Lighthouse media board

Where else would you rather be than near the water, and especially the sea, if it's in the high 20's or more? I love the sun and the hotter weather and wish I lived nearer the sea so I could walk the beaches when the day is long and stretches into warm, sultry evenings. I made a small media board using DecoArt products to create this crackle background to remind me of the beautiful colours and sights of a coastal walk.

Process steps

Paint the media board with a coat of white gesso .... at the same time dry brush the chipboard lighthouse with gesso too. Notice the different effects you get.

Apply modeling paste through a stencil for texture and to begin background layers. When dry paint over with cobalt teal hue and titan buff. Dry that and then apply transparent crackle glaze over it and leave to crackle naturally. When dry rub over with prussian blue.

Take the lighthouse and add watery washes of cobalt teal, prussian blue, paynes grey and transparent yellow iron oxide and give it a coat of antique decoupage (my new fund vintage product from DecoArt).

Some cheesecloth dipped in transparent yellow iron oxide, some thread dipped in raw umber and paynes grey and some little die-cuts of birds, shells and starfish finish off the design.

Hope you have had some nice sunny weather recently and hopefully not tooooo hot but warm enough to walk by the river, sit by the lake or be by the sea.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx

Under the Sea - DecoArt challenge

I am participating as a DecoArt Mixed Media Design Team Member (DMMDT) in their summer challenge 'Under the Sea', you are invited to submit a project up until the 12th August and there are two fabulous media packages to be won.

So get your DecoArt supplies out and get your thinking caps on, this is one not to be missed.
I have had some fun with a cheap Ikea frame for this one.

Process steps 

(These can be taken out of order, when you are waiting for drying or crackle times work on another piece of the project)

1. Give your frame a coat of white gesso and dry. Take some muslin and cheesecloth and adhere to the frame with a fabric structurizer (I used one I have in my supplies but DecoArt do a fabric stiffener you could try). Leave to dry.

2. Cut your card to fit the frame and give it a coat of white gesso. Mix some transparent/semi transparent sea blue and greens with water separately on a craft mat and dip and dry your background several times keeping the wash very light in colour.

3. Use a bubble like stencil with transparent crackle glaze and randomly add sections to the background. Leave to dry.

4. Take a piece of card and brayer red, orange  and yellow paints over the surface both horizontally and vertically and finish with a brayered wash of yellow oxide. Use a crackle stamp with red geranium archival ink and when dry die-cut flowers. Because they looked deeper than I wanted I dipped them in a watery titan buff and dried them.

5. Make another piece using greens and brown (without the crackle stamping) and cut foliage. Again I knocked the pieces back by dipping in watery titan buff.

6. Adhere glass flat backed cabochons to the background. Make more colour washes in the blue/greens and then drip and spritz with water. Repeat layers as necessary to achieve required results.

8. a) Die cut two seahorses from mount board and glue them together, dip in tiny amounts of pyrrole red and cadmium orange with water, seal with a coat of matte medium. b) Draw on markings with a ground espresso distress marker, c) then spritz lightly to move the distress ink around a little and seal with micro glaze. d) I spritzed again to check it was sealed but it wasn't fully and more ink moved around so I dabbed it off and re-drew in a few parts of the seahorse and sealed it again. e) To finish I splattered with some of the pyrrole red and quinacridone orange and used a posca white and a posca black pen to draw in a few dots and details. 

9. I didn't like the eye in the last photo so I played with it a bit more and now I'm happier with it (although he doesn't look as angry irl).

Right after that marathon onto more of the frame.

10. a) When the fabric is dry on the frame adhere glass glitter and micro beads to the fabric using matte medium. b) When dry splodge translucent blue and white paints over, spray with water mister and dry - you will need to repeat several times all around the frame. c) Again when dry spray perfect pearl sprays and dry again. This time add in some brown and yellow colours.

11. Knock back the deeper colours by splattering translucent white paint and by adding some snowtex.

10. Take the fun crab chipboard piece, add sand texture paste and dry, then stipple sandy colours and brown over him.

11. The other embellishments also had a bit of a make over including the starfish and shells that are real.

12. Give everything a spray of Americana matte sealer and finally put the frame together adding some knotted string and raise the seahorse to give it added dimension. I hadn't added the title of the piece on this photo but I am really pleased with the effects.

