Flowers CVC March #2

 Building fanciful flowers from dies

This project produced these imaginary flowers by using a die-fest of flower shapes and putting them together to create these beautiful layered designs on a shabby, distressed board.

Start with the board and sand the edges and top of the panel, brush off dust and give a coat of decou-page mixed with a little water (not too runny, like thin cream). Leave to dry.

Brush a first coat of white chalk paint keeping it thinner in some places. Dry. I realised when I'd taken the photo I didn't get any white paint into the crevices, so I found an old thin brush and added some.

Give a coat of pink chalky finish paint. I used both colours of pink and had the white tin handy to mix them on the panel itself. Dry.

Add a little vaseline as a resist to the next layer.

Paint a coat of white and dry.

Spritz the board and rub with a paper towel to get the distressed pink to show through. I think I needed to make the vaseline a little thicker in places but I sanded the edges to create more distressed areas.

Take a brown distress ink and blending tool and rub the ink into all the edges and crevices.

Take a baby wipe to wipe away a lot of the ink and show the distressed edges. You can always go back in with the blending tool if it looks too clean.

To finish the distressing I spritzed some walnut stain distress ink with water on my mat and dipped the board in it and dried the areas.

Onto the flowers.

Cut card and create distress ink backgrounds.

Choose the die sets you want to use.

Choose some plain card to go with the distress pieces and cut out a random selection of the large and small flowers.

Enjoy some time layering up different shapes and colours/patterns to create your imaginary flowers. 

Add some shaping to the petals and add some 3d foam shapes to add dimension to the finished blooms. I also had some small punches handy to complete one of the centres.

Create dimension.

Use the same process to get some leaves.

Adhere your pieces to the board, find a sentiment and add some ribbon or string to the top to hang it by.

These photos were taken out in the daylight, here you can see the real colours better. Thank goodness Spring is arriving.

xx

Supplies

TH Sizzix dies - Wildflower Stems 1, Wildflower Stems 2, Blossom, Brushstroke Flowers 4.

TH papers.- a dusky pink and a dark lilac mauve.

TH Distress Inks - Tea Dye, Dried Marigold, Antique Linen, Ground Espresso, Tattered Rose, Walnut Stain, Victorian Velvet, Cracked Pistachio, Peeled Paint, Rustic Wilderness, Wilted Violet, Lost Shadow,

TH Word Chips

PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints - Snowflake, Rose, Blah Mange 

(I used a DIY chalky finish paint from a company on line that I bought in a large tin).

King Spook Hanging

In typical Andy Skinner style these new stamps are fabulous to work with and I used them to create a little hanging to share on Andy's blog today.

I've used the little fella in the bottom left and called him King Spook.
Click on the photo for the links.

Roughly seal the substrate (I used one of my Tando media boards) with gesso, leave some of the outer edges exposed.

 Using the dip and dry technique and watery washes start with raw umber - dry. Add a little cobalt blue to it, dip and dry. Add a little more cobalt blue and some titan buff, dip and dry. Add some titanium white to the mix and repeat.

Stamp text using Spooks and Tech Trauma with watering can, give it a blast of the heatgun and then take a little white gesso with a palette knife - flatten it on your paper/foil palette and the keeping the knife flat to the surface of the board drag small amounts over the background so you get a distressed look.

Stamp the skulls onto tissue paper - I wanted a good clean image over the  rough background. Adhere to the background and give the whole board a covering with matte medium.

Mix a very watery wash of quin gold, paynes grey and quin red and apply to the surface spritzing with water if necessary to keep in light in colour tone - just like watercolours.

I chose those colours so it would tone in with the frame as well.

Cut the TH cameo frame with an oval cut out centre from thin greyboard, run it through an embossing folder and seal with a coat of gesso.

Put a little drops of decoart media acrylics silver, quinacridone red, quinacridone gold and titan buff on a flat palette and take them randomly on a brush and mix and blend them on the frame.

Paint over watery washes of raw umber and paynes grey allowing them to seep into the crevices and dry - repeat several times.

