A curio box scenario - Power Down

I have created a little diorama with the Tim Holtz new Curio Box die and sme of Andy Skinner's transfer sheet images. There's rather a retro/vintage vibe with the old vehicles and vintage photo and although it took me a while to make with the thinking and decision making time, it would be much quicker if I were to repeat it.

I have posted this on the Country View Crafts Project Blog with more details and photos. If you would like to see more details please pop over to take a look.

xxx

Discovery - canvas board

Happy Friday

This board started life as 'let's use up this paste' panel. I had a mix of white modeling paste and sand texture paste left over from another project and just couldn't let it go to waste, so I grabbed Andy Skinner's fossil stencil and one from Seth Apter and just used up the remains and left the board to dry.

Once dry I decided to use this as my February challenge sample for A Vintage Journey where the lovely Jennie has chosen 'Special Words' as the theme for the month. With the stencilled ammonite shape and word suddenly a walk along the beach came to mind and memories of various places where I have picked up shells and discovered beautiful patterns and designs through sea creatures, footprints and the print of the waves left in the sand. So the start of my creation began to emerge in my head and I gathered a few bits together to get me more focussed in.

 The colour combination I have chosen was from a palette I found on Pinterest and I added grey to each one to tone them in with each other. As always by the time I had finished the background I had added more which included some cobalt blue hue and prussian blue.

To get some colour on the board I decided to use a brayer, I haven't used it much for a while and I used several colours layering over the top of each other to get this background.

Then I dribbled, dripped and finger painted in some washes of the same colours to fill in some of the gaps before brayering over with some titan buff and titanium white mixed together to lift it all again.
WHAT DID I LEARN? - That next time I will brayer the paints first and get the background colour on before adding the stencilled texture. Hmm I might be trying that over the weekend lol.

So now I wanted to highlight the textured areas, I decided to replace the fossil stencil and add embossing ink and gold embossing powder. Great but again WHAT DID I LEARN? - I should have brayered over the raised area first with a brayer and a gorgeous deep golden brown colour because the gold has touched most of the texture, not all of it.

So that's what I did with the number and word at the top with prussian blue. But no that didn't work either ....

.... so out came the fine brushes and the titanium white to add to the blue to fill in the gaps. Yay, more contrast this time. So I went over the fossil as well.

Onto to creating the feature and embellishments. First I decided to paint the shells gold.

Next came the little box and I got so carried away I forgot to take any more individual photos but here are some close ups. To make it work with the background I decided the outside needed to be blues and the inside the yellows, I used the fluid acrylics and they blended in beautifully over the wood and kept the rustic  effects.

At this point I changed my mind completely on the design that you saw at the beginning of the post and decided to carry the fossil shape further over on the board, I just laid the stencil down and rubbed over the embossing ink pad and gold embossing powder.

I rubbed a cornflower blue and the coffee archival ink pads around the edges and gave them a good blast with the heat gun before using an embossing pen to add some gold over the numbers nd around the edges.

I assembled the box using some muslin dipped in the prussian blue and adhered it to the canvas and glued the little crustacean piece on the top.

With an easel on the back this stands beautifully.

What do you think of when you read the word 'DISCOVERY" for me it makes me realise that I am still learning new things every day, it might be when I experimenting with my paints, inks and mediums, it maybe in a discussion or chat with a friend, it might be something from the tv or even better when I'm away on a trip or holiday - when I'm exploring and learning about the past history of the place.

Do you think I am now thinking ahead to warmer weather? I could do with some sun on my back right now but that's always the case when January is out of the way.

Looking forward to seeing the entries for this challenge and I highly recommend this post for some amazing inspiration from the Creative Guides.
Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your art.

hugs Brenda xxx

Shabby Halloween box for AVJ

'Tis the season for all things eerie, mysterious, curious and weird. As it's the beginning of October then what better than some challenges to get you in the Halloween mood and A Vintage Journey is one of them to help you on your way. Anne is the spectral host this month and she says - 

As we approach All Hallows' Eve we want you to create a vintage, shabby, industrial, steampunk or mixed media project to celebrate the spookiness of Halloween, don't limit yourself to black, orange and purple - just 'Make it Spooky'!