I hope you have been following the team and their projects this month, so do pop over to the Media Blog to see what they have been creating AND look too at what you could be in with  chance of winning if you join in.

 Many thanks for stopping by Bumblebees and Butterflies and checking out my Under the Sea frame.

hugs Brenda xxx

Taking Sara's steer I am entering this into the 'By the Sea' challenge at Frilly and Funkie which includes a nautical or beach theme and colour palette. Thanks Sara. xxx

I also notice that Anything but Cute has a Summertime Fun challenge going so I thought I would enter it there too. No better fun than being by or in the sea.

So then I thought let's have fun with anymore challenges I could find and Mixed Media Mojo has Summer Fun with a twist of Shells.

PRODUCTS AND SUPPLIES

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Phthalo Green Blue

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Cobalt Teal

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Phthalo Turquoise

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Titan Buff

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – Quinacridone Magenta

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – Yellow Oxide

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Pyrrole Red

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Quinacridone Red

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Cadmium Orange

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Transparent Red Iron Oxide

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Viridian

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Prussian Blue

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Green Gold

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – Raw Umber
DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – Raw Sienna

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Quinacridone Gold

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - Burnt Sienna

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – Translucent White

DecoArt Media Mediums and Specialty Products – Transparent Crackle Glaze

DecoArt Media Mediums and Specialty Products - Clear Matte Medium

DecoArt Media Mediums and Specialty Products - White Gesso

Sizzix (Tim Holtz) Wildflowers thinlits

Sizzix (Tim Holtz) Holiday Greens thinlits

Sizzix (Tim Holtz) Sand and Sea Bigz die

Summertime 2 for CVCC

Sea and Sand

With thoughts turning to summertime at CVCC it has to be the beach for me, I love nothing better than a stroll across the sands looking for shells, taking in the sea air and watching the waves come in and out and this prompted my card today.

I began with two A4 sheets of card and the wet in wet technique - Vivian Keh has a great video tutorial here for you to try out if you like the look of the effects.

I used broken china, salty ocean, faded jeans and weathered wood distress sprays for the sea sheet and then antique linen, tattered rose and tea dye for the sand sheet.

As I was gathering the blueprint stamps and some dies together that would fit the theme I thought about having a weathered frame as part of the design so I made another sheet using coffee shop glimmer mist with vintage photo, gathered twigs and rusty hinge distress sprays.

The frame was diecut from the above sheet, inked with walnut stain and tea dye inks, splattered with water and then dipped in hickory smoke stain and and finished with a dip in tarnished bronze stain. This sounds like a fast process but I did heat dry in between each layer of inks.

The background was cut from the blue sheet and run through the dot matrix texture fade with the oval diffuser on it so it only textured the outside edge. I then painted some of the dots with various blues and white distress paint before stamping some small script in the centre. I roughened the edges and inked with walnut stain.

The large conch shell is from Tim's nautical blueprint set, stamped and cut from the sand sheet and watercoloured using various distress markers and a waterbrush. The smaller shells were cut from some offcuts of distressed card and glossy accents added over the top and the small starfish cut from hessian using the small sand dollar movers and shapers die.

Here we have some cheesecloth sprayed with antique linen and frayed burlap and scrunched up, the movers and shapers seahorse and some greenery cut from the festive greens strip die.

Having cut the seahorse from the sea sheet I painted on rock candy crackle paint and when it was dry blended over and around some walnut stain DI. I think he's one of the nicest seahorses I have ever made.

Finally the work block cut from the adventure thinlits set in coredinations paper, adhered to a piece of the sand card, sanded and inked.

I layered and overlapped the pieces as this fits onto a 10 1/2 x 14 1/2 cm card.

I hope you have time to explore a beach or somewhere out in the open whilst the warmer days are with us - enjoy........

..... I will soon when we will start our family holiday travelling to Lanzarote, it's fabulous taking the girls down to the beach late afternoon as the day begins to cool and the sand doesn't burn your feet. We'll take some bread and feed the fish too.