When dry sand the high spots on the surface back to the silvery colour and some raw greyboard and then blend a dark brow distress ink over the whole background and with a babywipe wipe it off again leaving the greyboard areas taking the ink and making the frame look much older,

Don't forget to sand the edges inside and out and blend with vintage photo DI.

Take a piece of media card and dip in watery cobalt blue, dry, and then mix a watery rose colour from the quin gold, quin red and titan buff and dip again.

Using the a stencil apply titanium white through it and stamp some text and numbers from the brand new 'Spook' set of stamps by Andy for Illusionary Artists.

Follow up with a wash of quin gold and paynes grey and dips of those colours with titanium white to get an etheral layered effect.

I stamped the image using aterng can archival ink but because of the stencilling and layers it didn't come out as sharply as i thought it would.

But I knew I was going to paint it in and with some paynes grey and a very fine brush I was able to add the detail in.

Stick King Spook to the back of the cameo frame and adhere it to a second one to give it some substance and dimension .... 

.... and assemble the hanging.

Thanks for stopping by and a especially to those of you who leave me such lovely comments - I really appreciate each and every one.

Don't forget to stay tuned to Andy's blog to see all the wonderful inspiration that gets posted.

hugs Brenda xx

Spring is in the Air at AVJ

This month the lovely Sandy has chosen our theme over at A Vintage Journey . It's been fabulous looking at the new growth peeking through in the garden. I so love this time of year and I hope we will begin to get a bit more sunshine now the clocks have changed.

Sandy describes the new challenge -

Leave those winter blues behind. Make anything that says SPRING using pastel colours. It is your choice, a card, canvas, 3D or a tag, etc. but remember it should be in one of the vintage; shabby; mixed media; art journalling; industrial or steampunk styles that we favour.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my hangings last month, I enjoyed making them and knowing that you liked them too has spurred me on to create another with a new technique using the DecoArt media range of acrylic paints. Following on from the weathered boards last time I have created some scratched board and added elements that definitely give me the feel that Spring is in the air.

I haven't gone very pastel with my project as it is the emergence of the first green buds and leaves that get me excited, so I have tried to echo that in this piece. Firstly I mixed green gold and the most tiniest amount of Prussian blue with white tinting base and painted the card, then heat dried it.

Next I stippled and spritzed paynes grey and burnt umber around the edges, keeping it a watery mix and quite light in colour.

I used Andy Skinner's scratch stamp with watering can archival ink all over it ......

I created some real scratches with a wire scratch brush and added a few remnant rubs.

I added random washes of quinacridone gold before heat drying and repeated with watery paynes grey, dried again .......

and finished with some hansa yellow light to bring some additional spring colour into it.

The die-cut flowers were dipped in sap green and orange to create colour contrasts, then dipped in yellow iron oxide and distress blended and dipped with abandoned coral .

The postage stamp frame was cut in black mount board and given a stippled finish using black gesso. When it was dry I lightly blended some iced espresso metallic lustre over it then spritzed with primary yellow media mister and again when dry spritzed with the back media mister. I finished with a light rub of champagne ice metallic lustre and this gave me the dark green, textured metallic look for the frame.

The circular disk (again cut from mountboard to give it some sturdiness) was given two coats of sap green media paint and then I used a palette knife to spread white crackle paste over it. This created some fine crackles and when it was fully dry I gave it a coat of transparent yellow iron oxide and quinacridone gold washes. Finally I sanded the edges and blended ground espresso DI round.

The little butterflies were diecut from a piece of painted card stamped with text using tiger lily archival ink and also edged with ground espresso. But if you look at the finished piece you will see how they changed as I added more paints to them.

Once I had put this altogether I decided to add the Spring banner, it needed something else to finish it off.

I hope you will be able to join us on this new leg of the journey and for those who enter there is a chance of winning a £20 voucher to Country View Crafts on-line store.

Enjoy April as the sun begins to warm the land in the northern hemisphere.

I shall be back again in a few hours with my DT sample for Country View Challenges, hope you can join me again, but in the meantime please visit the new AVJ challenge to see all the wonderful inspiration from the other Creative Guides.

hugs Brenda 

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” 

― Pablo Neruda