Me? I just decided to alter one of those hard paper maché type boxes to hold some of my spooky supplies and to make it seem even more weird I have gone shabby creepy.

Quick process steps

• Paint a coat of rustic chalky finish paint over the outside of the box and dry. 
• Apply random areas of weathered wood and leave to dry. 
• Paint a coat of white crackle paint. Leave to dry.

• Sand back some of the edges and ink with ground espresso distress ink.
• Rub over with a damp babywipe and a dry cloth to expose some of the burnt umber areas as well as the darker crackles from the ground espresso.

• Main focus for the lid - stamp the skull on a piece of tissue paper - dry.
• Take a wooden frame, ink the edges with ground espresso, stamp with a texture image and black archival ink and paint on a coat of transparent crackle glaze - leave to dry naturally.
• When dry paint over with white antiquing cream leave to dry again dry and then rub over with a babywipe to remove the antiquing cream except in the crackles.

• Adhere the stamped, crumpled tissue paper image to the box lid with Decoupage glue which is a sealer as well as an adhesive. Apply the Decoupage to the top of the paper and the whole top of the lid to seal it, heat dry.
• Paint a watery wash of titan buff over the skull but leave the teeth white.

• Give the rest of the box a coat of the Decoupage glue/sealer.
• Adhere the frame over the stamped tissue paper.

• Line the box and lid with tissue wrap and when glue is dry give a watery wash of titanium white acrylic paint. This helps it look more ethereal and gives the insides a finished look.

• Seal the base of the box with the Decoupage, I didn't worry about the inside as it had been sealed before it had been given the ethereal look when I glued over the top of the tissue wrap.
• I had intended to add borders, labels and embellishments to the lid and base of the box, but when it came down to it I just preferred the look of the remnant rubs on their own.

Over to you now to enter your projects at the new spooky challenge on AVJ but before you do I recommend you pop over to the challenge post to see all the incredible inspiration from some of the team, I promise you it's well worth a look.

Have a fabulous spooky month.

hugs Brenda xxx

On Hallowe'en the thing you must do

Is pretend that nothing can frighten you

And if somethin' scares you and you want to run

Just let on like it's Hallowe'en fun.

~Author unknown

Dare to Create

Just popping in to share one of the projects I made last weekend at the Dare to Crate retreat in Coventry with the amazing Andy Skinner and Tracy Weinzapfel. These two are just so funny together and kept us entertained all weekend with their banter and jokes and kept us occupied with their fabulous projects.

This is one of those book boxes where the spine pulls out as a tray to hold bits and pieces. You can imagine Andy's background was much darker and grungier but I seem to be in summer colour mode and kept mine lighter and love the mixes and blends I got.

Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes and of course this is Andy's interpretation of him.

Here is a side view and you can see I carried the tones of the colours onto the spine which is actually finely crackled but the photo doesn't pick it up.

The back is painted, stamped and stencilled .......

... and here you can see some of the fabulous texture we created.

Huge thanks to Andy for a fabulous weekend and teaching us the techniques he used to create this box. I love my version of it.

Just before I go I thought I would share the mug I won as a giveaway ..........

Hope you are having a happy and creative week.

hugs Brenda xxx

Upcycle for Frilly and Funkie

I am so pleased to be a guest over at Frilly and Funkie today where the host is the lovely Suzz and the theme is 'It's not easy being Green'. In honour of Earth day which is tomorrow we are to create an upcycled project and to repurpose an existing item, recycle an element that would usually be thrown away or use scraps in a creative way. On this project I've taken lots of scraps destined for the bin and altered, adapted, recycled and upcycled elements.

I started with a tin that has been sitting on a shelf out of the way for a couple of years. I nearly threw it a while back but held onto it 'just in case', you know how you do? I decided to take it out and when I realised my new little collection of cabinet cards would fit in it, I knew where I was going with it.