I hope you can join us at CVC Summertime challenge.

hugs Brenda xxx

A simple life is good with me. I don't need a whole lot. For me, a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, barefoot on a beach and I'm happy.

Yanni

A Visual Journey #26

Yikes you know what week we are on????? Yep you got it, half way through the year (in fact that was last week as I am one behind at the moment).

We are all going away as a family in August and our minds are turning to the sun, sea and sangria of Lanzarote. I combined those thoughts with a workshop I did recently on brayering techniques and decided on a sea theme with a brayered background and I really quite like the end result.

I began with three dark, opaque colours of fresco finish paint using Leandra's monotone look.

I then added more opaque and translucent colours until I achieved this (and guess how many colours I used in the end - 12!!!!).

To get my class started on our workshop we talked briefly about adding household items to the brayer including elastic bands and this technique reminded me of a watery effect - so using chipped sapphire distress ink we got this - .......

.... and then repeating with snowflake ff paint we got this -

I also added some 'bubbles' using Tim's stencil and mermaid lagoon distress ink.

Next I stamped the nautical blueprint stamps using scraps of leftover inky pieces of card and cut out the shapes and names.

Finding a left over sample of the monotone brayered paint technique from the workshop I dipped it in walnut stain distress ink and began putting the pages together. Finding a shell stamp from an old Craft Stamper magazine, I added that and a tresaure collage stamp using white pigment ink.

When I was happy with it I actually added some journalling about our impending holiday in Lanzarote and the memories it invokes.

Are you in Summer mode at the moment or are you in winter mode (according to what part of the world you live of course)?

Well I definitely want to start packing now, but will have to wait another month I am afraid.

Enjoy your holidays and breaks wherever you are.

hugs Brenda xxx

 As always if you would like to share the visual journey collection you will find the code to add to you post here -

get the InLinkz code

... and I look forward to sharing in your pages through the linky below.

Thanks for taking the time to share your work with me and each other.

An InLinkz Link-up

Crafts-Too Summer Days 2

I had a Marianne lighthouse die to play with this month from Crafts-Too and decided to use it as part of the ‘having fun in the sun’ twist for the summer days challenge. I am not good with being in or on the sea and yet it draws me in and I love being near it. In fact I love being on it for a short while and lighthouses are certainly an attraction for me. So I made this seascape hanging.

I have to say it looks better irlife and irlight, the photography doesn’t really do it justice,

I started with the Tim Holtz cabinet die cut in greyboard for a strong base and painted it with acrylic paint. When dry I stippled modelling paste over the bottom to represent the rough seas around the lighthouse and I adhered the lighthouse with the paste to see how it would be placed. Again when dry I painted in the sea and sky using acrylic paints, dripping different colour blues and sea green into the spaces, then adhered the second lighthouse I had made over the top, gluing some sand around the bottom of it.

I then added the boat – can you guess what it is? I’ve altered it quite a bit with alcohol inks, treasure gold and paint.

I dry-brushed the rough waves with white acrylic paint to make them look more like white tops.

The hanging piece is some corrugated packaging cut down and painted with gesso and sand to give it that shabby textured effect

I added some TH paper, given a coat of white wash (thinned white acrylic paint) with distressed the edges.

I assembled the pieces …….

… and coated the shell collection with some gesso and sand too to blend it all together.

But it just didn’t look right once I had taken all the photos – re-think time.

In the end I added some CI stamped seagulls and some painted ones in the background as I felt the sky area needed more attention.

I’m happier with it now but still thinks it needs something else?

I hope the visitors on the passenger ferry have a lovely visit on their trip around the harbour.

Oh and I nearly forgot, did you guess the boat is a peel-off? Sure you did.

I hope you have had some wonderful exciting summer days and fun in the sun.

Do come and join us at Crafts-Too Challenges we would love to see what projects you are making that link to this theme.

I am entering this into the Summer Vacation challenge at Inspiration Journal. and the Artistic Stamper's Postcards, travel and holidays challenges.

hugs {brenda} x0x