substrate and wiped back with a wet wipe. (I love this technique I learnt from our very own talented Shawn Petite).

11. I wanted to make this a bit grungier so I repeated step 10 using raw umber fluid acrylic.

12. I had picked a couple of bits up from the back garden to use in this journal. To get them ready I placed them between some kitchen paper and two pieces of card, put two elastic bands around it and put it in the microwave on full power for 2 minutes. They came out lovely and dry and flat ready to use.

13. I had originally thought I would paint the leaf with gesso but I love the holes in the leaf parts and the faded colours so I decided to seal it on both sides using the DecoArt matte sealer spray instead. I have to be honest and say I don’t know how long it will last! Because it was very dry I painted a coat of matte medium over the top of the leaf but it was very fragile and broke in a couple of places.

14. So I altered course and made the decision to completely change the ending of my processes. I added some very small torn pieces of collage paper and then covered the page with a coat of clear modeling paste and laid the leaf in it to protect it. Originally I thought I might be able to glue it on with a hot glue gun but hey ho – all the best plans! This now made the leaf very soft and pliable and bends with the page.

15. To finish I cut three leaves from the prints you can see in photo 8, stamped them with some brown texture and drew in the veins.

I added some hessian ribbon, some stained cambric and some words to complete the page.

I'm looking forward to creating more pages in this journal.

Thanks for stopping by and ....

xxx

Media board and colour theme for Tando

It's a colour theme over at Tando and I find they can really inspire me to create something different and out of the box for me. These are the colours to work with today.

I decided to use my much loved DecoArt media fluid acrylics and one of Di's media boards.

Process steps

1. Paint the media board with a thick coat of sap green, sprinkle with water droplets and leave it to sit for a minute. Start to heat the board but before the watery spots dry lay a piece of clean dry kitchen paper over it to absorb the water. It sucks up some of the paint that has mixed with the water and leaves these gorgeous splatter spots.

2. Repeat step one with a coat of cobalt teal hue. After you have lifted the paper and droplets sprinkle with water again and you get a variation of colour spots in the teal colour.

3. Now mix the lightest colour in the above palette using green gold and titanium white and repeat step 1 again. Here's where I hold my hand up and say I was so busy writing this post at the same time I forgot to heat the board (and take a photo) and laid the paper towel down lightly and pressed gently  and repeated with titanium white.

4. Take one of the Tando flowers with stems, soak it with water and when wet enough split it into three pieces. Rough up the flower petals and dry them again. Paint with acrylics, ink the tips of the petals with brown distress ink and flick with white.

I had the leaf die-cuts sitting on my desk and the flowers are from my supplies.

5. Cut a small piece of greyboard, paint it white and when dry add a remnant rub to create your focal title.

6. Sand the edges of the media board and blend the edges with brown distress ink and splatter some tiny drops of the colours used and dry.

Assemble everything together. 

The little flowers look amazing with so much texture and dimension.

I wouldn't normally use these colours for a project but I love the results.

Thanks for stopping by and .....

xxx