I took out some media acrylics and a piece of dry kitchen roll and dabbed burnt sienna all over and heat dried it. Of course metal gets hot so we need to be very careful we do not burn ourselves.

The next layer I used burnt umber and dabbed it over randomly leaving some of the burnt sienna showing and dry.

I repeated the random dabbing with paynes grey and heat dried. Now we a beginning to see a lot less of the pattern underneath.

The trick now is to use all three colours together so they are wet at the same time and you can blend them together and over the previous layers.

The using a paint brush paint a coat of quinacridone all over.

Then finish with very light and random patches of all three colours again.
 As you can see there are minute changes in the last three layers but you see it happen when you do it yourself irl and you have control of what colour goes where.

I left the tin overnight and put the lid on, I wanted to see if the paints would get rubbed/scratched off with opening and closing the lid, but I'm pleased to say there was no wear, however I am sure there will be over time and I don't think a layer of varnish would prevent it.
The next day I scraped on a layer of transparent crackle glaze and left it to dry.

I took the time then to decide on what embellishments I wanted to add.

Birdcages - given a watery coat of cobalt blue hue and metallic silver mixed and dried. Some areas were sanded back and then a watery wash of quinacridone gold painted over. More sanding back and ground espresso ink blended in. These were saved from my friend who was going to throw them out, they are muffin bands.

The butterfly - this was a mop up piece and painted so I didn't waste paint from a previous project - it had been given a rough coat of phthalo blue mixed with translucent white. I blended ground espresso over it and flicked it with water, then dried. I splattered watery cobalt turquoise over it, dried and repeated with watered down metallic silver. Next came a coat of quinacridone gold wash, dried and a quinacridone gold glaze (ultra matte varnish coloured with the quin gold paint). Later I decided this was a bit boring so I painted over with the clear crackle glaze to see what happened. Yes some tiny cracks appeared when I rubbed in white antiquing cream and to take the shine off of it I gave it a coat of ultra matte varnish, oh and that's not until I had sanded and inked the edges again!

The bottle -  was left over like the butterfly and had the same coat of phthalo blue and translucent white. I gave it a very thin coat of translucent crackle glaze and when dry blended over ground espresso again but it looked too dark and quite uninteresting so I painted over a thin coat of white crackle paste and I love how it picked up the distress ink as it dried. I finished off with some watery cobalt turquoise and quin gold and once more sanded and blended the ground espresso on the edges. Now it looks better.

The arch - was left over from another project and I think had been dipped in quinacridone gold and paynes grey. I took it, sanded the edges and blended in ground espresso. What happened next was totally unexpected - the distress crayons and mini latticework stencil were lying on the floor (as they do!!) so I decided to bring in some pattern and hey look what it ended up like - love it.

The chloe stems were left after designing a workshop project and I had one die-cut in peach and another in cream, I decided just to give them a quin wash and then a little paynes grey.

The image was printed from the computer and needed aging and as I was enjoying crackling everything I remembered my friend Julia's images on a project where she had cracked them too. So I got out some new Tim Holtz goodies, coloured the image with distress crayons and a water brush and then sealed it with crazing medium. Not sure I like it really!

Look what happened to the lid when I went back to it and the crackle glaze had dried and I had blended patina green antiquing cream over it. Maybe I had got it a tad too thick in places with the glaze?

I die-cut Tim's new lace thinlits dies three times from some waste card that had been given some rusting and patina treatment a while back and adhered them to the sides of the tin.

Then I put everything together to create a collage on the lid with all the elements I had altered and saved from destruction.

And here are my cabinet cards I bought at Brick Lane Market a while back, they're 2 1/2 x 4 ins. Two of them have dates on the back of 1870 and 1872, I think they are amazing.

I think they will feel right at home in this 'ancient' time-worn tin!!!

Thanks to the fabulous team at Frilly and Funkie for having me as their guest today.

hugs Brenda xx

A quote I found and included in my Frilly and Funkie write up.

“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”
― Erma Bombeck